Tag Archives: Climate Change

By: Lykke E. Andersen*

To celebrate Earth Day 2017, which is tomorrow, I would like to highlight the important findings of a paper by Campbell et al. published earlier this month in Nature (1). The paper documents, through the analysis of air trapped in ice from Antarctica, that the growth of global terrestrial gross primary production (GPP) –the amount of carbon dioxide that is ‘fixed’ into organic material through photosynthesis– is larger now than it has been at any time during the last 54,000 years. This basically means that the planet is greener and nature is thriving more now than at any time during human history, despite all the havoc we humans are wreaking everywhere.

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By: Lykke E. Andersen*

Bernard Francou, a famous glaciologist from the IRD in France, today made a very interesting presentation in La Paz about the loss of tropical glaciers around the World. It was only one of many interesting presentations made at the Climate Change Conference that is taking place these days, but it was so interesting indeed, that it inspired me to write my second blog in one day.

Francou documented the decrease in tropical glacier mass starting roughly in 1976 for the glaciers in the Andes and the Rocky Mountains and about a decade later for most other tropical glaciers in the World. Although tropical glaciers contain only a tiny part of all the ice on the planet, their melting currently contributes to about 26% of global sea level rise.

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By: Lykke E. Andersen*

There is little doubt that human greenhouse gas emissions, mainly arising from the burning of fossil fuels and forests, are warming the planet. The physical properties of CO₂ in the atmosphere imply that a doubling of CO₂ concentrations from the current 400 parts per million (ppm) to 800 ppm would directly cause an increase in the average global temperature of about 1°C, and with that increase in temperatures we would also experience an increase in global precipitation. That much we know with a high degree of certainty.

Anything beyond that, however, is highly uncertain. While most climate models incorporate positive feedback effects that amplify the initial direct warming effect several times, historical data suggests that there are important negative feedbacks that help stabilize global temperatures. Most importantly, Earth’s temperature has oscillated within a relatively narrow band for hundreds of millions of years despite much higher and much lower CO₂ concentrations in the past (see Figures 1 and 2). In addition, during the last couple of decades, global temperatures have not increased nearly as much as suggested by the models with strong positive feedbacks. Thus, we should have only low confidence in our knowledge about feedback effects and temperature increases beyond 1°C.

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Reports by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the World Bank show that communities across South America are already feeling the impact of climate change today—and that these are likely to intensify in the future. According to the IPCC, the economies of most Latin American countries depend on agriculture, which means that climatic change and extreme weather events that affect farming also pose a tangible threat to economic prosperity and developmental goals in the region. A 2012 World Bank Report even predicts that South America will be one of the regions hit hardest if temperatures rose by more than the internationally recognised 2°C target. This post will highlight five of the central ways in which South Americans are experiencing the effects of climate change:

1. Temperature: In South America, climate change has led to a variety of temperature changes. While the widely-cited 2007 IPCC report observed an overall 1°C increase in temperature across South America over the past decade, there has been significant regional variation, leading to diverse effects. For instance, Bolivia’s highlands have actually cooled by 1°C over the past five decades, while there is some evidence for rising temperatures in the lowlands. In a 2009 World Bank Report, Drs. Lykke Andersen and Dorte Verner show that the contradictory trends of average temperatures have led to uneven social and economic effects of climate change in Bolivia. They estimate that the cooling experienced in the country’s highlands has reduced income in these areas by about 2–3 percent. In the country’s wealthier lowlands, no such negative trends were observed. This means that in Bolivia changes in temperature affect the population of the comparatively poor highlands disproportionately, compared to the wealthier lowland of the country. Read More »

If climate change seemed far away, here are three reasons to reconsider. From basic daily staples to our favourite morning drink, climate change is already affecting crops in South America. The Inter-American Development Bank estimates that Latin America and the Caribbean contribute 11 percent of the value of world food production, making shifts in the region’s agricultural production relevant to global, as well as regional, food security.

1. Potato: According to the International Potato Centre (CIP), the potato is the third most widely consumed food crop in the world, with annual production approaching 300 million tons. According to a 2012 report by the 8th World Potato Congress, South American potato production reached slightly over 14 million tons in 2010. However, production in South America has come under climate-change induced stress. In 2012, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) reported that potato production in the Andes is increasingly threatened by late blight disease, which caused the severe Irish potato famine in the 1850s. The Integrated Pest Management Program at Cornell University outlines the course of the disease: Late blight is particularly severe under warm, humid conditions. it is triggered by the ‘oomycete pathogen’, which is a microorganism that produces millions of spores from infected plants. These survive from one season to the next in infected potatoes and travel through the air causing new infections if the weather is sufficiently wet. Infected potatoes develop dark lesions on the surface and – in many cases – rot from the inside. Read More »

Leelo en español AQUÍ 

By Tracey Li

This month saw the release of INESAD’s SimPachamama game. This is an educational simulation game, designed to teach the user about the deforestation and human wellbeing challenges associated with rural development in Bolivian forest communities. Being freely available online, it can be accessed and played by a large number of people.

However, more traditional ‘low-tech’, face-to-face games can also have a powerful reach: in recent years, many large non-government organizations (NGOs) such as the Red Cross have co-designed multiple participatory games. Facilitators from these organizations then take the games to several countries over the world, where they are used as educational and/or training tools in workshops. Read More »

BOOK REVIEW

Upsetting the Offset: The Political Economy of Carbon Markets

Mayfly Books.

By Ioulia Fenton

Let’s say you live in a fairly rich country and you are actually quite well off. You use lots of paper in your job, drive a car, heat and air-condition your house, and regularly fly for work, vacation, and to see your family in another country. You know that this causes tons of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to be released into the atmosphere, which is driving climate change, and that if everyone in the world had your kind of a lifestyle then we’d need five planets, not one, to survive. So you decide that you want to do something about it. Even though you have started to recycle, have put energy saving light bulbs in your house, bought a Prius, and always carry your water bottle and coffee thermos flask, somehow you feel that this is not enough: the Carbon Footprint Calculator still tells you that your kind of life needs more than four planets. Read More »

Léelo en español aquí 

BOOK REVIEW

Upsetting the Offset: The Political Economy of Carbon Markets

Mayfly Books.

By Ioulia Fenton

Let’s say you live in a fairly rich country and you are actually quite well off. You use lots of paper in your job, drive a car, heat and air-condition your house, and regularly fly for work, vacation, and to see your family in another country. You know that this causes tons of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to be released into the atmosphere, which is driving climate change, and that if everyone in the world had your kind of a lifestyle then we’d need five planets, not one, to survive. So you decide that you want to do something about it. Even though you have started to recycle, have put energy saving light bulbs in your house, bought a Prius, and always carry your water bottle and coffee thermos flask, somehow you feel that this is not enough: the Carbon Footprint Calculator still tells you that your kind of life needs more than four planets. Read More »

Yoram Bauman is what happens when economics meets comedy. Development Roast caught up with the friendly, engaging, and enthusiastic Stand-Up Economist himself to find out more about the latest out-of-the-box projects from the man who makes economics fun.

Blending the academic expertise of an environmental economist at the University of Washington (UW) with the sense of humor and charisma of a stand-up comedian, Bauman creates entertaining and informative comedy shows, with an economics theme, that he takes to audiences around the world. He is one of the authors of The Cartoon Introduction to Economics books, available in two volumes, which were reviewed by Development Roast last year. Volume One, released in 2010, covered microeconomics, and following its success the authors wrote and released Volume Two: Macroeconomics, in 2012. Due to their popularity, these books have now been published in several languages including Italian and Japanese, and will shortly be available in Spanish (see below for a sneak preview). Read More »

Welcome to the July 2013 edition of Bolivia Climate Change Monthly where you will find the latest research, policy, donor activity, and news related to climate change in Bolivia*.

A Measurement of the Carbon Sequestration Potential of Guadua Angustifolia in the Carrasco National Park, Bolivia by Ricardo A. Rojas Quiroga, Tracey Li, Gonzalo Lora, and Lykke E. Andersen published by the Institute for Advanced Development Studies (INESAD).

Abstract: The carbon sequestration potential of an unmanaged and previously unstudied Guadua angustifolia bamboo forest in the Carrasco National Park of Bolivia has been studied, by estimating the total aboveground biomass contained in the forest. It was found that the aboveground biomass consisting of stems, branches, and foliage, contains a total of 200 tons per hectare, leading to an estimated 100 tons of carbon being stored per hectare aboveground, which is comparable to some species of tree such as the Chinese Fir; this bamboo species therefore has the potential to play a significant role in the mitigation of climate change. The relation between the biomass, M, of each component (stems, branches, and foliage) and the diameter, d, of the plant was also studied, by fitting allometric equations of the form M = αdβ. It was found that all components fit this power law relation very well (R2 > 0.7), particularly the stems (R2 > 0.8) and branches (R2 > 0.9) for which the relation is found to be almost linear. Read More »