I recently came across a pioneering study of vulnerability in Kenya.  Below are the extracts from the summary, with brief reflections based on more recent work (notably our review of the economics of climate change adaptation and low carbon growth).  The earlier study integrated methods common in climate impact assessment (as the field was known in the 1980s) with concepts and techniques related to food entitlement, human ecology and household economics. The vulnerability assessment related specifically to climatic variability and household food security in six districts of Central and Eastern Kenya.

Research question 1. How does climatic variability affect household food security based on on-farm agricultural production?

During severe drought, there is little households are able to do to meet their food requirements from on-farm production. However, in moderate drought, average, and good years there is remarkable potential for agricultural improvements, sufficient to meet most household food requirements. This potential is constrained by availability of labor and capital.

Reflection: Still holds. Yet, there is often the naïve assumption in climate change vulnerability assessments that on-farm food security is the driving issue, as seen in some studies (the crop-climate model based studies by IFPRI and ILRI stand out, particularly when compared with the more complete work on sustainable livelihoods by the FAO, and many others). Vulnerability was well-established in the Kenya study as being located in socio-economic factors (see below) rather than the direct causal impacts of adverse climate events, yields and household production. The study adopted the sense of risk (perhaps anticipating Beck) and anticipation of a sequence of seasons.

Research question 2. How does participation in the monetary economy affect household food security?

Household participation in the monetary economy has reduced vulnerability to drought, at least in the short term. Access to off-farm income is the most effective coping strategy. The corollary of the apparent lessening of vulnerability to drought is a shift of primary responsibility for coping with drought from the individual household toward the national government and international food markets. The government now plays a major role in determining the impact of drought in rural areas, first in controlling the marketing of maize and beans, and second, in the provision of famine relief.

Reflection: The multi-scale nature of vulnerability was established—rather than mapping indicators at a fixed scale (e.g., a household or a pixel). Mapping of social networks has emerged as a vital tool in vulnerability assessment—hinted at in this study (see the NetMap toolbox). The role of ICT in household management of risks makes this even more obvious, for example the M-Pesa network in Kenya linked to remittances from the United Kingdom or the iCow app that enables cross-scale risk management.

Research question 3. What are the characteristics of household vulnerability to hunger and how does climatic variability affect the distribution of households with inadequate food security?

Vulnerability to hunger among smallholder agriculturalists in Central and Eastern Kenya is characterized by four dimensions: temporal persistence (climatic variability), resource endowment (agroecological potential and land use), resource entitlement (through agricultural production and off-farm employment), and special nutritional needs (children under 5, pregnant and lactating women). The groups most vulnerable to hunger during severe drought are over 40 percent of the population, three times larger than those vulnerable to chronic hunger.

Reflection: The temporal and contingent quality of vulnerability is brought out here—it is an ever changing characteristic made up of multiple attributes. While the language of the four domains has changed (few people talk of entitlements these days, climate change and disaster risk reduction have replaced the earlier focus on climate variability and risk), the substantive conclusions are much the same.

Research question 4. How have household responses to climatic variability changed and what are the current range, effectiveness, and constraints to adoption of available coping strategies?

Since the 1970s, the range of practicable drought coping strategies appears to have narrowed, and shifted from agricultural strategies to increased involvement in the monetary economy.

Reflection: The structure of vulnerability in social and economic networks was well established in the 1980s, and repeatedly demonstrated, recently in the Arab Spring. Yet, causal chains of vulnerability to climate change rarely make this connection, a major disconnect with reality (compare the ci:grasp climate-hazard chains with the earlier notion in PIK of syndromes that embedded dynamic decision making). The integration of vulnerability as the dynamic property of a system with coping strategies (before the term adaptation was widely used) shows the close links in theory and analytical constructs (and Bohle’s subsequent notion of vulnerability and coping as two sides of the same syndrome).

In conclusion, the logic of household production and reproduction in the rural areas has changed significantly with increasing participation in the market economy. Households can no longer be considered peasant risk minimizers. Neither are they climatic opportunists, i.e., attempting to make the best possible use of the good years. A pattern emerges climatic satisficing, accepting agricultural production without additional investment in either poor or good years, and risk spreading through the diversification of sources of income, most notably in off-farm employment.

Reflection: This study of vulnerability in Kenya documented the substantial shifts in the structure of vulnerability from the 1970s to the 1980s. A safe prediction is that the structure of vulnerability has already changed (from the 1980s) and will change substantially for most parts of Kenya (and elsewhere) in the next 10-20 years. A reinvigorated rural economy might emerge through REDD+, biofuels and carbon markets. Or, discovery of commercial deposits of natural gas in the Kenyan offshore economic zone is a black swan that could change many aspects of the economy, and poverty. The challenge ahead is surely to be agents of change (positive transformations) supported by methods that capture this dynamic nature of vulnerability and adaptation.

New year prize for those who can supply all the citations!

And finally, it is exciting to anticipate 2012 and especially registration of our offices in Nairobi and developing key partnerships with like-minded groups. Get in touch with Mica to follow up our vision and plans…

Tom

Tom Downing

CEO

From the north of England

I’ve spent a couple of days in Brussels, presenting the results from the EC ClimateCost project that Paul Watkiss and I coordinated (see www.ClimateCost.eu for the technical policy briefs and other material). The EC regularly convenes meetings of its research projects to communicate results and issues with the policy divisions in the EC, principally DG Clima but also the sectoral units leading agriculture, health and regional infrastructure (among those attending this time).

On the train over (a fan of EuroStar I am), I was reading New Scientist. Three articles strike me as far more than a coincidence.

The cover is a story on Climate Change: what do we know and what remains uncertain.  For instance, “Know: Greenhouse gases are warming the planet…Don’t know: How far greenhouse gases will rise”.  A solid account and nicely balanced between confidence in action based on the main lines of evidence and yet the challenges of understanding the full complexity of the future. (Equally readable of course is the Third Edition of the Atlas of Climate Change, see my earlier blog or order your hot-off-the-press copy at http://tinyurl.com/CCAtlas).

A smaller piece by Emanuel Derman introduces his new book: Models Behaving Badly (a rake-off of a famous British comedy, Men Behaving Badly: I wonder if Men and Models share common failings?).  The central thesis from a physicist who made it on Wall Street is that models cannot predict the future: “…on Wall Street and in life, it is crucial to carefully distinguish between theories and models.”

Derman is one of the pioneers of econo-physics, approaching financial markets as similar cases as physical systems.  Two more handles: POW (Physicists On Wall Street) and quant (quantitative analyst).  Derman offers much insight. I like his notion of models as metaphors or analogies, rather than representing verified truth. And “we forget at our peril that markets and prices are generated by human behavior.”

I started my talk in Brussels with the bald statement: “All models are wrong”. Nothing new there, and I’m quoting not just from Derman but famous climate scientists too (most recently Bruce Hewitson’s keynote at the Climate Change and Development in Africa Conference hosted by the African Climate Policy Centre). And yet, we tend to view models as revealing far more about an issue than they warrant. Much of my intervention in Brussels was to highlight the crucial role of framing the adaptation issue. Another feature of wicked problems is stakeholders have different framings of the issue and these framings constrain their evidence and solutions. Yet, academics seem to assume their models are real representations of truth and not just their own tacit framing of the issue. More on framing another day.

Linking these two stories together in the New Scientist (metaphorically only) under a News Exclusive on Global Capitalism. A Yale economist claims to show that hyperbolic discounting makes mathematical sense.

Hold on, I don’t want you to give up too soon. One feature of ‘wicked’ problems is that people value the long term future more than would appear to make economic sense (in conventional terms). For instance, those of us who worry about climate change assume that a liveable climate in the year 2100 and even 2200 has quite a bit of value. In contrast, conventional economic reasoning says that $100 today is worth more than $100 tomorrow, the difference is a discount rate. And yes, we do discount the future.

So we ‘the people’ hold two views of the future: one that discounts some things and often at high rates and one that implies that the future has value and cannot be discounted away. The economist’s answer to this has been to assume the discount rate reduces over time, even to zero or negative values. A smooth curve of declining discount rates is hyperbolic discounting.

Now the News Exclusive reports that the sometimes messy formulation of hyperbolic discount rates makes mathematical sense in some conditions. Hardly Earth-shattering news, but nice the economists are catching up with political economy and what people believe.

A small footnote, the article sites the leading economist in the UK who worked on discount rates in the Stern Review: Cameron Hepburn. Cameron led the serious economics in a study Paul and I coordinated on the cost of climate change impacts many years before Stern. Another handle, the costs of climate impacts is often referred to as the social cost of carbon (SCC), or in some circles the cost of inaction (as in we fail to act on the mitigation front).

Array of the impacts of climate change (social cost of carbon)

Paul  and I developed a matrix that plays off uncertainty in climate projections against confidence in economic valuation (see the figure here). And closing the loop now, if you got this far, I showed the SCC matrix in the talk in Brussels to try to capture the critical role of uncertainty in the economics of climate adaptation. To some appreciation, dare I say.

Bittersweet too, the meeting in Brussels, as I am no longer actively involved in any EC research projects. My baptism was in 1990 when I moved from the US to join Martin Parry’s Atmospheric Research Group at the University of Birmingham. So long ago, and some of the same people in the traces still…

Tom Downing

Oxford

GCAP completed its second Adaptation Academy Foundation Course in Cape Town, South Africa. The course was a huge success and has helped shape the direction of the Academy and future courses. We are excited that we were able to connect with a great group of participants and look forward to the 2012 course.

Muriel, an Adaptation Analyst at GCAP, attended this course as both a participant and trainer. Here is what she had to say:

“Though the Adaptation Academy Foundation Course took place over a month ago, I still reflect on my experiences during the Course and the people I met. Throughout the Course, I deepened my understanding of methods to support practical and robust adaptation decisions; further expanding on the work I have done with GCAP since I started working a year ago.

The Adaptation Academy was taught through structured sessions on many different topics centred around practical tools and application but still remained flexible and incorporated participants’ suggestions and needs. My favourite sessions focused on vulnerability assessment, adaptation screening options and leadership and communication development.

As a participant, I joined an amazing and diverse group of people, sharing many professional and personal experiences not only during the course but also outside of course activities. The course was a great networking opportunity and I am still in touch with many of the participants.

As a trainer, I felt uneasy at first about going on the other side of the mirror, in front of group I got to know very well as a participant. However, I believe this enhanced my ability to communicate with the participants and through encouragement from Tom and Mo, I was able to lead a few sessions on adaptation screening, providing real-world examples of practical approaches using scorecards.

I am very grateful to all the participants for showing me new ways of thinking and new cultures, and to GCAP for giving me the opportunity to both participate and teach at the Academy. I am already looking forward to the next year!”

For further details, see the Adaptation Academy website or contact Mohamed Hamza (GCAP): MHamza@ClimateAdaptation.cc or Mica Longanecker (GCAP): MLonganecker@ClimateAdaptation.cc.

Friday I received the advance copies of the third edition of the Atlas of Climate Change. What joy, to see something Kirstin and I started five years ago in the first edition, and two years ago for the third edition, come to light! What inspiration to see all the graphics in one cover. Now I can throw away all the drafts, clear out the online backups, close the door on the drafting stages. This is the cover from the Earthscan version; I hear the University of California Press version is out as well.

Today, what sadness to hear that Wangari Maathai has died, after battling cancer. Wangari was guest of honor for an event in the Copenhagen Conference of Parties–I remember launching weADAPT.org with her; Amy Luers and I were MCs to a standing room audience. Well, in the small foyer of the Danish Concert Hall and no chairs. But magical and her voice of empowerment and change so clear. That was December 2009. This spring, she agreed to write a foreword to the third edition of the Atlas. See below. Again, her voice comes through in the call to action. Read about Wangari’s life on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wangari_Maathai.

We are blessed with two forewords: Philippe Cousteau has written beautifully as well.

Be inspired.

Tom Downing

Oxford, 26 September 2011

Order your Atlas from Amazon for the Earthscan or UCP versions.

Voices & Visions of Our Future

Forewords to the Third Edition of the Atlas of Climate Change

The Atlas of Climate Change should inspire all of us to action. The authors call upon their experience to present the facts on climate change. In a clear format, from the early warning signs to drivers of change, from impacts to policy, they present the weight of evidence. We have come a long way on climate change, from ignorance and denial to policy recommendations and global negotiations.

Over the course of time climate scientists have drawn a line in the sand: the climate is warming and it is projected that unless we change our track we will see a temperature rise of more than 2°C which could have catastrophic effects for the biosphere and all who live in it. Scientists recommend that we should aim at reducing emissions significantly and urgently aspire to become carbon neutral. The scientific evidence so far presented is overwhelming and can be explored in this third edition of the Atlas.

The carbon cycle is a key component of ecological systems. And ecological systems are key components of climate action. Deforestation accounts for nearly 20 percent of global carbon emissions, and is reportedly greater than all of the transport systems globally combined. As we all know, the Amazon, Congo Basin, and South-East Asia rainforest ecosystems are the “green lungs” of the planet and are essential for global climate regulation. My work with the women of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya over the past 30 years has shown that grassroots communities will act on the root causes of environmental degradation once they appreciate the linkage between the environment and their livelihoods. It is they who will apply the skills and initiatives that will help them mitigate and adapt against the negative impacts of climate change. It is vital that climate policies work to promote equity, biodiversity, and the rights of vulnerable communities. Solutions to climate change must firmly put people and nature at their core.

We have a moral responsibility to protect the rights of future generations, and of all species that cannot speak for themselves but are nevertheless members of the community of life. The challenge of climate change demands that there be a global political will to address this issue. Without political will, especially of the politically and economically powerful nations, the results will be catastrophic, even as the world continues with diplomatic rhetoric and no action. We are the generation that has the opportunity to effectively respond to this challenge. We are already late. Take action now!

Professor Wangari Maathai

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, 2004 Founder of the Greenbelt Movement in Kenya, 1977 Goodwill Ambassador to the Congo Basin Forest UN Messenger for Peace and the Environment See www.Greenbeltmovement.org for more information on Professor Maathai’s work.

It is not every day that you get a chance to walk on top of an ocean. But that was where I found myself, with five feet of ice the only thing separating me from the 1,000 feet of freezing Arctic Ocean. I was in the Arctic as a correspondent for CNN International, living with scientists working in some of the most extreme conditions on Earth in order to shed more light on the complex systems that drive our climate.

At these temperatures, a human being would survive about five minutes in the water, so it seemed rather counterintuitive to drill and chip through the ice to reach the frigid water below. The US Arctic Research Commission wrote that: “We know more about the topography of the planets Venus and Mars than we do about the bathymetry of the Arctic Ocean.” As I stared down at the outlines of the ice hole we had created, it struck me as truly remarkable that such a small window could provide so much new knowledge.

The US federal budget for space exploration is just over 1,000 times larger than that for ocean exploration. While there is no question that exploring the Universe helps us to understand many things about this world, knowing if there is life on Mars is not critical to life on this planet; healthy oceans are. As Arthur C. Clark once wrote, “How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.”

As we argue about the status of the environment and what should be done about it, we fail to take action that should be universally embraced: to allow our decisions to be guided by science, and to act in the best interests of future generations. What understanding we do have has led us to a chilling conclusion: that humans are drastically altering the climate, both by emitting huge amounts of CO2 and by altering the land through agriculture and urbanization in such a way that the stable climate that saw humans thrive for the first millennia of our history is being unbalanced.

According to a report by the World Wildlife Fund we use 1.5 times the amount of resources that Earth can replenish each year. We are like farmers eating our seeds. There is urgency in understanding the world around us, if not for us, than for our children.

My grandfather, Jacques Cousteau, often shared with me a simple dream: that every child born has the right to walk on clean grass under a blue sky, breath fresh air and drink pure water. I believe that his is a dream we all share, and that in order to realize it, we must base our decisions on science, not on wishful thinking.

Philippe Cousteau

Explorer, Social Entrepreneur, Environmentalist and CEO of EarthEcho International www.earthecho.org

Greenland ice sheet showing area experiencing at least one melt day at present (red)

You’ve seen the headlines besetting another News Corp publication?  The Guardian feed covers the essentials:  The new Times Atlas was ushered in with a press release that 15% of Greenland’s ice sheet had disappeared in the past decade.  John Vidal notes the publisher launching the atlas, saying “This is concrete evidence of how climate change is altering the face of the planet forever – and doing so at an alarming and accelerating rate”, reiterated by a spokeswoman on Monday.

You’ve seen the headlines besetting another News Corp publication?  The Guardian feed covers the essentials:  The new Times Atlas was ushered in with a press release that 15% of Greenland’s ice sheet had disappeared in the past decade.  John Vidal notes the publisher launching the atlas, saying “This is concrete evidence of how climate change is altering the face of the planet forever – and doing so at an alarming and accelerating rate”, reiterated by a spokeswoman on Monday.

The astonishing thing is that no one checked the numbers. Evidently, a 15% loss of an ice sheet that is 2.9 cubic kilometers would correspond to a dramatic rise in sea level. The publishers didn’t check their sources.

Perhaps equally astonishing is that the scientists have become more aggressive in defending their science. Only a few years ago, climate folk were on the run from persistent attacks from naysayers. Now they seem to have learned a lessons: make sure the public has access to good science. The irony is that the melting of Greenland is not disputed, that climate change is the only plausible cause and that a 15% loss is quite likely in decades to come. (How many decades it will take to reach what may be a critical threshold is hotly disputed among the scientists.) So the guardians that monitor our environment are objecting to a public atlas that rather overstates the cause for concern that they share. Good.

One of the lessons Kirstin Down and I learned in producing the Atlas of Climate Change is extreme attention to data, sources, details and interpretations. We chose two graphics on the issue of Greenland, both well anchored in observed data. The map above combines three elements that will be significant in different ways: melting Greenland, an ice-free Arctic and new trade routes. To capture the time series of area of the Greenland ice sheet that melts each year, we show a well-validated time series (below). The time series shows that the area that melts is increasing, and quite alarmingly. However, melting is only the summer part of the annual cycle: it doesn’t all translate into sea level rise or retreat of the extent of the ice sheet. But alarming nonetheless.

We have found pulling together the wealth of material into a reliable body of evidence, and then distilling that in terms that are accessible to the majority is a challenge. That is what the Atlas seeks to do. We call it evidence-based. Our environmentalist friends (and sometimes they are the publishers) want us to go further, to raise awareness, motivate action.  We prefer to let the science speak for itself: across the whole story, it is a powerful voice.

Don’t take my word for it. The Third Edition should be available in October.

Tom Downing

Oxford

Penguin's Progress. An iconic feature of Cape Town's landscape. Well suited to the winter storms here.

Tomorrow is the last day of our Adaptation Academy here in Cape Town. Tonight it’s jazz on Long Street. The two are not really connected, but going to listen to jazz is a moment for reflection.

Mo and I are enormously pleased with this year’s course. Two weeks to share and learn with a fantastic group of people. Every year we are seeing practitioners with more experience and a keen sense of the needs. And this year, two who are paying for the course in order to open up their own career choices. One from Africa and one from Europe.

We’ve worked through vulnerability and economics, decision making and stakeholder-knowledge networks, personal leadership and communication, other side bars and discussions. Throughout, taking the measure of what we are learning from practice. Reflecting on our own learning. What will work in our projects and organisations? What do I need to know to be successful in the coming weeks and months?

We will pilot test our contract learning for professional certification plan. That is, the group is working with Mo to develop a plan! We have some of the outline in place and it is unlike anything I’d seen before. Which is why Mo’s leading this–he has developed a similar programme for teaching in one of his many previous lives.

Plans are afoot to build on the first two years with a more tightly focussed three-week foundation course that delivers specific learning outcomes. Sorry, slipped into the jargon-sales speak. The challenge in adaptation isn’t in all of the detail that a person might wish to know, about climates of the world to arcane techniques in decision analysis. The real need is how the pieces fit together into a successful adaptation plan. Pathways of ‘adapting well’.

Other side bars have been equally stimulating. Urban planners in Cape Town and Durban tacking complex land use issues. The interface of decision and climate spaces. Threading adaptation strategies and measures in African development projects. Watch this space for more updates!

Tom

Thomas E Downing

CEO, GCAP