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Silver Buckshot: Alternative Pathways Towards Greenhouse Gas Mitigation
›In 1986, global nuclear weapons stockpiles peaked at nearly 70,000 warheads. By the beginning of 2013, there were just over 17,000, with only 4,400 kept operational. This dramatic reduction was the fruit of a negotiation process that began in the late 1940s. In spite of incredible tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, negotiators were able to make progress once they focused on building trust with small, pragmatic steps, rather than starting with the complete elimination of all weapons. [Video Below]
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Jacob Glass, PassBlue
New Investment Law in Peru Undermines Rights of Indigenous Women
›August 22, 2014 // By Wilson Center StaffA new law in Peru encouraging investment in the country’s extractive industries has reignited debate on the lack of power indigenous women have in the mostly rural societies where they often live. The International Indigenous Women’s Forum, which drew more than 60 native women from across the world to Peru last month, highlighted this important issue.
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Ian Kraucunas on Bridging the Science-Politics Divide for Climate Change
›“Climate change is not just a far-away thing that affects far-away people,” says Ian Kraucunas, deputy director of atmospheric sciences and global change at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in this week’s podcast. “It affects things people here in the U.S. care about – and, in fact, that includes national security.”
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Melinda Harm Benson and Robin K. Craig, Ensia
The End of Sustainability?
›July 30, 2014 // By Wilson Center StaffThe time has come for us to collectively reexamine – and ultimately move past – the concept of sustainability. The continued invocation of sustainability in policy discussions ignores the emerging realities of the Anthropocene, which is creating a world characterized by extreme complexity, radical uncertainty, and unprecedented change. From a policy perspective, we must face the impossibility of even defining – let alone pursuing – a goal of “sustainability” in such a world. It’s not that sustainability is a bad idea. The question is whether the concept of sustainability is still useful as an environmental governance framework.
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Don’t Forget About Governance: The Risk of Tunnel Vision in Chasing Resilience for Asia’s Cities
›Asia is going through an unprecedented wave of urbanization. Secondary and tertiary cities are seeing the most rapid changes in land-use and ownership, social structures, and values as peri-urban and agricultural land become part of metropolitan cityscapes. All the while, climate change is making many of these fast-growing cities more vulnerable to disasters.
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Environmental Dimensions of Sustainable Recovery: Learning From Post-Conflict and Disaster Response
›“Environmental specialists need to change,” said Anita van Breda at the Wilson Center on June 25. “In the new normal, our work has to have a different relevancy.” [Video Below]
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Climate Change Will Test Water-Sharing Agreements
›July 15, 2014 // By Thomas CurranMany existing water-sharing treaties should be re-assessed in the context of climate change, write Shlomi Dinar, David Katz, Lucia De Stefano, and Brian Blakespoor in a World Bank working paper.
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A Closer Look at USAID’s Climate Strategy: Climate-Smart Development a Work in Progress
›July 14, 2014 // By Kathleen MogelgaardIn March, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest comprehensive synthesis of climate change research. The report concludes that “impacts from recent climate-related extremes, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones, and wildfires, reveal significant vulnerability and exposure of some ecosystems and many human systems to current climate variability.”
Showing posts from category adaptation.