Climate change and security in Asia: issues and implications for Australia

Introduction The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office has recently begun talking about the challenge of \u27climate security\u27, and former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan has said that “Global climate change must take its place alongside the threats of conflict, poverty and the proliferation of deadly weapons that have traditionally monopolized first-order political attention”. Climate change poses clears risks to Australia\u27s interests in trade, aid and political stability in Asia. This not inconsiderable risk poses some complex challenges to Australian foreign policy. This paper explores the risks climate change poses to security in Asia and the options for Australian foreign policy. &nbsp

Accommodating migration to promote adaptation to climate change

This paper explains how climate change may increase future migration, and which risks are associated with such migration. It also examines how some of this migration may enhance the capacity of communities to adapt to climate change. Climate change is likely to result in some increase above baseline rates of migration in the next 40 years. Most of this migration will occur within developing countries. There is little reason to think that such migration will increase the risk of violent conflict. Not all movements in response to climate change will have negative outcomes for the people that move, or the places they come from and go to. Migration, a proven development strategy, can increase the capacity of communities to adapt to climate change. The fewer choices people have about moving, however, the less likely it is that the outcomes of that movement will be positive. Involuntary resettlement should be a last resort. Many of the most dire risks arising from climate-motivated migration can be avoided through careful policy. Policy responses to minimize the risks associated with migration in response to climate change, and to maximize migration’s contribution to adaptive capacity include: ensuring that migrants have the same rights and opportunities as host communities; reducing the costs of moving money and people between areas of origin and destination; facilitating mutual understanding among migrants and host communities; clarifying property rights where they are contested; ensuring that efforts to assist migrants include host communities; and strengthening regional and international emergency response systems.Population Policies,Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Climate Change Economics,Voluntary and Involuntary Resettlement

Managing the Yellow River: Questions of Borders, Boundaries and Access

The Yellow River basin is the site of myriad water resource problems. The Yellow River has natural geomorphological characteristics that include seasonally variable flow, very high sediment load, and the capacity to flood with devastating effect. However, people have long sought to harness the water of the Yellow River to their own industrial and agricultural ends, so as to attain the things that they value, like good health, economic growth, and employment. Intensive human use of the basin now poses new managerial problems. The Yellow River’s problems thus now include water scarcity, pollution, and flood risk. In 1997 there were 226 ‘no flow’ days, when the River failed to reach the sea; the dry point started up to 700km inland (Jun 2004). This is not part of the natural flow regime of the Yellow River, which rarely ceased to flow before 1992. The Yellow River is also one of China’s most polluted rivers. While a major breach of the levees has been averted since the People’s Republic was founded in 1949, there is each year significant flooding in the Yellow River basin. The threat of a major levee failure is real and millions of lives and vast sums of capital investment will be lost in such an event, or if one of the many dams along its length fails. In this paper, we characterise the problems of the Yellow River in order to assess the significance of borders, boundaries and access in understanding the management of water. Events and conditions in particular localities have local causes; and in this sense the bounding of regions is significant. Yet borders and boundaries are permeable, permitting causes also to derive from conditions in neighbouring and distant regions. Furthermore, places have causes at a larger scale, such as the nation, since borders, like the regions they bound, are hierarchical and scaled

Barriers to adaptation to sea-level rise

Abstract Increasingly there is recognition from researchers and policy makers that there are legal, institutional and cultural barriers to climate change adaptation that will need to be addressed if we are able to adapt efficiently and equitably. However, there is a limited body of evidence and few examples of how barriers to adaptation to sea level rise emerge and are addressed in local contexts. Focusing on sea level rise in Australia, this project undertakes inquiry into legal, institutional and cultural barriers to adaptation in two ways. The first is an investigation of barriers to climate change adaptation in general by analysing a unique body of evidence in a systematic document analysis of over eight hundred pages of submissions to the Australian Productivity Commission’s inquiry to barriers to adaptation. The second was an in-depth investigation into community perceptions of one particular barrier - uncertainty about responsibility for adaptation - in two case study areas: Eurobodalla in New South Wales and Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. The study found that, according to key actors in climate change adaptation in Australia, there are 5 five key kinds of barriers to adaptation: governance, policy, uncertainty, resources, and psychosocial factors. The governance barrier of uncertainty about roles and responsibilities across levels of government and sectors was seen to be one of the most important barriers to adaptation. The subsequent empirical research into community preferences for the distribution of responsibility for key adaptation tasks revealed that there was strong support for a significant role for government in all aspects of adaptation. There is recognition that adaptation to sea level rise should be a shared responsibility, but with distinct roles for each level of government. Local government was seen to be best placed to manage public assets, regulate decisions about private assets, and lead and coordinate public input for local planning. Federal government was viewed as the most appropriate entity to take responsibility for information provision on the risks of sea level rise, and to bear most of the costs of adaptation. State governments, while not viewed as the primary responsible entity for any of these key tasks, was seen to have a role in coordinating adaptation actions across local government areas

Analysis of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Related to Food: A Study of Two Cafeterias in the Danish Municipality of Lyngby-Taarbæk

An important step in confronting climate change is assessing greenhouse gas emissions from everyday objects. Collaborating with the Science Shop, our team analyzed emissions associated with foods at the City Hall and Annex cafeterias in the Danish municipality of Lyngby-Taarbaek. Using life cycle assessment, we estimated emissions at 7.29 and 5.67 kgCO2-eq/kg from the City Hall and Annex cafeterias, respectively. Analyzing ten recipes, we found an average 35.7% fewer emissions per unit mass from \u27heart healthy\u27 over traditional Danish recipes

Structural and psycho-social limits to climate change adaptation in the great barrier reef region

Adaptation, as a strategy to respond to climate change, has limits: there are conditions under which adaptation strategies fail to alleviate impacts from climate change. Research has primarily focused on identifying absolute bio-physical limits. This paper contributes empirical insight to an emerging literature on the social limits to adaptation. Such limits arise from the ways in which societies perceive, experience and respond to climate change. Using qualitative data from multi-stakeholder workshops and key-informant interviews with representatives of the fisheries and tourism sectors of the Great Barrier Reef region, we identify psycho-social and structural limits associated with key adaptation strategies, and examine how these are perceived as more or less absolute across levels of organisation. We find that actors experience social limits to adaptation when: i) the effort of pursuing a strategy exceeds the benefits of desired adaptation outcomes; ii) the particular strategy does not address the actual source of vulnerability, and; iii) the benefits derived from adaptation are undermined by external factors. We also find that social limits are not necessarily more absolute at higher levels of organisation: respondents perceived considerable opportunities to address some psycho-social limits at the national-international interface, while they considered some social limits at the local and regional levels to be effectively absolute

Design and test of field programmable gate arrays in space applications

Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAU's) offer substantial benefits in terms of flexibility and design integration. In addition to qualifying this device for space applications by establishing its reliability and evaluating its sensitivity to radiation, screening the programmed devices with Automatic Test Equipment (ATE) and functional burn-in presents an interesting challenge. This paper presents a review of the design, qualification, and screening cycle employed for FPGA designs in a space program, and demonstrates the need for close interaction between design and test engineers

The association between trajectories of change in social functioning and psychological treatment outcome in university students: a growth mixture model analysis

BACKGROUND: The transition to university and resultant social support network disruption can be detrimental to the mental health of university students. As the need for mental health support is becoming increasingly prevalent in students, identification of factors associated with poorer outcomes is a priority. Changes in social functioning have a bi-directional relationship with mental health, however it is not clear how such measures may be related to effectiveness of psychological treatments. METHODS: Growth mixture models were estimated on a sample of 5221 students treated in routine mental health services to identify different trajectories of change in self-rated impairment in social leisure activities and close relationships during the course of treatment. Multinomial regression explored associations between trajectory classes and treatment outcomes. RESULTS: Five trajectory classes were identified for social leisure activity impairment while three classes were identified for close relationship impairment. In both measures most students remained mildly impaired. Other trajectories included severe impairment with limited improvement, severe impairment with delayed improvement, and, in social leisure activities only, rapid improvement, and deterioration. Trajectories of improvement were associated with positive treatment outcomes while trajectories of worsening or stable severe impairment were associated with negative treatment outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Changes in social functioning impairment are associated with psychological treatment outcomes in students, suggesting that these changes may be associated with treatment effectiveness as well as recovery experiences. Future research should seek to establish whether a causal link exists to understand whether integrating social support within psychological treatment may bring additional benefit for students