Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts and the Case for Resilience

This report focuses on the risks of climate change to development in Sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia and South Asia. Building on the 2012 report, Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4 degrees C Warmer World Must be Avoided, this new scientific analysis examines the likely impacts of present day, 2 degrees C and 4 degrees C warming on agricultural production, water resources, and coastal vulnerability for affected populations. The report show that significant significant climate and development impacts are already being felt in some regions, and in some cases multiple threats of increasing extreme heat waves, sea level rise, more severe storms, droughts and floods are expected to have further severe negative implications for the poorest. These impacts are likely to push many vulnerable households below the poverty trap threshold with high temperature extreme's negative impact on the yields of food crops. Promoting economic growth, the eradication of poverty and inequality will likely be a tougher challenge than the one it already is, and immediate steps must be taken to help countries adapt to these risks. The report shows that with the substantive reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, many of the worst projected climate impacts could still be avoided by holding warming below 2 degrees C

Farming in Changing Production Conditions: Agricultural Technology, Climate Change and Adaptation in Vietnam

In an era when enormous challenges to food security are imposed on humanity through phenomena such as global climate change, it is important to understand how farming households adapt and respond to a changing production environment. This thesis consists of three empirical studies with a special focus on rural farming households in Vietnam. The first study investigates the pattern and determinants of the use of four agricultural practices – new rice seed varieties, chemical fertilisers, pesticides and mechanisation – in small-scale rice farming. Using a long panel dataset, the study applied a two-stage estimation strategy to determine how and to what extent the changes in agricultural technology have been affected by various factors. The second study examines the changes in climatological variables since 1975 using a comprehensive dataset for a relatively long time period (1975 to 2014) and a high density of climatic records. It first combines statistical methods with geostatistical techniques to graphically represent the distribution of climate patterns, identifying variations and trends and linking to rice production throughout the country. The third study investigates whether or not farmers have altered their farming strategies over time in response to pronounced changes in the climate. Since farmers’ decisions to use certain farming techniques are inherently dynamic, I estimated a dynamic random-effects probit model, controlling for unobserved heterogeneity and state dependence. Vietnamese farmers have been operating their farms under a continuously transforming policy environment. However, new challenges are emerging and their impacts on agricultural production have been increasingly pronounced. The findings and policy implications drawn from these studies will be useful in enhancing farmers’ adaptive capacity in fast changing production conditions

Interdisciplinary Geospatial Assessment of Malaria Exposure in Ann Township, Myanmar

Despite considerable progress toward malaria elimination in Myanmar, challenges remain owing to the persistence of complex focal transmission reservoirs. Nearly all remaining infections are clinically silent, rendering them invisible to routine monitoring. Moreover, limited knowledge of population distributions and human activity on the landscape in remote regions of Myanmar hinders the development of targeted malaria elimination approaches, as advocated by the World Health Organization (WHO). This is especially true for Ann Township, a remote region of Myanmar with a high malaria burden, where a comprehensive understanding of local exposure, which includes the characterization of environmental settings and land use activities, is crucial to developing successful malaria elimination strategies. In this dissertation, I present an interdisciplinary approach that combines satellite earth observations with two separate on-the-ground surveys to assess human exposure to malaria at multiple scales. First, I mapped rural settlements using a fusion of Landsat imagery and multi-temporal auxiliary data sensitive to human activity patterns with a classification accuracy of 93.1%. A satellite data-based map of land cover and land use was then used to assess landscape-scale malaria exposure as a function of environmental settings for a subset of ten villages where a malaria prevalence survey was carried out. While multiple significant associations were discovered, the relationship found between malaria exposure and satellite-measured village forest cover was the most significant. Finally, a separate detailed survey that explored a variety of land use activities, including their frequency and duration along with testing for clinical or subclinical malaria, was used to identify and quantify factors promoting an individual’s likelihood of malaria infection regardless of the environmental settings. This analysis established strong associations between malaria and individual land use activities that bring respondents into direct contact with forested areas. These results highlight that the current Myanmar malaria elimination strategies, which focus on prevention from within the home (i.e., bednets and indoor spraying), are no longer sufficient to remove remaining malaria reservoirs in the country. A paradigm shift in malaria elimination strategies towards targeted interventions that can disrupt malaria transmission in the settings where the exposure occurs are critical to achieving country-wide malaria elimination

Climate Smart Agriculture: Building Resilience to Climate Change

The book uses an economic lens to identify the main features of climate-smart agriculture (CSA), its likely impact, and the challenges associated with its implementation. Drawing upon theory and concepts from agricultural development, institutional, and resource economics, this book expands and formalizes the conceptual foundations of CSA. Focusing on the adaptation/resilience dimension of CSA, the text embraces a mixture of conceptual analyses, including theory, empirical and policy analysis, and case studies, to look at adaptation and resilience through three possible avenues: ex-ante reduction of vulnerability, increasing adaptive capacity, and ex-post risk coping. The book is divided into three sections. The first section provides conceptual framing, giving an overview of the CSA concept and grounding it in core economic principles. The second section is devoted to a set of case studies illustrating the economic basis of CSA in terms of reducing vulnerability, increasing adaptive capacity and ex-post risk coping. The final section addresses policy issues related to climate change. Providing information on this new and important field in an approachable way, this book helps make sense of CSA and fills intellectual and policy gaps by defining the concept and placing it within an economic decision-making framework. This book will be of interest to agricultural, environmental, and natural resource economists, development economists, and scholars of development studies, climate change, and agriculture. It will also appeal to policy-makers, development practitioners, and members of governmental and non-governmental organizations interested in agriculture, food security and climate change

Earth Observation Science and Applications for Risk Reduction and Enhanced Resilience in Hindu Kush Himalaya Region

This open access book is a consolidation of lessons learnt and experiences gathered from our efforts to utilise Earth observation (EO) science and applications to address environmental challenges in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region. It includes a complete package of knowledge on service life cycles including multi-disciplinary topics and practically tested applications for the HKH. It comprises 19 chapters drawing from a decade’s worth of experience gleaned over the course of our implementation of SERVIR-HKH – a joint initiative of NASA, USAID, and ICIMOD – to build capacity on using EO and geospatial technology for effective decision making in the region. The book highlights SERVIR’s approaches to the design and delivery of information services – in agriculture and food security; land cover and land use change, and ecosystems; water resources and hydro-climatic disasters; and weather and climate services. It also touches upon multidisciplinary topics such as service planning; gender integration; user engagement; capacity building; communication; and monitoring, evaluation, and learning. We hope that this book will be a good reference document for professionals and practitioners working in remote sensing, geographic information systems, regional and spatial sciences, climate change, ecosystems, and environmental analysis. Furthermore, we are hopeful that policymakers, academics, and other informed audiences working in sustainable development and evaluation – beyond the wider SERVIR network and well as within it – will greatly benefit from what we share here on our applications, case studies, and documentation across cross-cutting topics

Remote Sensing in Mangroves

The book highlights recent advancements in the mapping and monitoring of mangrove forests using earth observation satellite data. New and historical satellite data and aerial photographs have been used to map the extent, change and bio-physical parameters, such as phenology and biomass. Research was conducted in different parts of the world. Knowledge and understanding gained from this book can be used for the sustainable management of mangrove forests of the worl

Climate Smart Agriculture: Building Resilience to Climate Change

climate change; food security; agricultural development; adaptatio