Ilona M. Otto

Social vulnerability to climate change: a review of concepts and evidence

This article provides a review of recent scientific literature on social vulnerability to climate change, aiming to determine which social and demographic groups, across a wide range of geographical locations, are the most vulnerable to climate change impacts within four well-being dimensions: health, safety, food security, and displacement. We analyze how vulnerability changes over time and ask whether there is evidence of critical thresholds beyond which social vulnerability drastically changes. The review finds that climate change is expected to exacerbate current vulnerabilities and inequalities. The findings confirm concerns about climate justice, especially its intergenerational dimensions. For example, deficiencies in early childhood may limit future educational and income generation opportunities. Evidence of clear thresholds is rare and is mainly related to the vulnerability of different age groups, household income level, and the impacts of different degrees of global warming.

The rise of multilevel governance for biodiversity conservation in Belarus

We describe the emergence of multilevel policy in biodiversity governance in Belarus—a country with a strongly hierarchical and centralized political system. We analyze the biodiversity protection policies from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the present day. Our evidence is based on document analysis and in-depth interviews with representatives of key stakeholder groups, including the Belarusian government and representatives of legalized as well as banned nongovernmental organizations. We observe that the importance of local government and nonstate actors in increasing, as the government enters and implements more international programs and agreements. Although the changes have contributed to an improved monitoring of protected areas and are in general seen as positive by the majority of stakeholders, the policy innovation process taking place in Belarus is still very different from those observed in Western democracies. Many changes are introduced on an ad hoc basis and they are not supported by the development of legal standards and procedures. Furthermore, a portion of innovative legislation exists only on paper and is never enforced. In the area of biodiversity governance, effective and urgent measures are most needed to support access to information, development of formal channels of cooperation between stakeholders, and sanctioning mechanisms in cases of mismanagement.

The Challenge of a 4°C World by 2100

As evidenced by the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC, our understanding of the Earth System and the climate change impacts expected in the coming decades is developing at a rapid pace. Contributing to this progress, the first ever Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison (ISI-MIP) has helped to paint a clearer picture of potential impacts at different levels of global mean warming. However, along with such advances the limitations of our understanding become more apparent. A number of processes are scarcely or not at all reflected in current assessments of the risks associated with significant levels of warming. These include critical thresholds in the Earth system which, once breached, can give rise to non-linear impacts. Recent insights from West Antarctica indicate that we have already ‘tipped’ several large glacier systems there, suggesting that the risk of crossing such thresholds might be much greater than previously thought. Also excluded from a sectoral perspective are the intricate interdependencies between systems and the potential for an initial impact to cascade into a chain of impacts, or for impacts to occur simultaneously and interact in complex ways. Finally, we need to take into account the different degrees of vulnerability not only across but also within nation states. The ramifications of non-linear impacts and their uneven distribution are likely to be deleterious to the stability and wellbeing of our societies and will, we hope, never be realized. However, if we wish to understand the challenges associated with a 4°C world2, such a world needs to be imagined.

Self-Governance and the Effects of Rules in Irrigation Systems: Evidence from Laboratory and Framed Field Experiments in China, India and Vietnam

This paper employs laboratory and framed field experiments to investigate factors influencing the behavior of irrigation users, with an emphasis on the effects of exogenously and endogenously designed allocation rules. The experiments were conducted with 36 groups of farmers and students from China, India and Vietnam. The results show that physically asymmetric access to water as a resource creates an asymmetric distribution of investments, harvests and revenues that favors upstream users. Exogenously designed allocation rules appear able to equalize the distribution of revenue between upstream and downstream users, but are also likely to reduce the volume of investment and generated revenue. Meanwhile, communication between irrigation users with the possibility of endogenously designed rules appears to have a stronger equalizing effect on asymmetric resource access but also increases overall investment, which then increases water availability in a hypothetical irrigation channel. This suggests that promoting participation of irrigation users in designing rules for water distribution, water use monitoring and sanctioning might improve the performance of irrigation systems.

Water Scarcity Impacts and Challenges of Water Governance in the Guanting Basin, North China. Evidence from Interviews with Local Stakeholders

The chapter presents results of an IWRM Project “Sustainable Water and Agricultural Land Use in the Guanting Watershed under Limited Water Availability” and focuses on institutional responses to water scarcity. We present results of interviews with stakeholders from the Guanting Basin on the perceptions of climate change and adaptation needs. The stakeholders interviewed were deeply aware of water shortages and their impacts in the study area. The examples of adaptation implemented on the ground mainly include supply driven measures. We observe weak coordination of water management across various government units and levels. Most of the interviewees believed that taking adaptation action was not within their competency, thinking that the central government or a different administrative unit would be responsible for such measures. The interviewees were aware of potentially promising concepts in water management such as compensation schemes, trade of water rights and weather insurance. Nevertheless, they recognized that these schemes would require larger institutional changes such as the introduction of water rights and fully recognized land property rights.