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The effect of climate change on food and water sustainability is an alarming issue worldwide. Food remains found in ancient settlements and mortuary contexts as is the case in ancient Egypt not only embody a list of plant taxa that shaped the people’s diet and cultural foodways but also encode the social and climatic history of Egypt and the Nile River, which is relevant to current issues relating to the anthropogenic impact of climate change and the impact of the damming of rivers on social structure and food and water supply. Food is more than a biological need that sustains our body; it is an active agent in the creation of social structure, economy, personal identity, and cross-cultural relationships. Contextualized analysis of food remains from the archaeological record has served as a powerful lens for archaeologists, anthropologists, and social historians to understand social relations, cultural interactions, and the engendered experiences of individuals in the past. The archaeological record from ancient Egypt has yielded an exceptionally rich array of organic food remains. Indeed, it was the study of botanical materials from Egypt that spearheaded the field of archaeobotany and allowed Willard Libby to invent carbon dating, using seeds from Djeser’s pyramid housed in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, eventually winning him the Nobel Prize for his contribution in archaeology, geology and other branches of science. In this dissertation, I continue this interdisciplinary cross-link between life sciences and the humanities by proposing interdisciplinary analyses to study ancient foodways, and ultimately demonstrate the various ways in which ancient botanical remains can expand our knowledge of ancient Egyptian society in terms of social structure, temporal and regional cultural variation, cross-regional interactions, and cultural relationships, especially in non-elite contexts. The interpretations of the results are carried out within the theoretical frameworks of postcolonial and indigenous archaeologies to transcend, and push the field of Egyptology beyond colonial and oriental origins. Scientific analysis including stable isotope biogeochemistry and ecology applications on well-dated plant-food remains from the archaeological record serve as a scientific tool to record changes in climate, soil fertility, water cycle, and environmental conditions and how they are influenced by different water and agricultural management systems, providing invaluable deep-time data on the anthropogenic impact of climate change on social structure and foodways. First, I present the analysis of unpublished and reanalyzed botanical remains excavated by Reisner and Lythgoe in the early 1900s at the sites of Nag ed-Deir and Deir el-Ballas that are now housed at the Phoebe Hearst Museum at the University of California, Berkeley. This study presents the results of archaeobotanical and molecular isotopic analyses on plant remains from these sites. A nano-archaeological method was also developed as a non-destructive way to identify the ingredients of a beer mash, which was found to have rich fiber content in addition to residue of wild fruits, used as a natural sweetener. This finding is a region-specific recipe, which demonstrates that there was regional cultural variation in ancient Egyptian cuisine, and a difference in nutritional values of food between the past and present foodways in the Egyptian society. This research also presents the result of a long stable isotope experiment, building a baseline for the Nile River, and introduces a new isotopic method using non-exchangeable oxygen isotopes in fruits to identify the source region of plant-food remains, and the environmental and water conditions in which they grew. Such an approach enables us to reconstruct the elements of a social history of food, regional identities, and cross-cultural interactions, ultimately challenging the simplistic assumption that the ancient Egyptian diet was homogenous and predominantly composed of “bread and beer made of wheat and barley”. This is also the first stable isotopic study on archaeobotanical remains from Egypt corroborated with AMS carbon dating. This new combination of methods opens a new direction of research into the history of cultural interactions, providing critical implications for historians, bioarchaeologists, hydrologists, and climate change scientists. This research demonstrates that the analysis of plant food remains through interdisciplinary theories and methods not only contributes to social sciences but is also significant in capturing the environmental history of climatic changes in the past and of important relevance to life sciences as well. Contextualized comparison of these changes by contrasting ancient and modern plant species biodiversity and their isotopic composition can be a significant contribution to the next generation of scientists interested in reversing the impact of climate change on social structure and food and water sustainability.

The social dimension of sustainability has remained relatively underdefined, despite the efforts to specify and integrate this dimension into the general sustainability conversation of scholars and practitioners. This study aims to advance the conversation of social sustainability by examining past the multi-disciplinary literature and policy documents, as well as proposing a comprehensive conceptual model of social sustainability. We present a model with five dimensions: safety and security, equity, adaptability, social inclusion and cohesion, and quality of life. Through these dimensions, we propose social sustainability as a process that strives for effective management and allocation of social capital as a constitutive resource, and the confrontation of such controllable and uncontrollable risks as natural disasters and climate change. Our model was constructed with the purpose of providing scholars, policymakers, and practitioners with a comprehensive guideline to create social sustainability policy with human beings as the priority and cultural awareness as a grounding approach to initiating disaster-related and climate-change resilience.

The growing needs for fruit and vegetable production, together with the current climate change situation, make agriculture under plastic and greenhouse cooling indispensable. The most commonly used approaches are natural ventilation, shading and fan-pad systems. To foster a climate that allows forplant production under cover in extreme conditions, a novel fan-pad system has been devised that incorporates a pre-chamber and an air distribution system using air ducts running alongside the crop rows. The system has been tested in a greenhouse in Almeria (Spain) during the daytime in August, when the weather was hotter. Tests were also carried out in combination with natural ventilation and shading. The results indicate that the fan-pad system was efficient under extreme weather conditions and that it avoided creating horizontal thermal gradients. By determining the theoretical value of the air temperature leaving the pad, we were able to estimate the evaporative cooling potential of the fan-pad system as a function of the outdoor climate. Under extreme conditions, the fan-pad system&rsquo, s efficiency decreased along with increased air temperature and, above all, the increased relative humidity of the outside air. When the outdoor climate is warm and humid, natural ventilation may be the most efficient temperature control method. If the outdoor climate is warm and dry, the evaporative pad is more effective, especially when combined with shading.

This report presents the water and climate adaptation plan (WATCAP) developed for the Sava river basin (SRB) as result of a study undertaken by the World Bank. The WATCAP is intended to help to bridge the gap between the climate change predictions for the SRB and the decision makers in current and planned water management investment projects that will be affected by changing climate trends. The purpose of the report is to: (i) assist stakeholders and decision makers in assessing and planning for the risks generated by climate change impacts on water resources; (ii) provide a basis for future plans and studies of adaptation to climate change impacts in the SRB; and (iii) stimulate cooperation and debate across the basin toward additional and more detailed studies on climate change impacts at the regional and basin scale. The SRB is projected to experience small increases in water use by the public water supply, industry, energy, and agricultural and irrigation sectors. However, it is widely expected that new hydropower plants (HPPs) will be constructed in the near future, making energy (primarily through hydropower) the most important water use in the SRB.

The current report is a milestone for preparing the Romanian climate change (CC) action plan. A CC action plan should be based on the consolidation and coordination of both mitigation and adaptation measures and options. An important step in the elaboration of such a plan is the selection of appropriate actions. This selection requires the involvement of competent authorities in the key sectors, including, in the case of Romania, transport, energy, urban, water, agriculture, and forestry. The screening approaches are used to facilitate a transparent decision-making process in various fields such as environmental impacts, dangerous substances, environmental footprint of products, or CC actions. The report is structured as follows: section one gives introduction. Section two summarizes the usage of screening approaches in the field of CC and environment by different European Union (EU) member states and by the European Commission. Section three discusses the main categories of mitigation and adaption measures that can be included in a CC action plan. Section four presents the screening approach and process and describes several complementary tools (multi-criteria analysis, cost-benefit analysis (CBA), cost effectiveness analysis (CEA), modeling) that should be used when the screening approach is insufficient. Section five provides a conclusion and key recommendations.

Section one of the papers provides a brief overview of the relationship between the Sahel region of Africa and climate variability trends and predictions, ultimately posing the primary research question of the study: Is the Sahel region more likely to have a higher probability of conflict and migration as a result of climate change and climate change-related events? In section two, research and analysis aim to identify causal paths between climate change, migration, and conflict via structural equation modeling focusing on recent climate change trends in the Africa and Sahel regions, particularly changes in temperature and rainfall, and analyzing the consequences of this climate variabil¬ity, namely migration and conflict. Section three brings the aspect of youth into the analysis, arguing that youth living in the rural Sahel region will likely find themselves particularly vulnerable to in¬creased climate change and variability, which will have direct and indirect implications on the security and livelihoods of these individuals. The paper explores the past, current and predicted issues faced by rural Sahel youth affected by the impacts of climate change, such as chronic unemployment and engagement in the illicit sector due to rural to urban migration from regions affected by drought, desertification and resource scarcity. The final section of the paper offers policy recommen¬dations for addressing negative climate-change related consequences through two key paths of intervention: (i) climate change adaptation measures and (ii) conflict and crime prevention measures.

Agriculture is the economic foundation of many Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries, employing about 60 percent of the workforce and contributing an average of 30 percent of gross domestic product. Yet agricultural growth rates for SSA declined in the 2000 and food insecurity remains a concern, with malnourishment only dropping from 34 to 30 percent in two decades. Various projections suggest that food production must increase by 70-100 percent by 2050 to meet the demands of a world with 9 billion people and changing diets. In SSA this will require considerable investments in agricultural development-research, institutional support and infrastructural development. Ensuring food security under a changing climate is one of the major challenges of our era. African agriculture is highly vulnerable to climate change. Climate-smart agriculture seeks to increase productivity in an environmentally and socially sustainable way, strengthen farmers' resilience to climate change, and reduce agriculture's contribution to climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing carbon storage on farmland. Climate-smart agriculture includes proven practical techniques-such as mulching, intercropping, conservation agriculture, crop rotation, integrated crop-livestock management, agroforestry, improved grazing, and improved water management-but also innovative practices such as better weather forecasting, early warning systems and risk insurance. Climate-smart agriculture fully incorporates attention to climate risk management. Climate-smart agriculture offers some unique opportunities to tackle food security, adaptation and mitigation objectives. African countries will particularly benefit from climate-smart agriculture given the central role of agriculture as a means to poverty alleviation and the major negative impacts that climate change is likely to have on the African continent.

This country note for Armenia is part of a series of country briefs that summarize information relevant to climate change and agriculture for three pilot countries in the Southern Caucasus Region, with a particular focus on climate and crop projections, adaptation options, policy development and institutional involvement. The note series has been developed to provide a baseline of knowledge on climate change and agriculture for the countries participating in the regional program on reducing vulnerability to climate change in Southern Caucasus Agricultural systems. This note for Armenia was shared with the government and other agricultural sector stakeholders and used as an engagement tool for a national awareness raising and consultation workshop, held in Yerevan in April 2012. Feedback and comments on the note from this consultation process have been incorporated into this updated version in collaboration with the Armenian Ministry of Agriculture.

This note examines how to maximize the benefits from the use of market instruments in support of developing countries' low-emission development priorities. First, it briefly surveys the current state and trends of the carbon market, highlighting the main achievements of carbon finance over its decade-long history. Second, it reviews updated scenarios of the scale of future carbon markets and associated financial flows, in light of developments in climate negotiations and domestic markets. Finally, it identifies the necessary steps to scale up carbon market flows in future, on both the demand and supply sides, including the reform of existing mechanisms, and innovation to broaden the scope, scale and reach of carbon markets. The most important determinant of carbon offset market flows to developing countries is clearly the level of international mitigation targets: the more ambitious the targets the greater the scope for such flows. Developed countries can also encourage flows by increasing supplementary limits, which are the proportion of mitigation targets that can be met by purchases from developing countries. Finally, there remains a considerable need for innovation, awareness-raising and capacity building in public and private institutions in developing countries, to increase their participation in the carbon market and build and enabling environment for low-emission development.

Since 2005, a growing number of vulnerable communities and nations have used the human rights lexicon to argue their case for an urgent and ambitious response to climate change. The purpose of this Social Development Department Working paper is to examine the emergence of a new discourse linking climate change and human rights, and to assess its social and political implications, particularly as they relate to development practitioners. The scope of this paper is to explore what relevance this new discourse has on what David Kennedy calls the 'vocabularies, expertise, and sensibilities' of development practitioners (Kennedy 2005). The methodology for this paper involved interviews with academics and policy practitioners who have shaped this emerging discourse; a wide-ranging literature review of texts relevant to the fields of development, climate change and human rights; discussions with development professionals who have the daily responsibility of operationalizing approaches to reducing vulnerability and building resilience; and finally drawing upon the author's own experience leading the Maldives' government's initiative on the Human Dimensions of Climate Change and as a consultant within the Social Dimensions of Climate Change Cluster of the World Bank's Social Development Department. It is important to stress that this paper is not a legal piece. Human rights are as much about ethical demands, calls for social justice, public awareness, advocacy, and political action as they are concerned with legal norms and rules. Sen has pointed out a 'theory of human rights cannot be sensibly confined within the juridical model in which it is frequently incarcerated' (Sen 2004, 319). Consequently this piece will focus on the wider, political economy aspects of the interface between human rights and climate change. It is further appropriate to state that this is not an advocacy piece. The paper deliberately avoids being normative or prescriptive in recommending a human rights-based approach to developing climate change operations. It does examine why vulnerable populations chose to embrace this approach, why they continue to view it as a transformative strategy, and what some of the successes and challenges have been.

Weather is the term used to describe the atmospheric conditions (heat, wetness, wind, etc.) prevailing at any one place and time. Climate is the sum of the prevailing weather conditions of a given place over a period of time, typically summed over many decades. This paper seeks to provide strategic directions for mainstreaming support for climate change within the World Bank's broader program of assistance to Vietnam. It does so by reviewing the current understanding of climate change in Vietnam and likely impacts, outlining principles to guide the Bank's engagement in this field, and applying these principles across a range of sectors, taking into account both near- and longer-term considerations. The report identifies elements of the Bank's current and planned portfolio of projects and analytical work that are contributing or will contribute to improved knowledge, planning, and actions, and it points to additional areas where new or more work seems warranted. The report represents a first iteration of a strategy for supporting Vietnam in managing the challenges posed by climate change. As more experience is gathered and as our understanding of both the science and the economics of climate change impacts in Vietnam improves, this strategy will need to be revisited and refined. While the process of climate change is expected to be a long-term phenomenon-with predictions for considerable changes through the second half of the twenty-first century, the focus of this report is on decisions and priorities that should govern the Bank's assistance during this decade. Given an array of uncertainties, extending the developing assistance planning vision much beyond 2020 is not practical. This time frame also corresponds to the government of Vietnam's own planning horizon.

The Development Marketplace 2009 focused on adaptation to climate change. This paper identifies lessons from the Marketplace and assesses their implications for adaptation support. The findings are based on: statistical tabulation of all proposals; in-depth qualitative and quantitative analysis of the 346 semi-finalists; and interviews with finalists and assessors. Proposals were fuelled by deep concerns that ongoing climate change and its impacts undermine development and exacerbate poverty, migration and food insecurity. Proposals addressed both local poverty and climate change challenges, and offered a wide range of approaches to render local development more resilient to current climate variability. Therefore, support to community-based adaptation should: exploit its strong local grounding and synergies with development; help connect local initiatives to higher levels; and use complementary approaches to address policy issues.

This paper identifies key challenges and solutions for carrying out project-level economic analysis of adaptation to climate change, both stand-alone and integrated into broader development projects. Very few projects addressing adaptation thus far have been subject to in-depth and rigorous economic analysis for a variety of reasons, including a lack of guidance on how to deal with assessments of the impacts of climate change, as well as with estimating costs and benefits of adaptation under uncertainty. The paper focus is on the agricultural sector, where the impacts of climate change have the potential to disrupt the livelihoods of rural populations in many regions and where adaptation must be given urgent consideration. Nevertheless, some of the approaches discussed are suitable to projects in other sectors as well. Finally, robust decision making (RDM) can provide an alternative quantitative decision analytic method that avoids subjective probability assessments and scenario predictions. RDM creates hundreds or thousands of plausible futures, in the judgment of the analyst, that are then used to systematically evaluate the performance of alternative actions. This approach facilitates identifying the set of conditions under which any particular alternative adaptation performs well or poorly, according to various evaluation criteria based on the decision maker's judgment. The decision maker can identify 'robust' alternatives that, compared to other alternatives, perform reasonably well across a wide range of plausible futures.