Allocation of land resources in semi-arid areas: a simulation based on the East African experience

This paper describes a simulation game prepared as an exercise for a course entitled 'Arid and Semi-arid Lands, their Status and Potential' which the authors taught in the Department of Geography of the University of Nairobi during the 1977 - 78 academic year. The simulation was intended to tie together the socio-economic and the physical aspects of arid and semiarid areas. It is concerned with the problem of land allocation in a situation where there is land-use conflict. The participants are divided into groups of farmers and pastoralists and are required to adjudicate the land in a manner acceptable to the government. The problem is complicated by a government proposal to set up a national park in the area. The subject of the simulation is relevant not only to students of arid and sami-arid areas, but also to those interested in resource management in developing countries. Sufficient information is given in this paper to allow the reader to set up the simulation

Climate Change and Water - IPCC Technical Paper VI

The monograph prepared by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, explains the climate change impact on water security. It provides with the large amount of figures from the most up to date research, scientific measures and explanation of important notions. It proposes solutions for mitigation of climate change´s impact on water security

Future extreme events in European climate: an exploration of regional climate model projections

This paper presents an overview of changes in the extreme events that are most likely to affect Europe in forthcoming decades. A variety of diagnostic methods are used to determine how heat waves, heavy precipitation, drought, wind storms, and storm surges change between present (1961-90) and future (2071-2100) climate on the basis of regional climate model simulations produced by the PRUDENCE project. A summary of the main results follows. Heat waves - Regional surface warming causes the frequency, intensity and duration of heat waves to increase over Europe. By the end of the twenty first century, countries in central Europe will experience the same number of hot days as are currently experienced in southern Europe. The intensity of extreme temperatures increases more rapidly than the intensity of more moderate temperatures over the continental interior due to increases in temperature variability. Precipitation - Heavy winter precipitation increases in central and northern Europe and decreases in the south; heavy summer precipitation increases in north-eastern Europe and decreases in the south. Mediterranean droughts start earlier in the year and last longer. Winter storms - Extreme wind speeds increase between 45°N and 55°N, except over and south of the Alps, and become more north-westerly than cuurently. These changes are associated with reductions in mean sea-level pressure, leading to more North Sea storms and a corresponding increase in storm surges along coastal regions of Holland, Germany and Denmark, in particular. These results are found to depend to different degrees on model formulation. While the responses of heat waves are robust to model formulation, the magnitudes of changes in precipitation and wind speed are sensitive to the choice of regional model, and the detailed patterns of these changes are sensitive to the choice of the driving global model. In the case of precipitation, variation between models can exceed both internal variability and variability between different emissions scenario

Adaptation Strategies: A Poor Man's Solution?

Historically, adaptation (coping with the impacts of climate change) has always been something of a poor relation of its big-brother mitigation (limiting emissions). It is essentially a bottom-up activity, in which governments play a framing rather than an active role, and in which the role of science is to package existing information for end users. On the international policy-making stage of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), adaptation was the sop to developing countries-the promise of funding to support adaptation actions was a carrot to persuade the smaller and poorer countries to support action to limit emissions. With the failure of the international process around limiting greenhouse gas emissions, adaptation has become a much more significant player. At the same time, it has become abundantly clear to all that there is going to be climate change on a scale that will cause impacts to which we must adapt. These impacts no longer threaten the poor and the insignificant; this year we have seen Russia brought to its knees through drought, with up to one-third of the grain crop ruined, and many thousands of people displaced by flooding in China and Pakistan. This presentation looks at what we must do to adapt to climate change-the size of the threat, and what we can do. It attempts to answer two fundamental questions: first, how must our lifestyle change in order to live with climate change and, second, can developing countries limit their emissions as they strive to improve living standards