The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for assessing the science related to climate change. It provides policymakers with regular assessments of the scientific basis of human-induced climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation. This IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate is the most comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of the observed and projected changes to the ocean and cryosphere and their associated impacts and risks, with a focus on resilience, risk management response options, and adaptation measures, considering both their potential and limitations. It brings together knowledge on physical and biogeochemical changes, the interplay with ecosystem changes, and the implications for human communities. It serves policymakers, decision makers, stakeholders, and all interested parties with unbiased, up-to-date, policy-relevant information. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This edited volume addresses the impacts of climate change on Pacific islands, and presents databases and indexes for assessing and adapting to island vulnerabilities. By analyzing susceptibility variables, developing comprehensive vulnerability indexes, and applying GIS techniques, the book's authors demonstrate the particular issues presented by climate change in the islands of the Pacific region, and how these issues may be managed to preserve and improve biodiversity and human livelihoods. The book first introduces the issues specific to island communities, such as high emissions impacts, and discusses the importance of the lithological traits of Pacific islands and how these physical factors relate to climate change impacts. From here, the book aims to analyze the various vulnerabilities of different island sectors, and to formulate a susceptibility index from these variables to be used by government and planning agencies for relief prioritization. Such variables include tropical cyclones, built infrastructures, proximity to coastal areas, agriculture, fisheries and marine resources, groundwater availability, biodiversity, and economic impacts on industries such as tourism. Through the categorization and indexing of these variables, human and physical adaptation measures are proposed, and support solutions are offered to aid the inhabitants of affected island countries. This book is intended for policy makers, academics, and climate change researchers, particularly those dealing with climate change impacts on small islands.

ALEXANDER GILLESPIE & WILLIAM C.G. BURNS The idea for this book grew out of the Ecopolitics conference in Canberra, Australia in 1996. The conference captured the ferment of the climate change debate in the South Pacific, as well as some its potential implications for the region’s inhabitants and e- systems. At that conference, one of the editors (Gillespie) delivered a paper on climate change issues in the region, as did Ros Taplin and Mark Diesendorf, who are also c- tributors to this volume. This book focuses on climate change issues in Australia, New Zealand, and the small island nations in the Pacific as the world struggles to cope with possible the impacts of environmental change and to formulate effective responses. While Australia and New Zealand’s per capita emissions of greenhouse gases are among the highest in the world, their aggregate contributions are small. However, both nations may exert a disprop- tionate influence in the global greenhouse debate because their obstinate positions at recent conferences of the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on C- mate Change (FCCC) may provide justification for other developed nations, as well as developing countries, to refuse to make meaningful reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions.

Tide gauges show that global sea level has risen about 7 inches during the 20th century, and recent satellite data show that the rate of sea-level rise is accelerating. As Earth warms, sea levels are rising mainly because ocean water expands as it warms; and water from melting glaciers and ice sheets is flowing into the ocean. Sea-level rise poses enormous risks to the valuable infrastructure, development, and wetlands that line much of the 1,600 mile shoreline of California, Oregon, and Washington. As those states seek to incorporate projections of sea-level rise into coastal planning, they asked the National Research Council to make independent projections of sea-level rise along their coasts for the years 2030, 2050, and 2100, taking into account regional factors that affect sea level. Sea-Level Rise for the Coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington: Past, Present, and Future explains that sea level along the U.S. west coast is affected by a number of factors. These include: climate patterns such as the El Niño, effects from the melting of modern and ancient ice sheets, and geologic processes, such as plate tectonics. Regional projections for California, Oregon, and Washington show a sharp distinction at Cape Mendocino in northern California. South of that point, sea-level rise is expected to be very close to global projections. However, projections are lower north of Cape Mendocino because the land is being pushed upward as the ocean plate moves under the continental plate along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. However, an earthquake magnitude 8 or larger, which occurs in the region every few hundred to 1,000 years, would cause the land to drop and sea level to suddenly rise.

Since 2009 there has been a fundamental shift in the way that the Pacific Island states engage with regional and world politics. The region has experienced, what Kiribati President Anote Tong has aptly called, a ‘paradigm shift’ in ideas about how Pacific diplomacy should be organised, and on what principles it should operate. Many leaders have called for a heightened Pacific voice in global affairs and a new commitment to establishing Pacific Island control of this diplomatic process. This change in thinking has been expressed in the establishment of new channels and arenas for Pacific diplomacy at the regional and global levels and new ways of connecting the two levels through active use of intermediate diplomatic associations. The New Pacific Diplomacy brings together a range of analyses and perspectives on these dramatic new developments in Pacific diplomacy at sub-regional, regional and global levels, and in the key sectors of global negotiation for Pacific states – fisheries, climate change, decolonisation, and trade.

In Statehood under Water, Alejandra Torres Camprubí revisits the concept of statehood through an analysis on how sea-level rise and the Anthropocene challenge the territorial, demographical, and political dimensions of the State. Closely examining the fight for survival undertaken by low-lying Pacific Island States, the author engages with the legal and policy innovations necessary to address these new scenarios. This monograph reacts against overly formal approaches to the law on statehood, and is devoted to the reconstruction of the context in which both the challenges, and the measures adopted to tackle them, are taking place. Progressively forged within the international community, it is the kind of political and ethical framework that will soon inform the potential transformation of the law on statehood.