To what extent are land resource managers preparing for high-end climate change in Scotland?

We explore the individual and institutional conditions and the climate information used to underpin decision-making for adaptation to high-end climate change (HECC) scenarios in a land resource management context. HECC refers to extreme projections with global annual temperature increases of over 4 °C. We analyse whether HECC scenarios are used in the adaptation decision-making of stakeholders who will tackle the potential problem. We also explore whether the adaptation actions being considered are pertinent only to future climate change or whether other drivers and information types are used in decision-making (including non-climate drivers). We also address the role of knowledge uncertainty in adaptation decision-making. Decision-makers perceive HECC as having a low probability of occurrence and so they do not directly account for HECC within existing actions to address climate change. Such actions focus on incremental rather than transformative solutions in which non-climate drivers are at least as important, and in many cases more important, than climate change alone. This reflects the need to accommodate multiple concerns and low risk options (i.e. incremental change). Uncertainty in climate change information is not a significant barrier to decision-making and stakeholders indicated little need for more climate information in support of adaptation decision-making. There is, however, an identified need for more information about the implications of particular sectoral and cross-sectoral impacts under HECC scenarios. The outcomes of this study provide evidence to assist in contextualising climate change information by creating usable, cross-sectoral, decision-centred information

Cross-sectoral interactions of adaptation and mitigation measures

Adaptation and mitigation are complementary strategies for addressing the impacts of climate change, yet are often considered separately. This paper examines the literature for evidence of the interactions of adaptation and mitigation measures across the agriculture, biodiversity, coasts, forests, urban and water sectors, focusing on Europe. It found that often adaptation and mitigation synergies and conflicts were not explicitly mentioned within a sector, let alone between sectors. Most measures, however, were found to have an effect on another sector, resulting in neutral, positive (synergies) or negative (conflicts) interactions within and between sectors. Many positive cross-sectoral interactions involved biodiversity or water and thus these could represent good starting places for the implementation of integrated, cross-sectoral strategies. Previous studies suggest that adaptation and mitigation are undertaken on different time and geographical scales; this study found many local scale measures which could facilitate integration between both adaptation and mitigation. It is important that cross-sectoral interaction of adaptation and mitigation measures are explicitly recognised if they are to be mainstreamed into policy, so that positive outcomes are enhanced and unintended consequences avoided

Tools and methods to support adaptive policy making in marine areas: Review and implementation of the Adaptive Marine Policy Toolbox

The development of adaptive policies for the management of dynamic and complex ecosystems, such as marine and coastal environments, asks for flexible and innovative tools which account for multifaceted issues, uncertainties and cope with a wide range of future conditions. To date, several tools and methods to support the design and implementation of adaptive policies have been developed by the research community (e.g. data processing and management, stakeholder analysis and participatory methods, numerical and simulation models, assessment approaches). The paper proposes a (four) step-wise methodology to review, analyze, classify and select existing tools dealing with social, economic and environmental issues. Firstly, existing toolboxes were retrieved. Secondly, an in-depth analysis was performed to classify their potential for the development and implementation of adaptive policies in marine areas. Thirdly, selected tools were included in the â\u80\u98Database of tools and methodsâ\u80\u99 of the wider Adaptive Marine Policy Tool Box, designed within the EU-FP7 PERSEUS project (Policy-oriented Environmental Research in Southern European Seas) to support policy makers with the application of an Adaptive Policy Framework. Finally, a review process was performed based on several qualitative criteria and expert judgment, which allowed to identify a set of valuable â\u80\u98flag toolsâ\u80\u99 useful to implement each step of the Adaptive Policy Framework

Inventory and critical assessment of legal, policy and institutional marine policy contexts in SES.

Deliverable 6.5 published by PERSEUS

Ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation: Concepts and a glossary

The RUBICODE project draws on expertise from a range of disciplines to develop and integrate frameworks for assessing the impacts of environmental change on ecosystem service provision, and for rationalising biodiversity conservation in that light. With such diverse expertise and concepts involved, interested parties will not be familiar with all the key terminology. This paper defines the terms as used within the project and, where useful, discusses some reasoning behind the definitions. Terms are grouped by concept rather than being listed alphabetically. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.Articl