Current Directions in the Climate Change Debate in the United States

human development, climate change

Global Dialogue Report - Sustainability and Growth: Sao Paulo

The Global Dialogue on Sustainability, Climate Change and Economic Growth was held in São Paulo in October 2011. It was co-organised by the Brazilian Centre for Analysis and Planning (CEBRAP) and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). The idea was to bring together practitioners and thinkers to explore through dialogue the key issues relating to sustainability, climate change and economic growth both now and over the next 20 or 30 years. It was a diverse and broad-based gathering that not only included entrepreneurs, directors of philanthropic organisations and researchers but also made a particular effort to include spokespeople from marginalised communities -- indigenous and riverine small-holder representatives from the Amazon and Atlantic rainforest regions and a pastoralist representative from Ethiopia -- who have often been excluded from conventional debates about sustainability, climate change and economic growth. These conventional debates focus on the biological and scientific aspects of environmental resilience, climate change and conservation, and often overlook indigenous people whose knowledge is key to meeting these challenges but whose livelihoods and wellbeing are threatened by unrestrained economic growth and technological expansion. The key issues for philanthropists identified during the Dialogue were: Recognising diversity and respecting plural perspectives on challenges and opportunities;Facilitating autonomy through hands-on engagement with grassroots initiatives, going beyond short-term project cycles and allowing for local-level learning;Supporting relationships, helping to build networks and broker connections between different levels, sectors and interests; andAddressing power and politics in both forms of knowledge (integrating the social and the biological) and governance and decision-making processes, recognising that democratisation plays a critical role in relation to sustainability, climate change and economic growth

Enhanced financial mechanisms for post 2012 mitigation

Despite the many calls to reform the CDM, its conceptual underpinnings are strong and it will most likely survive in the post-2012 climate regime. Some modifications may be considered in the short term to strengthen the effectiveness and transparency of the mechanism without modifying the Marrakesh Accords. In the medium term substantially increased mitigation efforts in developing countries may require a combination of three possible financial mechanisms: the current activity-based CDM albeit improved, a second market mechanism that would seek to improve the long term emission trends of developing countries by promoting broad based emission reduction programs primarily in the private sector, and a third financial mechanism outside of the market which would be an incentive for the adoption of policy changes leading to a low carbon path, but where emission reductions would not be used as international offsets.Environmental Economics&Policies,Carbon Policy and Trading,Montreal Protocol,Energy and Environment,Environment and Energy Efficiency

Gaining Depth: State of Watershed Investment 2014

Last year, governments, businesses, and donors channeled $12.3 billion (B) toward nature-based solutions to the global water crisis. Water users and public funders were paying land managers to repair and protect forests, wetlands, and other natural systems as a flexible, costeffective strategy to ensure clean and reliable water supplies, resilience to natural disasters, and sustainable livelihoods. These deals paid for watershed protection and restoration across more than 365 million (M) hectares (ha) worldwide in 2013, an area larger than India.The value of investment in watershed services1 (IWS) - referring to funding for watershed restoration or protection that delivers benefits to society like aquifer recharge or erosion control - has been growing at anaverage rate of 12% per year. The number of operational programs grew by two thirds between 2011 and 2013, expanding in both scale and sophistication as program developers introduced new tools to track returns on watershed investment, coordinated efforts across political boundaries, and delivered additional benefits like sustainable livelihoods and biodiversity protection

Real-time decoding of question-and-answer speech dialogue using human cortical activity.

Natural communication often occurs in dialogue, differentially engaging auditory and sensorimotor brain regions during listening and speaking. However, previous attempts to decode speech directly from the human brain typically consider listening or speaking tasks in isolation. Here, human participants listened to questions and responded aloud with answers while we used high-density electrocorticography (ECoG) recordings to detect when they heard or said an utterance and to then decode the utterance's identity. Because certain answers were only plausible responses to certain questions, we could dynamically update the prior probabilities of each answer using the decoded question likelihoods as context. We decode produced and perceived utterances with accuracy rates as high as 61% and 76%, respectively (chance is 7% and 20%). Contextual integration of decoded question likelihoods significantly improves answer decoding. These results demonstrate real-time decoding of speech in an interactive, conversational setting, which has important implications for patients who are unable to communicate