ECB Launches "Toward Resilience: A Guide to Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation"

There has been an ever increasing need to increase resilience and providing appropriate coping mechanisms to vulnerable communities, and in order to do so there were also many other tools created in order to measure vulnerability. These tools (such as the Hyogo Framework for Action and the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach) looks at and analysis individual and institutional capacities to assist in developing coping mechanisms that would reduce vulnerability.

There are many forms of vulnerability that can be experienced: Political Vulnerability, Economic Vulnerability and Social Vulnerability. However, there is the generally accepted Environmental Vulnerability which looks at the impacts of natural occurrences (or induced by anthropogenic activities) that impacts on the daily lives of communities. These natural impacts include floods, mud slides, climate change effects - such as droughts.

Therefore, understanding and yet developing tools and frameworks that assists in responding to disasters and those left vulnerable to due climate change impacts contribute to the knowledge pool of disaster risk reduction (DRR). Therefore, I would like to highlight the Emergency Capacity Building (ECB) Project and the release of their resource for stakeholders and community/humanitarian organisations entitled: "Toward Resilience: A Guide to Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA)".

Source: Emergency Capacity Building Project

The guide looks at six main factors that include understanding DRR and CCA, the vulnerable groups that may be affected (women, children and high risk groups), and also importantly looks at the programme cycle management for DRR and CCA which incorporates the implementation of projects and other areas of interest.

Water Managmenet and Storage for Climate Change Scenarios - Volta River Basin

The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) released a report entitled "The Water Resource Implications for Changing Climate in the Volta River Basin" which utilised a dynamic regional climate model (CCLM), a hydrological model (SWAT) and a water resource model (WEAP) to assess the impact of planned agricultural and hydro-power developments along the Volta River that serves approximately 24 million people. This report was initiated as part of the project "Re-thinking Water Storage for Climate Change Adaptation in Sub-Saharan Africa" that has an overall aim to develop guidance on methods for better inclusion of climate change in the planning and management of the full range of agricultural water storage options.

As previously stated, the Volta River serves 24 million people, it is most likely that this river will receive further stresses from climate change, increased developments and increased water demand due to population increase.

Considering the possible errors through modelling, variables do indicate a possible future changes that should be considered for water resource planning. The results indicate that mid-21st Century the average annual rainfall (basin wide), mean annual runoff and mean annual groundwater recharge, will decline. The report also sets up different scenarios and the outcomes based on these variables. However, these scenarios conclude that there would be an annual drop by 30% of Hydro-power generation and a reduction of technical performance of reservoirs. One can only imagine the domino affect that these outcomes may have on the production of much needed water for agricultural and livelihood development purposes. Spin-offs would therefore impact socio-economic development and food security.

Therefore, this report recommends that water management and storage planning within the basin should be systematic, increase and improve the communication and cooperation between stakeholders of the riparian states of the Volta River; and to consider innovative measures to water storage.

"Dont forget to switch off your PC!!"

This is something that I would often hear from my line manager, however I am guilty of not switching off my PC entirely. Sometimes I forget and sometimes I have something still running in the background, and I would let it continue running till the next day - like yesterday. But on the real side, it is amazing to see how much energy our IT&C networks and appliances consume. Not too long ago it was television that consumed large amounts of energy per household, no matter if it were switched on or not. But thankfully to the International Energy Agency (IEA) that spearheaded the "1-watt initiative", it reduced energy consumption by appliances, considerably.

Now think about this, that those were appliances that we could switch on and off, and hold in standby and it would be 'inactive' - but still consume loads of energy. Then think about "appliances" or technologies that are not even in your surroundings but you are probably using it right now to read this entry... OK, have you guessed what it is yet?

I hope you don't shoot yourself for this - but have you thought about the consumption of office server networks? What about the Internet that you use at home? The source of that connection has to come from some physical IT&C infrastructure. World wide, it is estimated that IT&C consumes 5% of global energy consumption - so high, as it is required to remain on standby so that it will be ready and fired up for you to use it the next time you click on the little Chrome/IE/Fire Fox/Opera icon, or sending an email. Now, people are just using their PCs, what about smarter technologies that have IT&C capabilities standard? Fridge, televisions - like the Samsung Series 7 (Awesome TV!!!), home audio? All these technologies will be linked to some server at some time of its use - and that server unfortunately has to be online for its use.

Now, to refresh your memory a bit, the IEA released a one pager document entitled "Guiding Principles for Energy Efficiency in Networked Products" in 2007. Very basic principles and should be easy to apply - unless the manufacturer of that networked product has some other mandate. However, progress is being made by other countries and unions that are implementing policies that concentrate on the energy efficiency within networked products. Such as USA (Energy Star), Republic of Korea (e-Standby Programme and Energy Efficient Labelling Programme), and the European Union (Code of Conduct on Energy Efficiency of Broadband Equipment). But, as you know, drivers should not only come from national or international responsible authorities, energy efficiency should also be driven by the corporates that house these servers.


Source: Ethan Pines for The New York Times

Considering a Report by The New York Times: "Power, Pollution and the Internet" that looked at large corporates such as Google and Facebook. Here, they have incorporated and re-engineered their cooling systems and supported their energy and electricity consumption with the use of renewable energy, and also redesigned their hardware to improve energy efficiency. Within the corporate environment, it becomes a economic and monetary issue, where I would expect that they would aim to answer questions like: Are our operations feasible and viable considering the cost implications? Which activities can we implement that will reduce consumption and cost within the organisation? - Lets hope that companies are considering these questions and identifying the areas within their processes with the highest consumption... Lets hope.

Please read follow this link for more information on other initiatives

European Environment Agency releases IAS Report and their Impacts

A few years ago I was fortunate enough to work with a PhD student on her work in identifying the relationship between South African Policy, Biodiversity and Invasive Alien Species. What was interesting for me while listening to these transcripts was the way that stakeholder engagement took place and how this affected IAS project implementation on the ground.

Like the aim of the European Environment Agency (EEA) report entitled: "The Impacts of Invasive Alien Species in Europe", I believe that proper IAS project implementation can only be successful once there are proper public and stakeholder awareness and education programmes in place about these impacts that concentrates on themes within the environment and the economy. "Once the public knows, the goal grows" - think I will coin that one.

The impacts that the report focuses on are biodiversity, ecosystem service, human health and economic activities. This report not only highlights threats The report also highlights certain recommendation to specifically deal with IAS within Europe, however, I do believe that although these recommendation are location specific there could be some application within the South African or developmental location context.

CEM Collaborates to launch World EV Cities and Eco-systems

I find it to be a challenge to head into a direction that is not mainstream, does not fit into the norms of the world and seems to be odd to the everyday person on the street. However, I am pleased when such thoughts are shared in a sort of cloud/knowledge sourcing environment where everyone can contribute and learn. Now you can only imagin how I felt when I read the article that the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM)  and other like-minded organisations launched the Electric Vehicle Initiative (EVI) website: "World EV Cities and Eco-systems".

The aim of the EVI website and that of the CEM would be to create a space where industry specialist. practitioners and developers can assist each other in leveraging resources, share electric vehicle best practices and increase collaborative work being done between cities around the world. The site is not only for story telling and real life experiences of customers and perceptions but also a place where not only qualitative information is shared but also where quantitative information gives insight into the electric vehicle experience.

As the site is fairly new, one would expect that content and resources are still running low at this point. However, EVI have already uploaded a document entitled: "EV City Casebook" which contains information and experiences of 16 cities across 9 countries and 3 continents. Obviously, as this site gains momentum and relevance, it should then be able to increase the amount of cities that are represented in this casebook.

To read more about the CEM and the organisations that collaborated to develop the World EV Cities and Eco-systems website, click here.