Davos group sees troubled economies, climate change as interlocking risks in coming years

Washington Post via AP: The widening income gap between the rich and poor and burgeoning government deficits are the risks most likely to have a global impact over the next decade, according to experts surveyed by the World Economic Forum.

Climate change, water shortages and aging populations rounded out the WEF’s top five risks. The 1,000-plus experts surveyed for the Switzerland-based forum’s annual risk report also warn that risk factors could combine to produce unique problems. These risk combinations included climate change putting a heavy burden on a global economy and a declining economy in turn hurting efforts to fight global warming.

 “These global risks are essentially a health warning regarding our most critical systems,” said report editor Lee Howell, a managing director at the forum. “Resilience to global risks needs to be a priority so that critical systems continue to function despite a major disturbance.”

The experts also identified the global health threat from increasing resistance of germs to antibiotics. Another new worry is a “digital wildfire” of wrong or controversial information going viral across online communities, such as outrage last year in the Muslim world over an anti-Islamic film. The report’s authors also noted that more and more people are living in disaster-prone areas such as coastal regions, increasing the economic costs of storms and flooding blamed on global warming....

Photo from the US Department of Transportation

African scientists call for climate change evidence

Emeka Johnkingsley in SciDev.net: African scientists urgently need to build more evidence on the impact of climate change on the continent, a conference has heard. A joint statement issued at the eighth Annual Meeting of African Science Academies last month (12–14November) in Nigeria, notes that Africa lacks much home-grown data about the impacts of extreme weather events and sea level rise.

It says: "Actions required of science include contributions to the development of risk assessments and mapping for various anticipated climate-related extreme events. The refinement of modelling techniques, taking account also of natural systems and traditional knowledge, in developing early warning systems contributes to strengthen risk reduction.”

Nigeria's president, Goodluck Jonathan, launched the statement, entitled 'Climate change in Africa: using science to reduce climate risks', and stressed that climate change information is needed for planning. "We believe that strong evidence-based knowledge on climate change will help policymakers take decisions and actions required to reduce climate risks in Africa," he said.

Roseanne Diab, executive officer of the Academy of Science of South Africa, toldSciDev.Net that a study on the impact of climate change on Africa would take at least two years and should be coordinated by the Network of African Science Academies (NASAC)….

Touaregs in Mali, shot by Alfred Weidinger, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Science key to reducing impacts of future natural hazards in developing countries

University of Cambridge Enterprise: The use of science to reduce the effects of future natural hazards such as floods, droughts and earthquakes must be stepped up and adopted more widely, according to a newly published Foresight report.

The report, 'Reducing Risks of Future Disasters: Priorities for Decision Makers' sets out how the threat of future disasters resulting from natural hazards can be stabilised if decision makers make better use of technological developments and existing risk assessment methods. This will save lives, livelihoods and resources in developing countries.

The report also urges that disaster risk reduction is routinely built in to developments as diverse as urban infrastructure, ecosystem protection and mobile telephone regulation. These measures would help reduce the cost of disasters, which has outstripped the total international aid investment over the past 20 years and has led to the loss of 1.3 million lives and $2 trillion of damage.

Professor Peter Guthrie, Thalia Konaris and former PhD student Faye Karababa, all from the Department of Engineering, have been involved in the report. The work was undertaken through Consultancy Services at Cambridge Enterprise.

“Death and destruction are not the inevitable consequences of natural hazards,” said Government Chief Scientific Adviser Sir John Beddington, who led the research. “We need to grasp this. Urbanisation over the next three decades, particularly in Africa and Asia, will continue. While this could lead to greater exposure and vulnerability, it also presents the greatest opportunity to protect large concentrations of people....

Step up for disaster risk reduction: appreciate, encourage and empower the female voice

Kanchana V in the Better India: The social role assigned to women as caregivers and nurturers naturally extend to disaster risk management, to secure life and the continuity of livelihoods, and to maintain the life support systems, in times of disasters. It would therefore be imprudent to understate the role women play in tackling emergency situations and in building resilience within their families and communities when a disaster strikes. Incontrovertibly, the societal position of women as agents of change needs to be stepped up.

Natural disasters devastate the lives and livelihoods of millions of people and cause substantial loss to the economy. Around 200 million young people worldwide are affected each year by reported disasters and thousands of them are killed and injured. A proper disaster risk management framework would enable the affected population, especially women, in taking immediate and correct steps in emergency situations.

In view of the transformational efforts by women in disaster prone areas, the UN General Assembly chose this year’s theme for the International Day for Disaster Reduction, celebrated world over on 13th October, as ‘Women and Girls: the [in]Visible Force of Resilience’. A wide range of events including tsunami drills and seismic risk discussions, gender-based violence workshops, community development work, poster and essay contests, panel discussions, gender awareness campaigns and education seminars were organised world over to celebrate the day. Women were given special awards and recognition for their exemplary work in disaster risk reduction and building resilience in their respective communities. United Nations has urged women and girls to be at the forefront of risk mitigation and disaster management. UN has also encouraged women to take up key leadership roles in disaster risk reduction initiatives and programs....

Om Kaliamman Koil Street flooded, shot by Mr.S.Koilraj (Dinamalar Reporter , Pallipalayam), Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Environment minister says coastal Gambia at risk

Amadou Jallow in AllAfrica.com via the Daily Observer (Banjul): The risk of climate change related damage to human and economic development in The Gambia's coastal areas is on the rise, with the compound effects of sea level rise and changes in the river discharge, erosion of coastal embankments and changes to natural sediments dynamics posing a serious threat to the natural resource base and livelihood opportunities of coastal communities including tourism.

This was disclosed by the minister of Forestry and the Environment, Fatou Ndeye Gaye, at the Paradise Suites Hotel on Tuesday, where she presided over the opening of a two-day validation workshop on the UNDP/GEF/ LCDF project preparatory grant, on the theme, 'Enhancing resources of Coastal areas and countries to climate change'. The validation is organised by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in collaboration with the National Environment Agency (NEA).

Policy and institutional development for climate risk management in coastal zones, physical investment in coastal protection against climate change risks and strengthening livelihoods of coastal communities at risk from climate change are the three main components of the project, and it seeks to employ a feedback loop between the three components and enable successful community-based adaptation approaches in coastal areas to be analysed and replicated in other vulnerable regions, within and outside The Gambia.

Minister Gaye said The Gambia is one of the most vulnerable countries in Africa in relation to climate change and faces a range of problems associated with flooding from sea level rise, drainage congestion and torrential rains. "Change in climatic patterns are also expected to further constrain productivity of some crops as well as forest regeneration," she added....

A ferry arriving in Banjul, shot by Grashoofd, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

Insurance industry paying increasing attention to climate change

Science Daily: The insurance industry, the world's largest business with $4.6 trillion in revenues, is making larger efforts to manage climate change-related risks, according to a new study published December 13 in the journal Science.

"Weather- and climate-related insurance losses today average $50 billion a year. These losses have more than doubled each decade since the 1980s, adjusted for inflation," says the study's author Evan Mills, a scientist in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)'s Environmental Energy Technologies Division. "Insurers have become quite adept at quantifying and managing the risks of climate change, and using their market presence to drive broader societal efforts at mitigation and adaptation."

Hurricane Sandy is only the most recent U.S. example of the kinds of increasing liabilities posed by severe weather events in a changing climate.

Managing a portfolio of $25 trillion in assets, similar in size to mutual funds or pensions globally, the insurance industry has become a significant voice in world policy forums addressing the issue, as well as a market force, investing at least $23 billion in emissions-reduction technologies, securities, and financing, plus $5 billion in funds with environmental screens, seeing risks to investments in polluting industries and opportunities in being part of the clean-tech revolution.

"Where there are risks, there are opportunities," writes Mills. Responding to shareholder, regulatory, and market forces, three global initiatives [UN Environment Program Finance Initiative (1995), ClimateWise (2007), and the Kyoto Statement (2009)] have compelled 129 insurance firms from 29 countries to engage in activities including: supporting climate research; developing climate-responsive products and services; raising awareness; reducing in-house greenhouse gas emissions; quantifying and disclosing climate risks; incorporating climate change into investment decisions; and influencing public policy. The ultimate goal of these industry activities is reducing climate-related losses among their customers as well as reducing their own exposure to risk, which is rising in step with the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather-related events....

Damage from Hurricane Ike in Crystal Beach, Texas, in 2008. Photo by FEMA

Climate change and disaster risk management at centre of Caribbean fisheries talks

The Bahamas Weekly: he hurricane season just ended, and particularly the trail of death and destruction carved out by Hurricane Sandy in October, has left many with a reminder of just how devastating natural disasters can be. Climate change is a compounding factor that regional fisheries managers cannot ignore.

This is why for the next three days, more than 90 collaborators from across the region will be focusing on these issues, as they convene the Workshop on Formulation of a Strategy, Action Plan and Programme Proposal on Disaster Risk Management (DRM), Climate Change Adaptation in Fisheries and Aquaculture in the CARICOM Region at the Knutsford Court Hotel, in New Kingston, Jamaica, from Monday, December 10 to Wednesday, December 12.

“The Caribbean is said to be one of the most disaster-prone regions in the world based on the frequency and severity of hazard impacts, as well as the significant damage, destruction and social and economic losses experienced. We are very mindful of the potential devastating impact of both man-made and natural hazards such as tropical storms, hurricanes, floods, droughts, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes and tsunamis. Over the past 2-3 decades, these hazards have had devastating impacts on the people, their property and livelihoods, and on the social and economic development of our countries,” said Executive Director of the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM), Milton Haughton.

Haughton noted that fishers, fish farmers and fishing communities, particularly those in coastal areas, are vulnerable. “It is not surprising, therefore, that the subject of climate change and disaster risk management has been recognised as a fundamental development challenge in the Caribbean requiring special attention by policy makers,” he added....

Harbour of Petite Rivière de Nippes, Haiti. Submitted by user Aimee Gaines to world66 (original location), which is licenced under Creative Commons 1.0

Climate models project increase in US wildfire risk

NASA: Scientists using NASA satellite data and climate models have projected drier conditions likely will cause increased fire activity across the United States in coming decades. Other findings about U.S. wildfires, including their amount of carbon emissions and how the length and strength of fire seasons are expected to change under future climate conditions, were also presented Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.

Doug Morton of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., presented the new analysis of future U.S. fire activity. The analysis was based on current fire trends and predicted greenhouse gas emissions.  "Climate models project an increase in fire risk across the U.S. by 2050, based on a trend toward drier conditions that favor fire activity and an increase in the frequency of extreme events," Morton said.

The analysis by Morton and colleagues used climate projections, prepared for the Fifth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to examine how dryness, and therefore fire activity, is expected to change.

The researchers calculated results for low and high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios. In both cases, results suggest more fire seasons that are longer and stronger across all regions of the U.S. in the next 30-50 years. Specifically, high fire years like 2012 would likely occur two to four times per decade by mid-century, instead of once per decade under current climate conditions.

Through August of this year, the U.S. burned area topped 2.5 million hectares (6.17 million acres), according to a fire emissions database that incorporates burned area estimates produced from observations by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instruments on NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites. That is short of the record 3.2 million hectares (7.90 million acres) burned in 2011, but exceeds the area burned during 12 of the 15 years since record keeping began in 1997. This and other satellite records, along with more refined climate and emissions models, are allowing scientists to tease out new information about fire trends....

Climate change, disaster risk: Asian action critical

Bindu N. Lohani in the Philippine Daily Inquirer: ... one thing is clear: Weather-related disasters are increasing in both frequency and intensity. Witness the string of severe recent floods across Asia—from Pakistan, to Thailand, to the Philippines—and Hurricane “Sandy” in the United States, which have vividly shown us how extreme weather events can bring entire countries to a virtual standstill. Volatile weather extremes are hitting Asia and the Pacific more often than any other region of the world.

This gives the Asia-Pacific region a huge stake in mitigating global temperature rise while adapting to already rising climate change impacts. Sixty percent of the region’s people rely on highly climate-sensitive farms, forests and fisheries for their livelihoods. Seven out of the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change and disasters caused by natural hazards are in Asia and the Pacific. A decrease in fresh water availability can affect more than one billion Asian people by 2050.

The region has borne the brunt of the physical and economic damage of increased disasters. It accounted for 38 percent of global disaster-related economic losses between 1980 and 2009. People in the Asia-Pacific region are four times more likely to be affected by disasters than those in Africa, and 25 times more likely than those in Europe or North America.

A recent report of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) noted that storms and floods, in particular, are becoming endemic to the region, and their increasing frequency and severity can slash economic growth and development. And as we have seen time and again, it is the poorest and most vulnerable citizens who suffer the most. We cannot hope to bring an end to poverty without building resilience to climate change and these associated events....

True-colour satellite image showing flooding in Ayutthaya and Pathum Thani Provinces in Central Thailand (right), compared to before the flooding (left). Ayutthaya lies north of Thailand’s capital city of Bangkok, and the floods plaguing Thailand in October 2011 did not spare this historic city. From NASA

'Black swans' and 'perfect storms' become lame excuses for bad risk management

Kelly Servick in Stanford University News: Elisabeth Paté-Cornell argues that a true 'black swan' - an event that is impossible to imagine because we've known nothing like it in the past - is extremely rare. The terms "black swan" and "perfect storm" have become part of the public vocabulary for describing disasters ranging from the 2008 meltdown in the financial sector to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But according to Elisabeth Paté-Cornell, a Stanford professor of management science and engineering, people in government and industry are using these terms too liberally in the aftermath of a disaster as an excuse for poor planning.

Her research, published in the November issue of the journal Risk Analysis, suggests that other fields could borrow risk analysis strategies from engineering to make better management decisions, even in the case of once-in-a-blue-moon events where statistics are scant, unreliable or non-existent.

Paté-Cornell argues that a true "black swan" – an event that is impossible to imagine because we've known nothing like it in the past – is extremely rare. The AIDS virus is one of very few examples. Usually, there are important clues and warning signs of emerging hazards (e.g., a new flu virus) that can be monitored to guide quick risk management responses.

..."Risk analysis is not about predicting anything before it happens, it's just giving the probability of various scenarios," she said. She argues that systematically exploring those scenarios can help companies and regulators make smarter decisions before an event in the face of uncertainty.

An engineering risk analyst thinks in terms of systems, their functional components and their dependencies, Paté-Cornell said. ....Paté-Cornell says that a systematic approach is also relevant to human aspects of risk analysis.

....Paté-Cornell has found that human errors, far from being unpredictable, are often rooted in the way an organization is managed. "We look at how the management has trained, informed and given incentives to people to do what they do and assign risk based on those assessments," she said.

...."Lots of people don't like probability because they don't understand it," she said, "and they think if they don't have hard statistics, they cannot do a risk analysis." In fact, we generally do a system-based risk analysis because we do not have reliable statistics about the performance of the whole system.

Two black swans, shot by fir0002 | flagstaffotos.com.au, Wikimedia Commons, under the following Creative Commons license: Attribution NonCommercial Unported 3.0

Cities of Dhaka, Manila, Bangkok, Yangon and Jakarta face highest climate change risks – Maplecroft Risk Atlas

Maplecroft News: Multinational companies operating in the Asian growth economies will be exposed to spiralling environmental risks over the coming decades, according to Maplecroft’s 5th annual Climate Change and Environmental Risk Atlas , which identifies Dhaka, Manila, Bangkok, Yangon, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City and Kolkata as the cities facing the most risk from the onset of climate change.

Maplecroft’s Climate Change Vulnerability Index (CCVI), which forms a central pillar of the Atlas, classifies seven cities as ‘extreme risk,’ out of a list of 50 that were chosen for their current and future importance to global business. Dhaka, Bangladesh, (ranked 1st), Manila, the Philippines (2), Bangkok, Thailand (3), Yangon, Myanmar (4), Jakarta, Indonesia (5), Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam (6) and Kolkata, India (7) emerged as the most at risk from the changing temperatures and weather systems that are forecast to take hold in the coming years.

The CCVI has been developed by Maplecroft to identify risks to populations, company operations, supply chains and investments in 197countries down to a level of 25km2. It evaluates exposure to climate related natural hazards; the sensitivity of populations; development; natural resources; agricultural dependency; research and development; government effectiveness and education levels.

With strong economic growth of above 5% forecast for countries such as the Philippines, Viet Nam, Indonesia and India in the next few years, the relevance of climate change to populations and business in the major commercial centres should not be underplayed, states Maplecroft in its analysis.
“As global corporations expand into the emerging growth markets, their operations and supply chains will become exposed to a complex set of climate risks that have the potential to disrupt business continuity,” states Maplecroft’s Head of Maps and Indices, Helen Hodge. “It is essential for companies to identify where suppliers, assets and personnel are most at risk and plan for the long term.”...

Manila Bay at night, shot by Waiting for serendipity, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

Norway fund tightens rules to protect forests

Reuters: Norway's $650 billion sovereign wealth fund has started asking companies it invests in to minimize their impact on rainforests, green groups said on Friday, welcoming a shift they hoped would make it rethink some deals. The fund, one of the world's biggest investors, made the changes to its guidelines in September without fanfare.

"We hope this will mean Norway stops investing and pulls out of many companies that are damaging rainforests," said Nils Hermann Ranum, spokesman of the Rainforest Foundation Norway.

Environmentalists have in the past accused Norway of investing uncritically in industries that threaten forests, such as palm oil, oil and gas, cattle ranching, logging, pulp and paper and hydropower dams. A central bank official did not comment on the specific accusations but said the fund, which manages the country's surplus oil revenue, had a long-running policy of not investing in companies that damaged the environment.

The fund's guidelines, posted online, said Norway "expects companies to manage risk associated with the causes and impacts of climate change resulting from greenhouse gas emissions and tropical deforestation."

The companies had to provide information on the impact of their work on forests over time and how it complied with international standards to protect forests, according to the rules. The fund's guidelines had referred to global warming in the past, but it was the first time they had mentioned rainforests, said the green groups....

A foggy forest in Telemark, shot by Ernst Vikne, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license