Por Comunicaciones

Smallholders’ uneven capacities to adapt to climate change amid Africa’s ‘green revolution’: Case study of Rwanda’s crop intensification program

Nathan Clay, Brian King
World Development, Volume 116, April 2019, Pages 1-14

Development programs and policies can influence smallholder producers’ abilities to adapt to climate change. However, gaps remain in understanding how households’ adaptive capacities can become uneven. This paper investigates how development transitions—such as the recent adoption of ‘green revolution’ agricultural policies throughout sub-Saharan Africa—intersect with cross-scale social-environmental processes to unevenly shape smallholders’ adaptive capacities and adaptation pathways. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative material from a multi-season study in Rwanda, we investigate smallholder adaptation processes amid a suite of rural development interventions. Our study finds that adaptive capacities arise differentially across livelihood groups in the context of evolving environmental, social, and political economic processes.


Tropical storms and mortality under climate change

Todd Pugatch
World Development Volume 117, May 2019, Pages 172-182

Extreme weather induced by climate change can have major consequences for human health. In this study, I quantify the effect of tropical storm frequency and severity on mortality using objective meteorological data and the universe of vital statistics records from a large developing country, Mexico. Using a measure of storm exposure that accounts for both windspeed dispersion and population density along the storm track, I project changes in past storm-related mortality under various scenarios of continued climate change, while holding population and income at contemporaneous levels. I find that storm-related deaths would have risen under most climate change scenarios considered, with increases of as much as 52% or declines of as much as 10%, depending on the interplay between increasing storm severity and decreased frequency.


Cuarto informe sobre financiamiento para el cambio climático en América Latina y el Caribe, 2013-2016

Samaniego, Joseluis – Schneider, Heloísa
CEPAL
Febrero 2019

En esta, que es la cuarta versión del informe sobre financiamiento para el cambio climático en América Latina y el Caribe, se describe y analiza el comportamiento entre 2013 y 2016 del flujo de recursos para el combate y la adaptación al cambio climático de 12 instituciones, que a través de diferentes instrumentos financieros movilizaron anualmente un promedio de 20.000 millones de dólares entre los países de la región.
Las fuentes del financiamiento fueron, mayoritariamente, los bancos nacionales de desarrollo, que, si bien han cedido espacio a los bancos multilaterales, concentraron el 47% del total aprobado en el período analizado.
Entre los recursos contabilizados se destaca la creciente participación de los bonos con fines climáticos, que en 2013 todavía no se habían utilizado y en 2016 representaron el 22% del total, y que fueron colocados principalmente por el sector privado, que concentró el 80% del total de las emisiones de este tipo de instrumentos financieros.
En 2016, la cantidad de recursos aprobados sumó poco más de 16.700 millones de dólares, concentrados en el Brasil y México, que en conjunto sumaron el 56% del total, con una marcada diferencia entre las fuentes. Mientras en el Brasil el principal proveedor fue la banca nacional de desarrollo, en México la principal fuente de recursos fueron los bonos con fines climáticos, emitidos por el sector privado, que ha demostrado un interés creciente en este tema en el mundo y también en la región.


Climate Change as Driver for Ecosystem Services Risk and Opportunities

Andreas Marx et.al.
Atlas of Ecosystem Services pp 173-178, February 2019
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Climate change is already affecting terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity in Europe


Climate change and flood risk: vulnerability assessment in an urban poor community in Mexico

Juan Alberto Gran Castro, Silvia Lizette Ramos De Robles
Environment and Urbanization, February 2019

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The impacts of climate change tend to be unevenly distributed, affecting mostly urban poor communities. This research analyses the case of El Colli, a community with high levels of marginalization and urban poverty in an area characterized by informal settlements in the Metropolitan Area of Guadalajara (state of Jalisco, Mexico). The main objective was to analyse the vulnerability to climate change in El Colli, focusing on the flood risk it is exposed to and using a mixed-methods design with various research tools. The findings show the specific aspects of vulnerability in a context of urban poverty, in which basic municipal services are scarce, government action is inadequate and residents show a high acceptance of risk. Based on the data, we state the need to incorporate local urban challenges into the debate on climate change, particularly those affecting informal settlements.