Shannon M. McNeeley

A comprehensive review of climate adaptation in the United States: more than before, but less than needed

We reviewed existing and planned adaptation activities of federal, tribal, state, and local governments and the private sector in the United States (U.S.) to understand what types of adaptation activities are underway across different sectors and scales throughout the country. Primary sources of review included material officially submitted for consideration in the upcoming 2013 U.S. National Climate Assessment and supplemental peer-reviewed and grey literature. Although substantial adaptation planning is occurring in various sectors, levels of government, and the private sector, few measures have been implemented and even fewer have been evaluated. Most adaptation actions to date appear to be incremental changes, not the transformational changes that may be needed in certain cases to adapt to significant changes in climate. While there appear to be no one-size-fits-all adaptations, there are similarities in approaches across scales and sectors, including mainstreaming climate considerations into existing policies and plans, and pursuing no- and low-regrets strategies. Despite the positive momentum in recent years, barriers to implementation still impede action in all sectors and across scales. The most significant barriers include lack of funding, policy and institutional constraints, and difficulty in anticipating climate change given the current state of information on change. However, the practice of adaptation can advance through learning by doing, stakeholder engagements (including “listening sessions”), and sharing of best practices. Efforts to advance adaptation across the U.S. and globally will necessitate the reduction or elimination of barriers, the enhancement of information and best practice sharing mechanisms, and the creation of comprehensive adaptation evaluation metrics.

The Cultural Theory of Risk for Climate Change Adaptation

The way in which people perceive climate change risk is informed by their social interactions and cultural worldviews comprising fundamental beliefs about society and nature. Therefore, perceptions of climate change risk and vulnerability along with people’s ‘‘myths of nature’’—that is, how groups of people conceptualize the way nature functions—influence the feasibility and acceptability ofclimate adaptation planning, policy making, and implementation. Thisstudy presents analyses ofculturalworldviews that broaden the currenttreatmentsof culture andclimate changemitigationandadaptationdecision makingincommunities.The authors useinsights from community-based climate research and engage the Cultural Theory of Risk conceptual framework to situate community understandings of, and responses to, climate impacts. This study looks at how the issue of climate change manifests socially in four cases in the United States and Tuvalu and how ideas about climate change are produced by the institutional cultural contexts across scales from the local to the global. This approach helps us identify local and regional priorities and support the development of new relationships for adaptation research and planning by helping to diagnose barriers to climate change adaptation, assist improved communication through framing/reframing climate issues based on shared understandings and collective learning, and help move from conflict to cooperation through better negotiation of diverse worldviews.

A “toad’s eye” view of drought: regional socio-natural vulnerability and responses in 2002 in Northwest Colorado

Drought is a part of the normal climate variability and the life and livelihoods of the Western United States. However, drought can also be a high impact or extreme event in some cases, such as the exceptional 2002 drought that had deleterious impacts across the Western United States. Studies of long-term climate variability along with climate change projections indicate that the Western United States should expect much more severe and extended drought episodes than experienced over the last century when most modern water law and policies were developed, such as the 1922 Colorado River Compact. This paper will discuss research examining regional socio-natural climate vulnerability and adaptive response capacities to the 2002 drought in the Yampa–White Basins region of Colorado across sectors and will demonstrate how a bottom-up or “toad’s eye” approach to understanding drought is paramount to complement top-down, instrumental data-driven analyses of drought. The results of empirical observations through interviews and participant observation in combination with analysis of drought indicators will be presented. Implications for adaptation research and planning for climate variability and change will be discussed.

Catalyzing frontiers in water-climate-society research: A view from early career scientists and junior faculty

AMEriCAN METEOrOlOGiCAl SOCiETY | 477 AffiliAtions: McNeeley, TesseNdorf, aNd lazrus—NCAR, Boulder, Colorado; lazrus—University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma; Heikkila—University of Colorado, Denver, Colorado; fergusoN—Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado; arrigo—East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina; aTTari—Columbia University, New York, New York; ciaNfraNi— Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts; dilliNg aNd kircHoff—University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado; gurdak— San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California; kaMpf—Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado; kauNeckis—University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada; lee—San Jose State University, San Jose, California; liNTNer—Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey; MaHoNey—UCAR, Boulder, Colorado; opiTz-sTapleToN— Institute for Social and Environmental Transition, Boulder, Colorado; ray—University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii; souTH—University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom; sTubblefield—Humboldt State University, Arcata, California; brugger—University of California—Davis, Davis, California CoRREsPonDinG AUtHoR: Shannon M. McNeeley, Advanced Study Program, Research Applications Laboratory/Integrated Science Program, NCAR, P.O. Box 3000, Boulder, CO 80307 E-mail: smcneele@ucar.edu

Drought Risk and Adaptation in the Interior United States: Understanding the Importance of Local Context for Resource Management in Times of Drought*

AbstractDrought is a natural part of the historical climate variability in the northern Rocky Mountains and high plains region of the United States. However, recent drought impacts and climate change projections have increased the need for a systematized way to document and understand drought in a manner that is meaningful to public land and resource managers. The purpose of this exploratory study was to characterize the ways in which some federal and tribal natural resource managers experienced and dealt with drought on lands managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) and tribes in two case site examples (northwest Colorado and southwest South Dakota) that have experienced high drought exposure in the last two decades. The authors employed a social–ecological system framework, whereby key informant interviews and local and regional drought indicator data were used characterize the social and ecological factors that contribute to drought vulnerability and the ways in which drought onset, persist...

Sustainable Climate Change Adaptation in Indian Country

AbstractMuch of the academic literature and policy discussions about sustainable development and climate change adaptation focus on poor and developing nations, yet many tribal communities inside the United States include marginalized peoples and developing nations who face structural barriers to effectively adapt to climate change. There is a need to critically examine diverse climate change risks for indigenous peoples in the United States and the many structural barriers that limit their ability to adapt to climate change. This paper uses a sustainable climate adaptation framework to outline the context and the relationships of power and authority, along with different ways of knowing and meaning, to illustrate the underpinnings of some tribes’ barriers to sustainable climate adaptation. The background of those structural barriers for tribes is traced, and then the case of water rights and management at the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming is used to illustrate the interplay of policy, culture, climat...

Regional Climate Response Collaboratives: Multi-institutional Support for Climate Resilience

AbstractFederal investments by U.S. agencies to enhance climate resilience at regional scales grew over the past decade (2010s). To maximize efficiency and effectiveness in serving multiple sectors and scales, it has become critical to leverage existing agency-specific research, infrastructure, and capacity while avoiding redundancy. We discuss lessons learned from a multi-institutional “regional climate response collaborative” that comprises three different federally-supported climate service entities in the Rocky Mountain west and northern plains region. These lessons include leveraging different strengths of each partner, creating deliberate mechanisms to increase cross-entity communication and joint ownership of projects, and placing a common priority on stakeholder-relevant research and outcomes. We share the conditions that fostered successful collaboration, which can be transferred elsewhere, and suggest mechanisms for overcoming potential barriers. Synergies are essential for producing actionable ...