- Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment
- Climate Diplomacy: Seeing the Bigger Picture
- Federal Support to Local Climate Adaptation
- Mapping Demographics and Climate Change
- The Policy Climate, Climate Policy Initiative
- Global Conference – Cities Learning Together
Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment
This updated paper revisits conceptual frameworks for identifying and assessing vulnerability. It identifies a set of metrics for characterising vulnerability assessments and applies them to a range of published assessments to develop understanding of the state of assessment practice. The paper assesses the apparent linkages between assessment practice and adaptation decision-making to develop insights into effective pathways for facilitating adaptation outcomes.
Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment: From Conceptual Frameworks to Practical Heuristics (updated version), Preston BL, Working Paper 16, CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship, CSIRO, Australia, September 2013
Climate Diplomacy: Seeing the Bigger Picture
This policy brief explores the potential for least developed countries (LDCs) to use Climate Diplomacy to promote more ambitious international action on climate change, both inside and outside, the formal global talks. It urges the leaders of LDCs to integrate climate messaging into foreign and diplomatic affairs. The paper argues that with stronger Climate Diplomacy, states will be able to engage more effectively on climate change both bilaterally and multilaterally, and within and beyond the UNFCCC.
Climate Diplomacy: Seeing the Bigger Picture, Kiran Sura and Nadia Schweimler, Policy Brief, Climate Development Knowledge Network (CDKN), August 2013 [808 KB, PDF]
Federal Support to Local Climate Adaptation
The US infrastructure such as roads and bridges, wastewater systems, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) centers are vulnerable to changes in the climate. While this report acknowledges that US federal efforts are under way to facilitate more informed adaptation decisions, it notes that these efforts could better support the needs of local infrastructure decision makers. The report draws on the experience of a select set of stakeholders to identify factors that ease the adaptation process in USA.
Future Federal Adaptation Efforts Could Better Support Local Infrastructure Decision Makers, Report to Congressional Requesters, United States Government Accountability Office (GAO), 2013 [4.42 MB, PDF]
Mapping Demographics and Climate Change
This free online interactive map (jointly developed by the University of Michigan’s Graham Sustainability Institute and Headwaters Economics) provides social, economic and demographic statistics on 225 counties in the Great Lakes region, overlaid with detailed data about municipal spending, land-use change and climate change characteristics. It gives Great Lakes policymakers and decision-makers easy access to targeted data to help them plan for, and adapt to, the regional impacts of climate change.
Socioeconomics and Climate Change in the Great Lakes Region – Map, University of Michigan’s Graham Sustainability Institute and Headwaters Economics, Great Lakes Adaptation Assessment for Cities (GLAA-C), The University of Michigan, 2013
The Policy Climate, Climate Policy Initiative
This edition of The Policy Climate focuses on the regions that represent the majority of global greenhouse gas emissions and at the same time are very diverse in terms of economic development, political system and climate policy: Brazil, China, India, Europe and the United States of America. It gives an overview of the policies implemented so far and analyses what has worked well and what hasn’t with these climate change policies. Key findings are that climate policy today is national (rather than global) and that its design is pluralistic and administered by various stakeholders.
The Policy Climate, Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), 2013 [5.33 MB, PDF]
Global Conference – Cities Learning Together
Building on the RMIT European Union (EU) Centre’s industry networks, PASCAL’s extensive work around Learning Cities and in partnership with the host, Hong Kong Institute of Education, this global conference will be a practically-oriented dialogue between European Union and older OECD approaches and those of East Asia and other non-EU regions. It will focus on present and future action, mainly within local neighbourhoods in big cities, to build green, safe, healthy, communities which are economically viable and sustainable.
Conference: Cities Learning Together – Local Communities in the Sustainable and Healthy Learning City, European Union (EU) Centre at RMIT University-Melbourne, Kowloon, Hong Kong, November 18-20, 2013
For further information, please contact the editor, Saleem Janjua: daptnet@rmit.edu.au
Professor Darryn McEvoy, Program Leader, RMIT University Climate Change Adaptation Programme
Professor Peter Hayes, Co-founder and Executive Director of Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability
Dr. Saleem Janjua, Editor, AdaptNet
AdaptNet is a free fortnightly report produced by RMIT University Global Cities Research Institute’s Climate Change Adaptation Programme, Melbourne, Australia. It is published in partnership with the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability.