Some projections about the future from the webcomic XKCD:
Category Archives: Tools
Mapping ecological impact of 2010 Amazonian drought
From NASA EOS Image of the Day:
Between July and September 2010, severe drought gripped the Amazon Basin. The Negro River, a tributary of the Amazon, reached its lowest level in 109 years of record-keeping, and uncontrolled fires spread a pall of smoke over the drying basin. But how did the drought affect the trees?
This image shows a possible answer. Made with vegetation “greenness” measurements from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, the image shows vegetation conditions between July and September 2010 compared to average conditions for the same period between 2000 and 2009 (except for 2005, another drought year). The vegetation indices are measurements of the how much photosynthesis could be happening based on how much leafy vegetation the satellite sees. In 2010, the vegetation index recorded lower values than in previous years, an indication that trees under drought stress either produced fewer leaves or the chlorophyll content of leaves was lower, or both.
Seven Reflections on Disasters and resilience from around the web
1) The Boston Globe’s Big Picture photo blog has pictures of Japan one month after the quake & tsunami
2) Andy Revkin comments on DotEarth on the limits of Japan’s disaster memory in response to a fascinating Associated Press article by by Jay Alabaster – Tsunami-hit towns forgot warnings from ancestors.
3) And Andy Revkin also wonder’s whether nuclear power is simply too brittle to be a resilient power source.
4) Richard A. Kerr writes in Science Magazine article Long Road to U.S. Quake Resilience about recent NRC report that argues that it is underfunding programs to develop resilience to Earthquakes.
5) New York Times on how Danger Is Pent Up Behind Aging Dams. Apparently of the USA’s 85,000 dams, more than 4,400 are considered susceptible to failure, but governments cannot agree on who should pay for renovations.
6) Bob Costanza and others write in Solutions magazine on Solutions for Averting the Next Deepwater Horizon. They argues that sensible resource development should require resource developers to purchase disaster bonds to capture true social costs of resource development
7) In New York Times Leslie Kaufman writes on complexity and resilience of Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystems response to BP Oil Spill.
Controversies around the Social Cost of Carbon
What is the social cost of carbon? That is,the monetary value of the long-term damages done by greenhouse gas emissions? Frank Ackerman from the Stockholm Environment Institute U.S. Center, recently gave a fascinating talk at the Stockholm Resilience Centre where he presented the widely used FUND-model, an integrated assessment model of climate change that links climate change science with economics. According to Ackerman, the interesting aspect with this model is not only that it is commonly cited by policy-makers in the US, but also that some of its basic assumptions, lead to quite bizarre results. The policy implications can not be overestimated.
As Ackerman notes in the TripleCrisis blog:
True or false: Risks of a climate catastrophe can be ignored, even as temperatures rise? The economic impact of climate change is no greater than the increased cost of air conditioning in a warmer future? The ideal temperature for agriculture could be 17oC above historical levels?
All true, according to the increasingly popular FUND model of climate economics. It is one of three models used by the federal government’s Interagency Working Group to estimate the “social cost of carbon” – that is, the monetary value of the long-term damages done by greenhouse gas emissions. According to FUND, as used by the Working Group, the social cost of carbon is a mere $6 per ton of CO2. That translates into $0.06 per gallon of gasoline. Do you believe that a tax of $0.06 per gallon at the gas pump (and equivalent taxes on other fossil fuels) would solve the climate problem and pay for all future climate damages?
I didn’t believe it, either. But the FUND model is growing in acceptance as a standard for evaluation of climate economics. To explain the model’s apparent dismissal of potential harm, I undertook a study of the inner workings of FUND (with the help of an expert in the relevant software language) for E3 Network. Having looked under the hood, I’d say the model needs to be towed back to the shop for a major overhaul.
A working paper that teases the critique in detail can be found here. To summarize the conclusions for non-economists: the social cost of carbon is way higher than $6 per ton of CO2….
Revisiting Ostrom’s Design principles for community-based Natural Resource Management
In her talk at Resilience 2011, Elinor Ostrom recommended a recent paper by her colleagues that reviews 91 studies that empirically evaluated her design principles for for resilient institutions for the management of common pool resources.
Cox, M., G. Arnold, and S. Villamayor Tomás. 2010. A review of design principles for community-based natural resource management. Ecology and Society 15(4): 38. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol15/iss4/art38/
The authors found that her principals were well supported. They provide a reformulation of the design principals, by dividing each of the components 1,2, and 4 into two parts and keeping the remaining principals as they are. Their revised principles are below:
| Principle | Description |
| 1A | User boundaries: Clear boundaries between legitimate users and nonusers must be clearly defined. |
| 1B | Resource boundaries: Clear boundaries are present that define a resource system and separate it from the larger biophysical environment. |
| 2A | Congruence with local conditions: Appropriation and provision rules are congruent with local social and environmental conditions. |
| 2B | Appropriation and provision: The benefits obtained by users from a common-pool resource (CPR), as determined by appropriation rules, are proportional to the amount of inputs required in the form of labor, material, or money, as determined by provision rules. |
| 3 | Collective-choice arrangements: Most individuals affected by the operational rules can participate in modifying the operational rules. |
| 4A | Monitoring users: Monitors who are accountable to the users monitor the appropriation and provision levels of the users. |
| 4B | Monitoring the resource: Monitors who are accountable to the users monitor the condition of the resource. |
| 5 | Graduated sanctions: Appropriators who violate operational rules are likely to be assessed graduated sanctions (depending on the seriousness and the context of the offense) by other appropriators, by officials accountable to the appropriators, or by both. |
| 6 | Conflict-resolution mechanisms: Appropriators and their officials have rapid access to low-cost local arenas to resolve conflicts among appropriators or between appropriators and officials. |
| 7 | Minimal recognition of rights to organize: The rights of appropriators to devise their own institutions are not challenged by external governmental authorities. |
| 8 | Nested enterprises: Appropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and governance activities are organized in multiple layers of nested enterprises. |
Michael Cox et al conclude:
a probabilistic, rather than deterministic, interpretation of the design principles is warranted. Likewise, we remain uncertain as to whether the principles may apply to systems at a variety of scales. Ultimately, however, the design principles are robust to empirical testing in our analysis of 91 studies. Thus, we conclude that they are a sound basis for future research conducted to further disentangle the interactive effects of relevant variables, both within and across multiple environmental and social scales.
Aside from our empirical analysis, we dealt with an important theoretical debate regarding the principles: Are they inherently part of a blueprint approach to CPR management or can they be combined with a more diagnostic approach? We think the latter is the case, and this points us in a specific direction for future research. Each of the aforementioned empirical complications could likely be addressed by approaching CPR management from a diagnostic perspective. This is a process that helps to sort out what is important in a CPR setting, when, and why. We hope to see and plan to participate in future work to develop this approach further.
Cox, M., G. Arnold, and S. Villamayor Tomás (2010). A review of design principles for community-based natural resource management Ecology and Society, 15 (4)
Steve Carpenter wins Stockholm Water Prize
Big congratulations to my former post-doc advisor Steve Carpenter on winning the 2011 Stockholm Water Prize. It is well deserved as Steve has done a huge amount of really innovative work on ecosystem dynamics, ecological economics, large scale ecosystem experiments, and environmental management.
The prize citation writes:
Professor Carpenter’s groundbreaking research has shown how lake ecosystems are affected by the surrounding landscape and by human activities. His findings have formed the basis for concrete solutions on how to manage lakes.
Professor Carpenter, 59, is recognised as one of the world’s most influential environmental scientists in the field of ecology. By combining theoretical models and large-scale lake experiments he has reframed our understanding of freshwater environments and how lake ecosystems are impacted by humans and the surrounding landscape.
The Stockholm Water Prize Nominating Committee emphasises the importance of Professor Carpenter’s contributions in helping us understand how we affect lakes through nutrient loading, fishing, and introduction of exotic species.
“Professor Carpenter has shown outstanding leadership in setting the ecological research agenda, integrating it into a socio-ecological context, and in providing guidance for the management of aquatic resources,” noted the Stockholm Water Prize Nominating Committee.
…
The Stockholm Water Prize is a global award founded in 1991 and presented annually by the Stockholm International Water Institute to an individual, organisation or institution for outstanding water-related activities. The Stockholm Water Prize Laureate receives USD 150,000 and a crystal sculpture specially designed and created by Orrefors.H.M. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, who is the patron of the Prize, will formally present Professor Carpenter with the 2011 Stockholm Water Prize at a Royal Award Ceremony in Stockholm City Hall on August 25 during the 2011 World Water Week in Stockholm.
SIWI, who gives the water prize have also posted an interview with Steve about his work on trophic cascades and resilience:
Japan’s cascading disaster
It is too early for a resilience analysis of Japan’s cascading disaster, but here are some links. First on the fast variables, and then on the slow.
1) International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is posting their continuously updated report on situation at Update on the Japan Earthquake web page.
2) Christian Science Monitor Reports: Lax oversight, ‘greed’ preceded Japan nuclear crisis
3) In his New Yorker blog, Evan Osnos reflects on China’s Nuclear Binge. Rapid building combined with poor monitoring and corruption is not a good recipe for nuclear safety. He writes about the a recent corruption case of Kang Rixin:
His was a $260 million corruption case connected to rigged bids in the construction of nuclear power plants. Keith Bradsher, in the Times, wrote, “While none of Mr. Kang’s decisions publicly documented would have created hazardous conditions at nuclear plants, the case is a worrisome sign that nuclear executives in China may not always put safety first in their decision-making.”
4) Miller-Mcune writes Nuclear Disasters: Do Plans Trump Actions? about a new report from Union of Concerned Scientists which says that U.S. nuclear regulators are way too complacent about the possibility of a catastrophe.
5) On the STEPS centre‘s blog Andy Stirling writes about Japan’s neglected nuclear lessons:
So the most serious lesson already emerging outside Japan is about the pressures, driven by established nuclear commitments, to obscure information; compromise objectivity; and suppress political choice about energy futures. We may live in hope that there will come a time when more comprehensive and dispassionate attention will be given to the full global potential of viable alternatives to nuclear power. Many of these are manifestly more resilient in the face of technical mishap, natural disaster or deliberate acts of violence. Distributed renewable energy infrastructures, for instance, offer a way to avoid huge regulation-enforced losses of electricity-generating capacity when a series of similar plants have to be closed due to safety failings in any one. They minimise the compounding economic impacts of the knock-on self-destruction of massively expensive capital equipment, some time after an initial shock. They do not threaten to exacerbate natural disaster with forced precautionary evacuations of large tracts of urban industrial areas. And there is no scenario at all – unlikely or otherwise – under which they can render significant areas of land effectively uninhabitable for decades, let alone commit large populations to the potential long-term (and untraceable) harm of elevated low doses of ionising radiation.
Japanese Earthquake & Tsunami from above and below
New York Times has Satellite Photos of Japan Before and After Tsunami
Boston Globe’s Big Picture photoblog has collected photos from the ground.
Steven Johnson on the source of good ideas
Two short videos by science writer Steven Johnson on his book Where good ideas come from: the natural history of innovation.
An animated promotional video for his book:
And him giving a TED talk.
Steve Johnson has posted some of the responses to his ideas on his blog.
I haven’t read the book, but complex systems scientist Cosma Shalizi has a rich review that addresses many of the books strengths and weaknesses. He introduces the book as:
This is 100-proof American evolutionist, naturalistic liberalism, which is to say, Pragmatism. It is a celebration of the virtues of openness, experimentation (including failed experiments), giving “slow hunches” chances to develop, to serendipitously blending ideas from diverse intellectual backgrounds and disciplines, and the continuity of human culture and thought with processes in the natural world. It’s a view of the social life of the mind, illustrated by engagingly-told anecdotes from the history of science and technology; apt references to a wide range of scholarly studies; long, admiring quotations from Darwin; the natural history of coral reefs and the evolution of sexual reproduction. (The broader history of culture, especially the fine arts, is occasionally alluded to, and there are abundantly merited plugs for his old teacher Franco Moretti’s studies on the evolution of genres and “distant reading”; but mostly it’s a science-and-technology book.) Johnson has painted a crowd scene: good ideas hardly ever come from isolated individuals thinking very hard and having flashes of inspiration; they come from people who are immersed in communities of inquiry, and especially from those who bridge multiple communities. The picture is an attractive one, which I actually think (or perhaps “fervently pray”) has a lot of truth to it.
Participatory Scenario Development Approaches
Participatory scenario development is a process that involves the participation of stakeholders to explore the future in a creative and policy-relevant way. For an example see the 2008 paper Making Investments in Dryland Development Work: Participatory Scenario Planning in the Makanya Catchment, Tanzania, which Elin Enfors wrote with me and two other colleagues.
Two recent reports present lessons learned from the World Bank’ Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change project use of participatory scenarios. Such reports are important as the tools and techniques that people need to use are difficult to adequately describe in papers, and have too narrow audience to be worthwhile to describe in books. The reports are freely downloadable from the World Bank.
Approaches for Identifying Pro-Poor Adaptation Options (PDF, 3.7 MB). By Livia Bizikova, Samantha Boardley, and Simon Mead
The first report presents lessons learned from the application of participatory scenario-based tools within the World Bank’ Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change project. The authors illustrate how such tools provide opportunities to increase the usability of information on climate change impacts when developing adaptation responses and explore linkages between development, projected climate change and relevant adaptation responses.
Pro-Poor Adaptation: Capacity Development Manual (PDF, 4.0 MB) By ESSA Technologies Ltd and International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD)
The second report is based on the experiences of the authors in designing, developing and delivering participatory scenario workshops as part of World Bank’ Economics of Adaptation to Climate Change project. It focuses on providing ‘how to’ information for people to apply participatory scenario approaches.