A Collaborative Approach for Reducing Wildland Fire Risks to Communities and the Environment

The Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior joined the Western Governors' Association, National Association of State Foresters, National Association of Counties, and the Intertribal Timber Council to endorse this 10-Year Comprehensive Strategy to deal with the wildland fire and hazardous fuels situation, as well as the needs for habitat restoration and rehabilitation in the Nation. Its goals were to improve fire prevention and suppression, reduce hazardous fuels, restore fire-adapted ecosystems, and promote community assistance. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

MARINE CORPS TRAINING FOR SUCCESS IN LITTORAL COMBAT: WHAT DOES A SERVICE-LEVEL TRAINING EXERCISE LOOK LIKE FOR A MARINE LITTORAL REGIMENT?

Since 1775 the United States Navy and Marine Corps team has worked together as a naval expeditionary force to project military power to various regions around the globe. The strength of this force has been the cohesion built during training and the preparation conducted in garrison prior to peaceful deployments or into a conflict. The nature of war has not changed over the years; per Commandant of the Marine Corps, the nature of war is, and will continue to be, an escalation to conflict stemming from the opposing wills of two individual nation states or groups. However, the character of war changes as we continue to evolve and make advancements with technology. A key aspect of being competitive and having the ability to adapt, even with changes in the way we wage war, is having a properly organized, adequately equipped, and well-trained force. The latter is the main focus of this research. This research aims to provide an alternative way of training Marine Corps forces that will conduct operations in the United States Indo-Pacific Command area of responsibility. Currently, the Marine Corps spends a significant amount of money annually training in the desert—an environment in which our senior leaders do not expect to fight in the near future.Major, United States Marine CorpsApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Adapting to change: Time for climate resilience and a new adaptation strategy. EPC Issue Paper 5 March 2020

The dramatic effects of climate change are being felt across the European continent and the world. Considering how sluggish and unsuccessful the world has been in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the impacts will become long-lasting scars. Even implementing radical climate mitigation now would be insufficient in addressing the economic, societal and environmental implications of climate change, which are expected to only intensify in the years to come. This means climate mitigation must go hand in hand with the adaptation efforts recognised in the Paris Agreement. And although the damages of climate change are usually localised and adaptation measures often depend on local specificities, given the interconnections between ecosystems, people and economies in a globalised world there are strong reasons for European Union (EU) member states to join forces, pool risk and cooperate across borders. Sharing information, good practices, experiences and resources to strengthen resilience and enhance adaptive capacity makes sense economically, environmentally and socially. The European Commission’s 2013 Adaptation Strategy is the first attempt to set EU-wide adaptation and climate resilience and could be considered novel in that it tried to mainstream adaptation goals into relevant legislation, instruments and funds. It was not very proactive, however. It also lacked long-term perspective, failed to put the adaptation file high on the political agenda, was under resourced, and suffered from knowledge gaps and silo thinking. The Commission’s European Green Deal proposal, which has been presented as a major step forward to the goal of Europe becoming the world’s first climate-neutral continent, suggests that the Commission will adopt a new EU strategy on adaptation to climate within the first two years of its mandate (2020-2021). In light of the risks climate change poses to ecosystems, societies and the economy (through inter alia the vulnerability of the supply chain to climate change and its potential failure to provide services to consumers), adaptation should take a prominent role alongside mitigation in the EU’s political climate agenda. Respecting the division of treaty competences, there are important areas where EU-wide action and support could foster the continent’s resilience to climate change. The European Policy Centre (EPC) project “Building a climate-resilient Europe”, which has culminated in this Issue Paper, has identified the following: (i) the ability to convert science-based knowledge into preventive action and responsible behaviour, thus filling the information gap; (ii) the need to close the protection gap through better risk management and risk sharing; (iii) the necessity to adopt nature-based infrastructural solutions widely and tackle the grey infrastructure bias; and (iv) the need to address the funding and investment gap. This Issue Paper aims to help inform the upcoming EU Adaptation Strategy and, by extension, strengthen the EU’s resilience to climate change. To that end, the authors make a call for the EU to mainstream adaptation and shift its focus from reacting to disasters to a more proactive approach that prioritises prevention, risk reduction and resilience building. In doing so, the EU must ensure fairness and distributive justice while striving for climate change mitigation and protecting the environment and biodiversity. To succeed, the new EU Adaptation Strategy will need to address specific challenges related to the information, protection, funding and investment gaps; and the grey infrastructure bias. To tackle and address those challenges, this Paper proposes 17 solutions outlined in Table 1 (see page 6)

Environmental Impacts of Diverting Crop Residues to Fuel Use

Shortage of fuel wood has lead many rural people to switch to using agricultural residues as an alternative energy source. However this has not always been met with universal acclaim due to the role of residues as fertilisers. Although crop residues and animal manure as a nutrient source has been superseded by inorganic fertilizers in most intensive farming systems, they\ud continue to be the main source of crop nutrient replacement in most developing countries. There has developed wide spread assumption that the removal of all crop residues from the fields must therefore be prevented since this will be detrimental to crop productivity. This is a gross simplification on several fronts

Food security, risk management and climate change

This report identifies major constraints to the adaptive capacity of food organisations operating in Australia. This report is about food security, climate change and risk management. Australia has enjoyed an unprecedented level of food security for more than half a century, but there are new uncertainties emerging and it would be unrealistic – if not complacent – to assume the same level of food security will persist simply because of recent history. The project collected data from more than 36 case study organisations (both foreign and local) operating in the Australian food-supply chain, and found that for many businesses,  risk management practices require substantial improvement to cope with and exploit the uncertainties that lie ahead. Three risks were identified as major constraints to adaptive capacity of food organisations operating in Australia:  risk management practices; an uncertain regulatory environment – itself a result of gaps in risk management; climate change uncertainty and projections about climate change impacts, also related to risk management

EQUIPPING THE NMESIS BATTERY

As the Marine Corps seeks to meet the strategic guidance set forth in the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the organization must replace legacy weapons systems that are less effective within the littoral combat area. As part of the Navy and Marine Corps Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS), the Marine Corps will incorporate the Naval Strike Missile (NSM) as one capability that will contribute to the Navy's freedom of maneuver within an enemy's weapon engagement zone (WEZ). Designated as the ROGUE-Fires system, the Marine Corps solution is an unmanned Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) that has the ability to mount either the NSM or the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) family of munitions. This study's purpose is to assess the ideal equipping solution to ensure a NMESIS battery can accomplish its Training and Readiness (T&R) standards, assuming that it will be financially unfeasible to equip each unit with a full complement of 18 systems per battery. By limiting systems per battery in CONUS, the Marine Corps can reallocate additional funds toward replacing other legacy systems identified in Force Design 2030. Data used in the study included Total Force Training requirements, MOS-specific training objectives, and current unmanned system operators training objectives to formulate an example of likely T&R standards for a NMESIS battery.Major, United States Marine CorpsApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Forest Land Ownership Changes in Portugal

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Lithium-ion battery’s life cycle : safety risks and risk management at workplaces

This summary is the final report of the research project “Lithium-ion battery’s life cycle: safety risks and risk management at workplaces”, funded by Finnish Work Environment Fund, the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, OSALAN and Mitsubishi Logisnext Europe. The project has been part of SAF€RA program. The research was coordinated by Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (Finland) and the research partner was GAIKER (Spain). The report summarizes the occupational safety of the LIB value chain and presents good practices and aspects that need to be taken into account in the management of the safety risks related to LIBs, together with assessment of gaseous emissions and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) which was used for evaluating the environmental impacts throughout the value chain of the LIB selected for the case study