Climate Readiness Institute launch at UC Berkeley today

I am tweeting as @stripeygirlcat at the launch of the Climate Readiness Institute at the Brower Center at UC Berkeley today-- follow me! (I only use that account for climate change-related posts, no live-tweeting the Oscars will ever occur there.)

There is quite a brain trust here today. Inspiring.

It was Peaceful on Zero Allocation Day - California Water Law Symposium Report-Back

I've been in and out of one climate change-related stakeholder meeting, conference, workshop, symposium, training or another since mid-January, it seems-- I haven't had time to catch my breath and update this blog. There's been much afoot, with the new iteration of the California Climate Adaptation Strategy out in draft format for comment,and the official onset of drought in California Jan. 17, and the related gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes. Not to make light of it, but the fact that California has a water problem is not very new news. We haven't had serious precip here since December 2012. In fact, one scientist says it may be the driest water year in 500 years (per a Jan. 21 article based on an interview with paleoclimatologist B. Lynn Ingram at UC Berkeley).

Yesterday was a highlight of the recent onslaught of climate change-related gatherings-- the California Water Law Symposium. 

Some notes:

ZERO ALLOCATION DAY, a Friday, was a quiet day. Fish and farms have nothing to fight over. Finally these interests have something (no water) in common.

John Leshy: Looking back, California used to have 150 yr-long droughts; it was settled in an unusually wet period; all our distribution systems were designed for a larger volume of water than we can expect in the future.

Forrest Melton: NASA Ames is using satellites (2 landsats, 2 MODIS) and ground data (CIMIS -- the California Irrigation Management Information System) to calculate how much to irrigate given evapotranspiration-- super efficient use of water!

Jay Lund: Everyone thinks the solution to drought is to build reservoirs. But it's not Field of Dreams-- build a basin and it will fill with water-- we are losing snowmelt as a source, we shouldn't invest in new infrastructure that is dependent on historical conditions. Repurpose old, smaller reservoirs? Manage groundwater better!

Cliff Lee: The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is potentially going to be rendered irrelevant by climate change (which will make many historic salmon streams too shallow/warm for spawning--> some populations are doomed, ESA can't save them) 

Lester Snow: GROUNDWATER GROUNDWATER GROUNDWATER; innovation; diversification; learn to manage resources as well as we manage crises (reacting to symptoms, not problem); need to reach out to find new leadership among Latinos, Millennials-- demographic shift is salient to water planning

Desalination-- Carlsbad Project-- desal is either a totally reasonable, do-able thing or the devil's work, bound to poison the ocean at brine discharge site and tie ratepayers to high-priced, energy-intensive water

Fresh water flow into the San Francisco Bay Delta is either critical to estuary health or not, apparently evidence is disputed; a good source on the Delta is Aquafornia

That's all, pray for rain

News from the Human Rights/Climate Change Nexus: +Heat = +Native Cultural Losses, +Conflict

The Dec. 18, 2013, Al-Jazeera article "How climate change destroys human rights" by Jon Letman offers an interesting sampler plate of five recent studies and organizing efforts to illustrate the human rights/climate change nexus.

ARCTIC LOSS, NATIVE CULTURAL LOSSES

The Letman article was brought to my attention by a friend and former colleague, now at Tebtebba, because another friend and former colleague, Rodion Syulandziga from the Russian indigenous rights network RAIPON, contributed to it. (Click here for info on RAIPON in English, from the Arctic Council's website.)

Rodion points out to Letman that "[i]ncreasingly unpredictable weather and unreliable sea ice directly impacts animal migration, which affects subsistence hunting for traditional food sources like reindeer and sea mammals. Warmer temperatures ... also hasten the introduction of plant and animal diseases as southern species of fish and birds move north." And, "[i]n addition to a warming Arctic, Russia’s indigenous peoples also face the rush to exploit vast energy and mineral resources. Oil, gas, coal, nickel, iron ore, platinum and other minerals draw multi-national corporations to Russia’s most remote regions where highly restricted access makes monitoring health and safety practices, damage and pollution mitigation and other conditions difficult or impossible."

Rodion also touches on how RAIPON is being subjected to increasing threats from the Russian government. In 2012-2013 this involved using technicalities of the law to suspend the group's activities during a critical period of time (when a national RAIPON gathering was supposed to happen), ordering the arrest of a staff member on specious grounds when he was abroad at a conference, and using political pressure to increase the influence of Kremlin-friendly indigenous representatives in the organization. Indigenous communities whose cultures are predicated on the existence of permafrost and sea ice are existentially threatened by climate change, and in Russia, also by the government's repression of civil society.

MORE HEAT, MORE CONFLICT

I see another familiar reference in this article-- a link to a study of how heat correlates with aggression in Kenya, led by Solomon Hsiang, now a professor at UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy, my alma mater. He did the study with Ted Miguel of the UC Berkeley-based Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), which analyzes the impact of development projects, and Marshall Burke, also at UC Berkeley (in Ag and Resource Economics). The study supports the idea demonstrated in other studies "that climatic events which produce temporary warming are associated with a temporary increase in violent intergroup conflict..." (p. 2). Sol Hsiang has a fascinating body of work on the social implications of climate threats.

• See his personal website's list of publications
• See his list of publications and press coverage of his research at GSPP's website

Some highlights of Sol's work:

• Click here for a six and a half-minute interview where he summarizes some of his findings on heat's correlation with aggression for the PBS Newshour from August 2013.

• Read Climate, conflict, and social stability:what does the evidence say? - a compelling meta-analysis of 50 studies published in 2013 with M. Burke, which finds a possible "causal association between climatological changes and various conflict outcomes..." 

Other studies/articles referenced in the Letman article:

• The projected timing of climate departure from recent variability (Mora et al., October 2013, Nature) - showing how parts of the tropics may experience unprecedented climates within the next 10 years, and how, if GHG emissions aren't brought under control, the "average" place on Earth will experience a radically different climate within the next 35 years.
• A 2012 Human Rights Watch publication on the health impacts of Bangladesh's tanneries, in part authored by Richard Pearshouse, an HRW researcher interviewed by Letman; and a 2009 article on Bangladesh's climate refugees (L. Friedman, Scientific American)

Losing your glacier? Make your own!

This is amazing. Do-it-yourself glaciers: The iceman cometh: If climate change takes your local glacier away, why not build another? (July 13, 2013, the Economist)

This doesn't solve every problem related to the loss of the glaciers, but it gets at one aspect that hurts a vulnerable population-- farmers who depend on snowmelt to irrigate crops in high altitude (short-growing-season) climates.

"[S]ome farms are better-off now than they used to be in the days before the natural glaciers vanished."

Hats off.

Even hardy blue oaks have their limits- KQED coverage of Bay Area climate change

Yesterday KQED's Lauren Sommer aired this 5 min. piece about SF Bay Area climate change impacts, focusing on the plight of the blue oaks of Mount Hamilton and other California live oak species featuring the work of some of my colleague adaptation experts at the Nature Conservancy (TNC), UC Berkeley, and the Pepperwood Preserve in Sonoma County. Follow that link for maps and other links.

"It could be these oaks are already living at their limit, says [TNC's] Sasha Gennet."

Talking to David Ackerly (UCB) and Pepperwood's Lisa Micheli, the reporter comments: "Think of it as an acorn-by-acorn race with climate change."

System Change not Climate Change- Report-back on the "Climate Space" at the WSF

On May 16, 2013, I had the opportunity to hear two respected leaders in the climate and social justice movements report back on the the California contingent's experience at the World Social Forum, where the U.S. contingent (the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance) hosted the WSF's first "Climate Space."

Maria Poblet, the Executive Director of Causa Justa::Just Cause (CJJC), and Miya Yoshitani, Associate Director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), both based in my home city of Oakland, CA, talked about their experience in Tunisia. They also asked the audience (which was a packed room, a mix of old and young, speaking Spanish, Chinese, and I think Tagolog, with three simultaneous translators working at the back of the room) what was the root of climate change. People offered science (the greenhouse effect), mistaken science (the ozone layer), and economics (capitalism). We ate take-out Chinese food and shared in some of the contingent's favorite photos, memories, and songs from their week in Tunisia. They closed out the report-back by leading us in some of their favorite chants, including: 

No war! No warming! Build the people's economy!

In the slide show of photos from the trip, I noticed these signs:

Another World is Possible
REDD+ = Colonialism
NO-REDD IN AFRICA NETWORK
System Change not Climate Change

Climate change was really and truly on the agenda at the Forum. Read the Climate Space declaration produced by its 19 international facilitating organizations at the 2013 WSF. It reads, in part:

We need a new system that seeks harmony between humans and nature and not an endless growth model that the capitalist system promotes in order to make more and more profit. Mother Earth and her natural resources cannot sustain the consumption and production needs of this modern industrialized society. 

To get a flavor for the report-back, read Revolution Under Construction, Maria's post for the blog Organizing Upgrade on the WSF experience. It's not about the Climate Space, but about the particular moment in Tunisia of the WSF, in terms of political change. With a great photo gallery.

Read Miya's blog post about the 2013 WSF: Confessions of a climate denier in Tunisia, about how she came to link the environmental justice movement with the work of  "stopping the world from mass suicide by carbon." She writes:

The point is, that the climate justice fight here in the US and around the world is not just a fight against the ecological crisis of all time, it is the fight for a new economy, a new energy system, a new democracy, a new relationship to the planet and to each other, for land, water, and food sovereignty, for indigenous rights, for human rights and dignity for all people. When climate justice wins we win the world that we want.

We can’t sit this one out not because we have too much to lose, but because we have too much to gain.

Amen.

Sub-Saharan Africa Puts up a Great Green Wall - Viva la Grande Muraille Verte!

This is just amazing: The Great Green Wall of Africa (D. Lieber, Planetsave.com/ Importantmedia.org, Apr. 21, 2013)

The main website for the project is in French with auto-translations to English and Arabic via Google Translate (so, not quite translated). The auto-translate English version of the project's vision describes the two stages of the project:

The major targets of the relevant indicators are:

 (i) in 2020-2025, halting the advance of desertification, restore and enhance the potential of arid and semi-arid and install the conditions for sustainable development and 

(ii ) term, [original: à terme,] achieve the transformation of vast arid Sahel real rural production centers and Sustainable Development (SDPRP) vectors powerful incentive to return to the land forces.

Indeed! May we return to the land forces! Viva la Grande Muraille Verte! Such an inspiring project.