Climate Vulnerability, Volume 2

'Sound and solid case studies on vulnerability and adaptation have been woefully lacking in the international discourse on climate change. This set of books begins to bridge the gap.' Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of United Nations Environment Programme 'Important reading for students and practitioners alike.' Martin Parry, Co-Chair, Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 'Fills an important gap in our understanding ... It is policy-relevant and deserves to be widely read.' Richard Klein, Senior Research Fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Sweden The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in its 2001 report that much of the developing world is highly vulnerable to adverse impacts from climate change. But the IPCC also concluded that the vulnerabilities of developing countries are too little studied and too poorly understood to enable determination of adaptation strategies that would be effective at reducing risks. These authoritative volumes, resulting from the work of the Assessments of Impacts and Adaptations to Climate Change (AIACC) project launched by the IPCC in 2002, are the first to provide a comprehensive investigation of the issues at stake. Climate Change and Vulnerability discusses who is vulnerable to climate change, the nature of their vulnerability and the causes of their vulnerability for parts of the world that have been poorly researched until now. Climate Change and Adaptation covers current practices for managing climate risks to food security, water resources, livelihoods, human health and infrastructure, needs for effective management of climate risks, the changing nature of the risks, strategies for adaptation, and the need to integrate these strategies into development planning and resource management.

Climate change has been the subject of thousands of books and magazines, scientific journals, and newspaper articles daily. It’s a subject that can be very political and emotional, often blurring the lines between fact and fiction. The vast majority of research, studies, projections and recommendations tend to focus on the human influence on climate change and global warming as the result of CO2 emissions, often to the exclusion of other threats that include population growth and the stress placed on energy sources due to emerging global affluence. Climate Vulnerability, Five Volume Set seeks to strip away the politics and emotion that surround climate change and will assess the broad range of threats using the bottom up approach—including CO2 emissions, population growth, emerging affluence, and many others—to our five most critical resources: water, food, ecosystems, energy, and human health. Inclusively determining what these threats are while seeking preventive measures and adaptations is at the heart of this unique reference work. Takes a Bottom-Up approach, addressing climate change and the threat to our key resources at the local level first and globally second, providing a more accurate and inclusive approach. Includes extensive cross-referencing, which is key to readers as new connections between factors can be discovered. Cuts across a number of disciplines and will appeal to Biological Science, Earth & Environmental Science, Ecology, and Social Science, comprehensively addressing climate change and other threats to our key resources from multiple perspectives

This latest Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will again form the standard reference for all those concerned with climate change and its consequences, including students, researchers and policy makers in environmental science, meteorology, climatology, biology, ecology, atmospheric chemistry and environmental policy.

'Sound and solid case studies on vulnerability and adaptation have been woefully lacking in the international discourse on climate change. This set of books begins to bridge the gap.' Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of United Nations Environment Programme 'Important reading for students and practitioners alike.' Martin Parry, Co-Chair, Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 'Fills an important gap in our understanding ... It is policy-relevant and deserves to be widely read.' Richard Klein, Senior Research Fellow, Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Sweden The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded in its 2001 report that much of the developing world is highly vulnerable to adverse impacts from climate change. But the IPCC also concluded that the vulnerabilities of developing countries are too little studied and too poorly understood to enable determination of adaptation strategies that would be effective at reducing risks. These authoritative volumes, resulting from the work of the Assessments of Impacts and Adaptations to Climate Change (AIACC) project launched by the IPCC in 2002, are the first to provide a comprehensive investigation of the issues at stake. Climate Change and Vulnerability discusses who is vulnerable to climate change, the nature of their vulnerability and the causes of their vulnerability for parts of the world that have been poorly researched until now. Climate Change and Adaptation covers current practices for managing climate risks to food security, water resources, livelihoods, human health and infrastructure, needs for effective management of climate risks, the changing nature of the risks, strategies for adaptation, and the need to integrate these strategies into development planning and resource management.

This book highlights how climate change has affected migration in the Indian subcontinent. Drawing on field research, it argues that extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, cyclones, cloudbursts as well as sea-level rise, desertification and declining crop productivity have shown higher frequency in recent times and have depleted bio-physical diversity and the capacity of the ecosystem to provide food and livelihood security. The volume shows how the socio-economically poor are worst affected in these circumstances and resort to migration to survive. The essays in the volume study the role of remittances sent by migrants to their families in environmentally fragile zones in providing an important cushion and adaptation capabilities to cope with extreme weather events. The book looks at the socio-economic and political drivers of migration, different forms of mobility, mortality and morbidity levels in the affected population, and discusses mitigation and adaption strategies. The volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of environment and ecology, migration and diaspora studies, development studies, sociology and social anthropology, governance and public policy, and politics.

Climate Vulnerability, Volume 1