Welcome to the Kendall Foundation’s Conservation and Climate Change Clearinghouse. We are assembling this website as a service to the growing community of individuals who are working to protect the Earth’s land and biodiversity from the increasing anthropogenic effects of climate change. To read more about the Clearinghouse, click here.
IUCN Congress focuses on climate change and adaptation
Last week, the World Conservation Union hosted its quadrennial Congress in Barcelona, Spain, hosting approximately 8000 conservationists and government representatives from around the world. The first week of the event was devoted to the Forum, essentially a conference featuring over 800 sessions. Over a hundred of these directly related to one of the Forum’s three principal themes: “A new climate for change” (or “C4C”; click here for a pdf overview of the stream). More from the Congress will be forthcoming on the Clearinghouse.
1st meeting of Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Biodiversity and Climate Change
The Conference of the Parties (COP) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has established an Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group (AHTEG) on Biodiversity and Climate Change. The first meeting of the group will take place in London from 17-21 November 2008. Background on the AHTEG’s mission can be found in a recently completed “online dialogue” that took place from 13-17 October 2008. (Note that this AHTEG follows on the establishment of previous AHTEGs on the same topic. In 2003 an AHTEG on Biological Diversity and Climate Change produced the report Interlinkages between Biological Diversity and Climate Change, while in 2006 an AHTEG on on Biological Diversity and Adaptation to Climate Change produced a report on Guidance for promoting synergy among activities addressing biological diversity, desertification, land degradation and climate change.)
Foundation report on “wildlife adaptation to climate change”
The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has released a “white paper” entitled Wildlife Adaptation to Climate Change: Field Review. Intended to help DDCF devise a grantmaking strategy for wildlife, adaptation, and climate change, the report offers both a concise overview of the issues at hand as well as a final section focusing on “opportunity areas.” These latter consist of a number of strategies: rethinking the problem, forecasting and advance knowledge, developing and refine tools, implementation and testing, and investing in leadership. The report concludes with a number of useful summary slides that capture critical perspectives on the nexus between wildlife conservation and climate change.
Three books from Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press has released three relevant books on conservation & climate change. Last year, Jonathan Cowie produced Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects. This volume provides a thorough treatment of the topic, with coverage ranging from “early biology and climate of the Hadean and Archeaen eons” to “the Kyoto Protocol.” For details on the book, see this extensive online summary, a review by Camille Parmesan, and the Google Books version. (Cowie is the author of the 1998 book: Climate and Human Change: Disaster or Opportunity?) This year, CUP released two books by Catherine Gautier of UC-Santa Barbara. One is an edited volume entitled Facing Climate Change Together, which “brings together scientists from the US and Europe to review the state-of-the-art in climate change science.” Her authored book is entitled Oil, Water, and Climate: An Introduction, which examines the complex interweaving of the three topics at hand.
Cultural Survival Quarterly on climate change & indigenous people
The August 2008 issue of Cultural Survival Quarterly features a number of stories on climate change and indigenous people. An introductory overview to the issue notes that: “Unfortunately, the same closeness to the land that has given indigenous peoples early warning about global warming also means that they suffer the consequences of it to a far greater degree than others.” Other articles cover the relationship between indigenous peoples and wind energy, sea level inundation, biofuels, representation in international fora, and polar bears. The latter article makes the case that “the science brought by the Fish and Wildlife representatives to justify listing the polar bear as threatened looked great on paper, but was incomplete—even to other scientists—and ignored Iñupiat traditional knowledge.”
Defenders of Wildlife releases series on “Navigating the Arctic Meltdown”
Defenders has compiled a series of concise 4-page reports focusing on ten species that are or will be affected by climate change in the Arctic: polar bear, ivory gull, wolverine, Arctic loon, Arctic cod, Kittlitz’s murrelets, caribou, orange-crowned warbler, walrus, and spectacled eider.
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