Climate Bonds! May you live long and prosper!

From the Nov. 27, 2011, edition of the New York Times, by Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop: A Change of Heart on Investing in the Climate.

This article describes a new form of financing for climate change adaptation now underway. These "green bonds" focus on "battling climate change" -- e.g., backing mitigation and adaptation investments-- using a relatively low-risk finance instrument. They will only be successful if they get enough projects to back and enough big investors, but they've only just launched and... "[Sean Kidney, executive chairman of the Climate Bonds Initiative] estimates that $14 billion to $30 billion worth of bonds backed by investments related to climate change solutions have already been issued internationally..."

Kidney elaborates on what these bonds should cover:

"'[W]hen you’re talking about building a low-carbon economy, it should not be just about mitigation but about adaption as well. Water investments in North Africa might be considered climate adaptation bonds. Adaptation would look at infrastructure for disaster risk reduction, flood defenses or forestry conservation.'"

Find out more here:

Climate Bonds Initiative - "an investor-focused nongovernmental organization set up to promote large-scale investment in the low-carbon economy"

CBI's new Climate Bond Standards and Certification Board - launched on Nov. 24, 2011.

The Oct. 19, 2011, press release about the launch of the State Street Global Advisors (SSgA)'s High Quality Green Bond Strategy "a way to direct fixed income investments to climate solutions."

My Writings about Adaptation on the Bay Area Open Space Council's Blog, Part 4

Here's my new piece "Be Our Guest: Generation Hot" for the Bay Area Open Space blog, posted yesterday. I'm describing some of the good work being done to prepare California for climate impacts at the state and local levels.

My Writings about Adaptation on the Bay Area Open Space Council's Blog, Part 3

Here is my post "Be Our Guest: When the Levee Breaks, Mama You Got to Go"on the issue of human versus natural system adaptation, and "ecosystem-based" adaptation, written for the Bay Area Open Space blog.

Part four, coming out next week, talks about California adaptation initiatives.

I love that the blog editor linked my title "When the Levee Breaks, Mama You Got to Go" to a recording of the Led Zeppelin song. I didn't explain in my post that the song is actually relevant-- written about the Great Mississippi Flood in 1927, which was as much an engineering disaster as a natural disaster. Read more about the 1927 flood in John Barry's book on the matter, Rising Tide, written well before Katrina. I loan that book out but make sure to get it back, because I feel like it's a really important cautionary tale that I never want to forget. You can preview it on Google Books.

Congratulations RISE on a great media piece!

Yesterday I heard a wonderfully evocative radio program on KALW radio about the San Francisco Bay and sea level rise, featuring our local climate change science/ planning heavy-hitters Will Travis of BCDC and Healy Hamilton of the California Academy of Sciences.

Congratulations to radio producer/director Claire Schoen, and to Travis and Healy (and the others who appeared in the segment) on a great piece of media exposure!

One of my favorite quotes was from Healy, said with such calm force, as though her life depended on you, the listener, grasping her every word and believing:

We are headed right now on a path to an ice-free planet. And once we are there this planet will look nothing like it does today, and the human infrastructure that we all depend upon will not be able to adapt to those kinds of changes.

Listen to the one-hour program RISE: Part I: Sounding the Waters streaming here.

My Writings about Adaptation on the Bay Area Open Space Council's Blog, Part 2

Here's "Be Our Guest: Planning for Climate Change, Part Two (A Case Study of Impact Scenarios in Marin County)" -- the next installment in my four-part series being posted on the Bay Area Open Space Council Blog. This one is about the Futures of Wild Marin workshop that I organized with 35 resource managers and scientists in Marin in January 2011.

My Writings about Adaptation on the Bay Area Open Space Council's Blog, Part 1

I've been asked to write a series of posts for the Bay Area Open Space Council's blog about climate change adaptation, and Monday was the launch of the series.

Read my first post "Be Our Guest: Planning for Climate Change, Part One," wherein I tell the story of how I got involved in adaptation work back in 2008.

Part two will talk about my scenario planning case study in Marin County, the Futures of Wild Marin.

Part three will discuss the conflict between planning for adaptation for human and natural systems, and the theory of "ecosystem-based" adaptation.

Part four will present some of the new California-based adaptation initiatives.

Water security alarm bells sound in Canada

On Oct. 4, 2011, the Adaptation to Climate Change Team (ACT) think tank at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver-- "the only university-based think tank initiative in North America dedicated to climate change adaptation" -- released a set of water security reports: Climate Change Adaptation and Water Governance.

Last year I interviewed the executive director of ACT, Deborah Harford, for my thesis on North Pacific adaptation, to get her critique of the British Columbia province-level plan. She was clearly passionate about trying to provoke the government into further action, and I am excited to see this new set of reports coming from her team.

The lead author of the reports, Bob Sandford, is quoted in the Vancouver Sun, directing comments at the government of British Columbia:

"You manage groundwater like a country would in the 18th century!"

Read more in L. Pynn's Oct. 5, 2011, article SFU study calls for coordinated water conservation policies: Surface and groundwater should be managed together.