——–NOTICE———
This is the last issue for 2012. AdaptNet will resume on Tuesday, 12 February 2013. We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest and support throughout 2012. You are one of over 1200 subscribers to AdaptNet in fifty different countries. We would appreciate your feedback on how AdaptNet is currently being used and how it might be improved in future. Please send comments to the editor, Dr. Saleem Janjua, at: muhammadsaleem.janjua@rmit.edu.au
- Technical Report: Urban Heat Island
- GIS Assessment of Coastal Vulnerability to Climate Change
- Suburban Neighbourhood Adaptation for a Changing Climate
- Food Security, Neoliberalism, Productivism & Climate Change
- Why a 4C Warmer World Must Be Avoided?
- International Conference on Asian and Pacific Coasts
Technical Report: Urban Heat Island
The report focuses on the collection and use of airborne thermal remote sensing of the urban land surface as a tool for informing policy development and on-ground implementation of urban heat island mitigation strategies. It reviews previous studies to investigate approaches of collecting and using airborne thermal imagery to analyze drivers of high urban surface heating, and hence the urban heat island.
Technical Report: Urban Heat Island, Richard Harris and Andrew Coutts, Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research (VCCCAR), Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, October 2012
GIS Assessment of Coastal Vulnerability to Climate Change
The paper assesses the potential vulnerability of Vietnam’s coast to climate change and discusses possible adaptation policies and plan to reduce the impacts. It uses GIS analysis for the assessment of coastal vulnerability. The paper finds that a non-structural approach (coastal buffer zones, storm warning systems, growing of flood-resistant crops, elevated storm shelters) could be used by Vietnam to adapt its low-lying coastline to climate change.
GIS Assessment of Coastal Vulnerability to Climate Change and Coastal Adaption Planning in Vietnam, Isaac Boateng, Journal of Coastal Conservation, vol. 16, issue 1, pp. 25-36, March 2012 [subscription required]
Suburban Neighbourhood Adaptation for a Changing Climate
Based on the outcomes of SNACC (suburban neighbourhood adaptation for a changing climate) project, this report presents effective, feasible and acceptable suburban adaptation actions. It discusses pathways to achieving those adaptation actions as well. The paper argues that over 85% of people in England live in suburbs, yet little is being done at either the home and garden scale or the neighbourhood scale to reduce the impacts of future climate change.
Suburban Neighbourhood Adaptation for a Changing Climate (SNACC): Final Report, Katie Williams et al., University of the West of England, Oxford Brookes University and Heriot-Watt University, UK, 2012 [2.84 MB, PDF]
Food Security, Neoliberalism, Productivism & Climate Change
This paper provides a brief overview of food insecurity among Australians. It examines the unsustainable farm production system that has developed since the Second World War and has been strongly shaped, in the last three decades, by neoliberalism. The paper highlights the role of neoliberalism in fostering productivist responses to the climate-change challenge, and to other challenges, faced by Australian agriculture.
Food Security in Australia in an Era of Neoliberalism, Productivism and Climate Change (Article in Press), Geoffrey Lawrence, Carol Richards and Kristen Lyons, Journal of Rural Studies, pp. 1-10, 2012 [311 KB, PDF]
Why a 4C Warmer World Must Be Avoided?
This report is a stark reminder that climate change affects everything. The solutions do not lie only in climate finance or climate projects. The solutions lie in effective risk management and ensuring all our work, all our thinking, is designed with the threat of a 4°C degree world in mind. The report argues that the lack of action on climate change not only risks putting prosperity out of reach of millions of people in the developing world; it threatens to roll back decades of sustainable development.
Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4C Warmer World Must Be Avoided, A Report for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank, November 2012 [14.3 MB, PDF]
International Conference on Asian and Pacific Coasts
7th International Conference on Asian and Pacific Coasts will take place from 24-26 September 2013 in Bali, Indonesia. It aims to promote scientific advancement, technological progress, information exchange, and cooperation among engineers and researchers in coastal, port, and ocean engineering and other related fields. Abstracts/proposals may be submitted by 15 January 2013.
7th International Conference on Asian and Pacific Coasts, Hasanuddin University, Bali, Indonesia, 24-26 September 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.