More studies showing species having unexpected responses to climate change

UC Berkeley's Grinnell Resurvey Project has generated data which allows researchers to assert some unexpected truths about species' responses to climate change.

The general wisdom is that species will move upslope/north to retreat from warming conditions. But that isn't how some species are responding. Two new studies -- "The push and pull of climate change causes heterogeneous shifts in avian elevational range" (Tingley, Koo, Moritz, Rush, and Beissinger) published Aug. 6, 2012, in Global Change Biology, and "Anthropogenic refugia ameliorate the severe climate-related decline of a montane mammal along its trailing edge" (Morelli, Smith, Kastely, Mastroserio, Moritz, and Beissinger) from Aug. 15, 2012, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B -- look at this puzzle. The first study found as many as 25% of species have shifted in ways not predicted, considering temperature changes. Lead author Morgan Tingley says, "We find that precipitation changes can have a major, opposing influence to temperature in a species’ range shift." The second study looks at Belding's ground squirrel, an animal perceived to be relatively common in the Sierras which has apparently disappeared from 42% of the places where it was recorded in the early 1900s by the original Grinnell survey. Local extinctions appeared more likely where winters are warmer and rain more frequent. UC Berkeley's Toni Morelli elaborates, "[T]he rate of decline is much greater than that seen in the same region for the pika, a small mountain-dwelling cousin of the rabbit that has become the poster child for the effects of climate warming in the contiguous United States."

Eerily, Tingley pointed out in this Aug. 15 article announcing the two studies' release, "More worrisome are the species that have not shifted. How are they adapting? Are they moving, but we just can’t detect it? Or are they slowly declining as environmental conditions gradually become less ideal where they live?"

Meanwhile, the ground squirrel seems to be doing particularly well in places modified by humans-- artificial oases like Mono Lake County Park. In the end, human land management choices might play a bigger role in the survival of a species than global changes in temperature or rain. It should make our state and local governments reconsider the importance of preserving open space-- you never know what species is making its last stand against climate change there.

When the Climate Tells You It's Time to Go

In "Addressing Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific," an 80-page report released March 13, 2012, by the Asian Development Bank, researchers attempt to tease out climate change factors from the many other factors driving migration and displacement in the region expected to sustain the worst population impacts from climate change.

[I]t [is] hard to predict with any degree of certainty the number of people who will be displaced by climate change. However, it is possible to identify the processes by which these migrations will occur, as well as the places where they are most likely to happen. This is what this report aims to do, focusing on extreme weather events, water stress and land degradation, and sea-level rise.

Based on one report I read from the International Organization on Migration (Migration and Climate Change, from Oli Brown, 2008), those who STAY worry me more than those who GO. The ADB report addresses this in their chapter "Strengthening Adaptation Through Migration" (from page 46):

At the same time that an increasing number of populations find themselves forced to move because of climate change, significant numbers of populations often find themselves forced to stay. Climate change could indeed prevent the most vulnerable from migrating, as their resources will be reduced [...]. 

I like that this report (a) doesn't raise alarms about invading hoards of poor climate migrants sweeping up on rich countries' shores (which Brown calls out as a myth in his 2008 report) and (b) points to the need to anticipate and plan for wise migration rather than waiting for it to happen on its own, possibly in ways that leave people in greater danger.

Basically, where Asian Pacific countries are concerned, good migration policies make good neighbors! This has always been true, but the pressure is on to strengthen these policies now. The report ends on this note:

Governments at all levels, regional bodies, and international organizations have a responsibility to act with urgency on this issue. They have before them an opportunity to shape a future of human mobility that promotes better, more inclusive living conditions for the people of the world’s most populous region. 

You can't force a person to move out of harm's way, but you can-- and governments must-- create the conditions that allow for safe passage to a better place when the climate tells you it's time to go.

"Green Helmets" Get a Red Light at the UN Security Council

Today's New York Times reports that a special meeting at the UN Security Council did not result in agreement on action to address security threats caused by climate change. (The article was published online yesterday - U.N. Deadlock on Addressing Climate Shift by N. MacFarquhar, July 20, 2011)

The Guardian's advance coverage of the meeting (UN security council to consider climate change peacekeeping, S. Goldenberg, July 20, 2011) describes the backdrop for the meeting as discussions proposing introduction of "green helmets – which could step into conflicts caused by shrinking resources."

The idea of climate change as a threat to the security of sovereign states is not at all new. The U.S. National Intelligence Council issued an alert back in 2000 about how infectious disease, propelled in new ways by climate change, threatens U.S. security (The Global Infectious Disease Threat and Its Implications for the United States) - though soon after eclipsed by more immediate security threats in 2001.

The idea of the UN acting to address climate change as a global security threat-- that is relatively new. Russia, China, developing nations and climate change denialists argued against this action. The NYT article quotes a government representative of China, Wang Min: "The Security Council does not have the expertise in climate change and does not have the necessary means and resources." He has a point.

The other problem I see with a "green helmet" campaign- what threshold event would trigger deployment? Where does the line between one human-generated crisis and another get drawn? Would the Security Council deploy the theoretical green helmets to evacuate a drowning island nation, where the crisis is clearly caused by climate-driven sea level rise, but perhaps not deploy them to help alleviate the famine in Somalia, where climate change plays a role but less definitively so?

I can't help think about Cyclone Nargis, which devastated Burma/Myanmar right as I was transitioning from a study of the human rights impacts of sanctions on that country to a study of the concept of human security. I was reading strong statements from advocates working within the UN to create a team that would deploy in "human security" crises, as in, crises exactly like Cyclone Nargis, where a population was under massive threat and the government was unequipped (and in this case just reluctant) to help its own people. In that storm in 2008, about 138,000 people died, and the UN stood by, talking about intervention - but not intervening - to help a people devastated by violent weather of the sort we will see more often under climate change.

I presume the "green helmet" promoters are the same people who make the human security argument at the UN (that the UN should intervene if a government can't protect its own people against threats to individual security, such as organized crime, domestic violence, droughts and violent weather, etc., differentiated from national security threats, such as international terrorism, which the military addresses).

I wish it were so that the UN could ever be that organized and well-resourced to take into account climate change threats to security. The reality is that there will be climate refugees, they will look like economic refugees and will be treated as such (badly), and-- like those lost in Cyclone Nargis, living under military dictatorship-- many more will not be able to escape their life-threatening climatic conditions.

Read more about what the International Organization for Migration paper has to say about these climate refugees:
Brown, O. (2008). Migration and Climate Change. Geneva: International Organization for Migration.

Here's a newer IOM report (2011): Climate change, migration and critical international security
considerations.