Linking Population, Fertility and Family Planning with Adaptation to Climate Change: Views from Ethiopia

As global climate change unfolds, its effects are being felt disproportionately in the world's poorest countries and among the groups of people least able to cope. Many of the countries hardest hit by the effects of climate change also face rapid population growth, with their populations on track to double by 2050.Population Action International (PAI) and Miz-Hasab Research Center (MHRC), in collaboration with the Joint Global Change Research Institute (JGCRI), studied which groups are most vulnerable, what community members say they need to adapt, and the role of family planning and reproductive health in increasing resilience to climate change impacts.The study was carried out in 2008-2009 in peri-urban and rural areas of two regions in Ethiopia: the Oromia region and the Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's (SNNP) region

Proceedings of the 1974 Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center Wheat-Yield Conference

The proceedings of the 1974 Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center Wheat-Yield Conference are presented. The state of art of wheat-yield forecasting and the feasibility of incorporating remote sensing into this forecasting were discussed with emphasis on formulating common approach to wheat-yield forecasting, primarily using conventional meteorological measurements, which can later include the various applications of remote sensing. Papers are presented which deal with developments in the field of crop modelling

Soil Moisture Workshop

The Soil Moisture Workshop was held at the United States Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, Maryland on January 17-19, 1978. The objectives of the Workshop were to evaluate the state of the art of remote sensing of soil moisture; examine the needs of potential users; and make recommendations concerning the future of soil moisture research and development. To accomplish these objectives, small working groups were organized in advance of the Workshop to prepare position papers. These papers served as the basis for this report

The pirates of Somalia: Coastguards of anarchy

This paper analyses the underlying factors driving piracy off the coast of Somalia and examines the effectiveness of the international naval anti-piracy mission with respect to its declared aims. We show that while the navies perform well with respect to their short-term aims, they failed to contain the escalation of the piracy problem through 2009: pirates have been diverted from the Gulf of Aden into the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Evidence from domestic conditions in Somalia suggests that economic development and greater stability might in fact aid pirates

After the Rain – learning the lessons from flood recovery in Hull

The report shows that it is often not so much the floods themselves, but what comes afterwards, that people find so difficult to deal with. The research on which this report is based aimed to undertake a real-time longitudinal study to document and understand the everyday experiences of individuals following the floods of June 2007 in interaction with networks of actors and organisations, strategies of institutional support and investment in the built environment and infrastructure. It had the following objectives: - To identify and document key dimensions of the longer term experience of flood impact and flood recovery, including health, economic and social aspects. - To examine how resilience and vulnerability were manifest in the interaction between everyday strategies of adaptation during the flood recovery process, and modes of institutional support and the management of infrastructure and the built environment. -To explore to what extent the recovery process entailed the development of new forms of resilience and to identify the implications for developing local level resilience for flood recovery in the future. To develop an archive that will be accessible for future research into other aspects of flood recovery. The flooding which affected the city of Kingston-upon-Hull took place in June 2007. Over 110mm of rain fell during the biggest event, overwhelming the city‟s drainage system and resulting in widespread pluvial flooding. The floods affected over 8,600 households and one person was killed. Our research used in-depth, qualitative methods where 44 people kept weekly diaries and participated in interviews and group discussions over an 18-month period

An assessment of the ability of Bartlett–Lewis type of rainfall models to reproduce drought statistics

Of all natural disasters, the economic and environmental consequences of droughts are among the highest because of their longevity and widespread spatial extent. Because of their extreme behaviour, studying droughts generally requires long time series of historical climate data. Rainfall is a very important variable for calculating drought statistics, for quantifying historical droughts or for assessing the impact on other hydrological (e. g. water stage in rivers) or agricultural (e. g. irrigation requirements) variables. Unfortunately, time series of historical observations are often too short for such assessments. To circumvent this, one may rely on the synthetic rainfall time series from stochastic point process rainfall models, such as Bartlett-Lewis models. The present study investigates whether drought statistics are preserved when simulating rainfall with Bartlett-Lewis models. Therefore, a 105 yr 10 min rainfall time series obtained at Uccle, Belgium is used as a test case. First, drought events were identified on the basis of the Effective Drought Index (EDI), and each event was characterized by two variables, i.e. drought duration (D) and drought severity (S). As both parameters are interdependent, a multivariate distribution function, which makes use of a copula, was fitted. Based on the copula, four types of drought return periods are calculated for observed as well as simulated droughts and are used to evaluate the ability of the rainfall models to simulate drought events with the appropriate characteristics. Overall, all Bartlett-Lewis model types studied fail to preserve extreme drought statistics, which is attributed to the model structure and to the model stationarity caused by maintaining the same parameter set during the whole simulation period

Scientific knowledge and scientific uncertainty in bushfire and flood risk mitigation: literature review

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Scientific Diversity, Scientific Uncertainty and Risk Mitigation Policy and Planning (RMPP) project aims to investigate the diversity and uncertainty of bushfire and flood science, and its contribution to risk mitigation policy and planning. The project investigates how policy makers, practitioners, courts, inquiries and the community differentiate, understand and use scientific knowledge in relation to bushfire and flood risk. It uses qualitative social science methods and case studies to analyse how diverse types of knowledge are ordered and judged as salient, credible and authoritative, and the pragmatic meaning this holds for emergency management across the PPRR spectrum. This research report is the second literature review of the RMPP project and was written before any of the case studies had been completed. It synthesises approximately 250 academic sources on bushfire and flood risk science, including research on hazard modelling, prescribed burning, hydrological engineering, development planning, meteorology, climatology and evacuation planning. The report also incorporates theoretical insights from the fields of risk studies and science and technology studies (STS), as well as indicative research regarding the public understandings of science, risk communication and deliberative planning. This report outlines the key scientific practices (methods and knowledge) and scientific uncertainties in bushfire and flood risk mitigation in Australia. Scientific uncertainties are those ‘known unknowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’ that emerge from the development and utilisation of scientific knowledge. Risk mitigation involves those processes through which agencies attempt to limit the vulnerability of assets and values to a given hazard. The focus of this report is the uncertainties encountered and managed by risk mitigation professionals in regards to these two hazards, though literature regarding natural sciences and the scientific method more generally are also included where appropriate. It is important to note that while this report excludes professional experience and local knowledge from its consideration of uncertainties and knowledge, these are also very important aspects of risk mitigation which will be addressed in the RMPP project’s case studies. Key findings of this report include: Risk and scientific knowledge are both constructed categories, indicating that attempts to understand any individual instance of risk or scientific knowledge should be understood in light of the social, political, economic, and ecological context in which they emerge. Uncertainty is a necessary element of scientific methods, and as such risk mitigation practitioners and researchers alike should seek to ‘embrace uncertainty’ (Moore et al., 2005) as part of navigating bushfire and flood risk mitigation