t In developing countries where economies and livelihoods depend largely on ecosystem services, policies for adaptation to climate change should take into account the role of these services in increasing the resilience of society.
We address the issue of how to develop credible indicators of vulnerability to climate change that can be used to guide the development of adaptation policies. We compare the indicators and measures that five past national-level studies have used and examine how and why their approaches have differed.
We describe the nature of recent (50 year) rainfall variability in the summer rainfall zone, South Africa, and how variability is recognised and responded to on the ground by farmers. Using daily rainfall data and self-organising mapping (SOM) we identify 12 internally homogeneous rainfall regions displaying differing parameters of precipitation change.
Local ecological knowledge (LEK) of those who earn their livelihoods from natural environments has long been recognized as providing far-reaching insights into ecological processes.
Agroforestry systems are believed to provide a number of ecosystem services; however, until recently evidence in the agroforestry literature supporting these perceived benefits has been lacking. This special issue brings together a series of papers from around the globe to address recent findings on the ecosystem services and environmental benefits provided by agroforestry.
This paper develops a conceptual model to examine the vulnerability of Inuit food systems to food insecurity as a consequence of climate change. The model illustrates that food system vulnerability is determined by the exposure and sensitivity of the food system to climaterelated risks and its adaptive capacity to deal with those risks.
Indigenous Knowledge and Long-term Ecological Change: Detection, Interpretation, and Responses to Changing Ecological Conditions in Pacific Island Communities Matthew Lauer • Shankar Aswani Received: 28 October 2009 / Accepted: 1 March 2010 / Published online: 25 March 2010 The Author(s) 2010.
The important role that local knowledge and practices can play in reducing risk and
improving disaster preparedness is now acknowledged by disaster risk reduction
specialists, especially since the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. However,
they have yet to be commonly used by communities, scientists, practitioners and policymakers.
A 9.1M earthquake occurred in Indian Ocean on 26 December 2004 and caused tsunami disaster that devastated many areas in Asian and African countries. Aceh Province, the closest areas from the epicenter, received huge impacts.
The recent Red Cross experience acting on forecasts in west Africa provides examples of how climate information can be linked to decisions and serve development in low-income regions, and how climate and weather forecasts may become useful to communities at risk from climatic events, provided that the obstacles thwarting these communities’ access to and use of forecasts are clearly identified a