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Decision-makers face a particular challenge in planning for climate adaptation. The complexity of climate change's likely impacts, such as increased flooding, has widened the scope of information necessary to take action. This is particularly the case in valuable low-lying coastal regions, which host many competing interests, and where there is a growing need to draw from varied fields in the risk-based management of flooding. The rising scrutiny over science's ability to match expectations of policy actors has called for the integration of stakeholder and scientific knowledge domains. Focusing on the Broads — the United Kingdom's largest protected wetland — this study looked to assess future flood risk and consider potential adaptation responses in a collaborative approach. Interviews and surveys with local stakeholders accompanied the development of a hydraulic model in an iterative participatory design, centred on a scientist-stakeholder workshop. Knowledge and perspectives were shared on processes driving risk in the Broads, as well as on the implications of adaptation measures, allowing for their prioritisation. The research outcomes highlight not only the challenges that scientist-stakeholder integrated assessments of future flood risk face, but also their potential to lead to the production of useful information for decision-making.

Transboundary water resources management in the Equatorial Nile Basin (EQNB) is a politically contested issue. There is a growing body of literature examining water-related discourses which identifies the ability of powerful actors and institutions to influence policy. Concern about the effects of future climate change has featured strongly in research on the Nile River for several decades. It is therefore timely to consider whether and how these concerns are reflected in regional policy documents and policy discourse. This study analyzes discourse framings of water resources management and climate change in policy documents (27, published between 2001 and 2013) and as elicited in interviews (38) with water managers in the EQNB. Three main discursive framings are identified which are present in the discourses on both subjects: a problem-oriented environmental risk frame and two solution-oriented frames, on governance and infrastructure development. Climate change discourse only emerges as a common topic around 2007. The framings found in the water resources management discourse and the climate change discourse are almost identical, suggesting that discursive framings were adopted from the former for use in the latter. We infer that the climate change discourse may have offered a less politically sensitive route to circumvent political sensitivities around water allocation and distribution between riparian countries in the EQNB. However, the climate change discourse does not offer a lasting solution to the more fundamental political dispute over water allocation. Moreover, in cases where the climate change discourse is subsumed within a water resources management discourse, there are dangers that it will not fully address the needs of effective adaptation.

Wind energy has been the fastest growing renewable energy technology for more than a decade. However, the visual impacts of wind farms are still one of the most controversial effects of wind energy development. Photomontage visualisations are frequently used in Visual Impact Assessments 2 (VIA) to give a sense of scale of the proposed development. Yet visualisations in VIAs are often perceived to underestimate the scale and magnitude of the visual impact of wind turbines. The aim of this multiphase mixed methods study is to explore the perceived accuracy of images that represent the visual impacts of both onshore and offshore wind farms. Field visits and data from a public survey are used to assess the accuracy of visualisations and to examine the effect of camera lens focal length on perception of scale of wind turbines. Results show that panoramic photomontages are perceived as the least accurate, while images taken at 75 mm focal length in full frame format are perceived as the most accurate form of representation of the scale and visual impact of wind turbines. These findings imply that the panoramic visualisation technique, which has been used for decades to predict the scale of wind turbines in VIAs, is ineffective in predicting accurately the visual impact of wind farms, and an alternative predictive technique is needed. For wind farm visualisations the use of 75 mm full frame image format is recommended in order to improve the accuracy, enable better informed decision making and avoid the loss of credibility of visualisations and VIAs.

Policy agendas increasingly respond to the perceived security threats of climate change, not least via its effects on water. Yet, solid links between climate, water, conflict and security have seldom been substantiated empirically. Drawing from the conceptual framework and empirical results of the EC-funded research project CLICO (‘Climate Change, Hydro-Conflict and Human Security’) which is presented in this Special Issue, this opening article looks at the conditions that shape conflict and insecurity, with a focus on the role of adaptation policies. We find three main sources of human insecurity: first, democratic deficits, which are more influential than hydro-climatic stresses; second, mal-adaptations, i.e. adaptations that have adverse effects for the security of some groups; and third, structural violence, often related to economic and state development. There is a systemic contradiction insofar as the pursuit of adaptation through state-led economic growth projects ends up producing new insecurities for parts of the population. Adaptation to hydro-climatic change, therefore, is likely to be a contested and painful process. Research on security and climate change must move beyond narrow investigations of conflict and study the links between structural violence and human insecurity, in particular the conditions and processes that reduce the options available to deal with potential insecurities.

Diversity of both social networks and livelihood sources plays a central role in determining the sustainability of natural resource use and resilience of social–ecological systems, not least in resource-dependent economies. Yet the types of social capital and characteristics of diversity are not well understood. Here we examine social capital and livelihood diversification strategies in dynamic lakeshore social–ecological systems in Uganda adapting to climate variability and change. Water and land use data are used to explain lake system variations and lakeshore people's livelihood responses in terms of adaptive cycles and examine how system resilience changes over time in response to climatic and other stresses. Interview and household survey data are used to explain household adaptations to climate variability based on livelihood diversification and social capital and to determine which adaptations were dominant during different stages of adaptive cycles. Results show that households adapt to climate va...

The Pongola River Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (PRESPA) project quantified the economic benefits accuring to different livelihood sectors from the water resources of the Pongola floodplain, South Africa. The floodplain carries a diverse economy and ecology which is supported by flood events that once occured naturally but are now regulated by an upstream dam. PRESPA modelled the eco-hydrology which underpins various ecosystem services to determine how this might be managed to alleviate poverty. A model was used to quantify the economic value of the available water, especially the value accruing to the poor. This model linked to three development scenarios to explore trade-offs and outcomes of (1) a status quo, ‘unstructured’ economy; (2) a structured diverse economy; and (3) a structured ‘single sector’ agricultural economy. This model gives decision makers a measure of where water is best used in terms of poverty alleviation and enables them to examine future economic and ecosystem trajecto...

This article examines whether some response strategies to climate variability and change have the potential to undermine long-term resilience of social–ecological systems. We define the parameters of a resilience approach, suggesting that resilience is characterized by the ability to absorb perturbations without changing overall system function, the ability to adapt within the resources of the system itself, and the ability to learn, innovate, and change. We evaluate nine current regional climate change policy responses and examine governance, sensitivity to feedbacks, and problem framing to evaluate impacts on characteristics of a resilient system. We find that some responses, such as the increase in harvest rates to deal with pine beetle infestations in Canada and expansion of biofuels globally, have the potential to undermine long-term resilience of resource systems. Other responses, such as decentralized water planning in Brazil and tropical storm disaster management in Caribbean islands, have the potential to increase long-term resilience. We argue that there are multiple sources of resilience in most systems and hence policy should identify such sources and strengthen capacities to adapt and learn.  2011

This paper reviews current knowledge of the potential impacts of climate change on water resources in Africa and the possible limits, barriers or opportunities for adaptation to climate change in internationally-shared river basins. Africa faces significant challenges to water resources management in the form of high variability and regional scarcity, set within the context of generally weak institutional capacity. Management is further challenged by the transboundary nature of many of its river basins. Climate change, despite uncertainty about the detail of its impacts on water resources, is likely to exacerbate many of these challenges. River basins, and the riparian states that share them, differ in their capacities to adapt. Without appropriate cooperation adaptation may be limited and uneven. Further research to examine the factors and processes that are important for cooperation to lead to positive adaptation outcomes and the increased adaptive capacity of water management institutions is s...

While there is a recognised need to adapt to changing climatic conditions, there is an emerging discourse of limits to such adaptation. Limits are traditionally analysed as a set of immutable thresholds in biological, economic or technological parameters. This paper contends that limits to adaptation are endogenous to society and hence contingent on ethics, knowledge, attitudes to risk and culture. We review insights from history, sociology and psychology of risk, economics and political science to develop four propositions concerning limits to adaptation. First, any limits to adaptation depend on the ultimate goals of adaptation underpinned by diverse values. Second, adaptation need not be limited by uncertainty around future foresight of risk. Third, social and individual factors limit adaptation action. Fourth, systematic undervaluation of loss of places and culture disguises real, experienced but subjective limits to adaptation. We conclude that these issues of values and ethics, risk, knowledge and culture construct societal limits to adaptation, but that these limits are mutable.

This note examines the effects of climate variability on natural–resources management in East Africa. The bimodal rainfall regime in much of East Africa brings rainy seasons from March to May and October to December with greater interannual variability from October to December. We discuss the impacts of rainfall extremes in 1961 and 1997 and explore three examples of natural–resources management in the context of rainfall variability: inland fisheries in East and southern Africa; fluctuations in the level of Lake Victoria; and lake–shore communities around Lake Kyoga in Uganda. The discussion reflects the complexity of linkages between climate, environment and society in the region and highlights implications for natural–resources management. These range from benefits due to improved seasonal rainfall forecasting to reduce the damage of extremes, to improved understanding of existing climate–society interactions to provide insights into the region's vulnerability and adaptive capacity in relation to future climate change.