Societal Adaptation to Climate Variability and Change

✍ Scribed by Sally Kane, Gary Yohe (auth.), Sally M. Kane, Gary W. Yohe (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 276
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Changes in climate and climate variability have an effect on people's behaviour around the world, and public institutions have an important part to play in influencing our ability to respond to and plan for climate risk. We may be able to reduce climate risk by seeking to mitigate the threat on the one hand, and by adapting to a changed climate on the other. Another theme of the book is the integrated role of adaptation and mitigation in framing issues and performing analyses. Adaptation costs fall most heavily on the poor and special attention needs to be paid to adaptation by the poorest populations. An integrating framework is also presented to provide the context for an expansive typology of terms to apply to adaptation. The 12 papers collected here use methods from a variety of disciplines and focus on different time frames for decision making, from short term to the very long term.
Readership: Technically trained readers familiar with the policy issues surrounding climate change and interested in learning the scientific underpinnings of issues related to societal adaptation.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-vi
Societal Adaptation to Climate Variability and Change: An Introduction....Pages 1-4
Cautionary Tales: Adaptation and the Global Poor....Pages 5-17
Smallholder Maize Production and Climatic Risk: A Case Study from Mexico....Pages 19-36
Pacific Salmon Fisheries: Climate, Information and Adaptation in a Conflict-Ridden Context....Pages 37-61
Reducing Vulnerability to Climate Variability in Southern Africa: The Growing Role of Climate Information....Pages 63-73
Linking Adaptation and Mitigation in Climate Change Policy....Pages 75-102
Adaptation and the Guardrail Approach to Tolerable Climate Change....Pages 103-128
The Impacts of Climate Variability on Near-Term Policy Choices and the Value of Information....Pages 129-161
Climate Variability, Climate Change and Water Resource Management in the Great Lakes....Pages 163-179
Adaptation in Canadian Agriculture to Climatic Variability and Change....Pages 181-201
Adaptation: Sensitivity to Natural Variability, Agent Assumptions and Dynamic Climate Changes....Pages 203-221
An Anatomy of Adaptation to Climate Change and Variability....Pages 223-251
Irreversibility, Uncertainty, and Learning: Portraits of Adaptation to Long-Term Climate Change....Pages 253-278

✦ Subjects

Meteorology/Climatology; Environmental Management; Ecotoxicology