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Monday, 19 April 2010
Eyjafjallajoekull and all that
There are two types of natural disaster - the ones that we can cause like landslides from deforestation, sea level rises from climate change, or deadly smogs from air pollution, and the big geological disasters like volcanos and earthquakes that we have no control over. The former we have to mitigate their likelihood and adapt to their impacts, the latter we can only adapt to.The newspapers here in the UK are dominated by the unpronounceable Eyjafjallajoekull volcano and its plume of ash which has grounded flights across northern Europe - much more coverage than the devastating earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and China, it should be noted. A detail that has passed many by is that while we do have a network of nine Volcanic Ash Advisory Centres around the world, we seem completely unprepared for how to deal with closed skies. Fruit and veg is rotting in airports rather than being freighted to Europe, manufacturers with Just In Time supply chains are tearing their hair out, and about a million Brits are stranded abroad.
Nature is famously resilient to short term shocks. Trees will survive explosions which demolish houses, by bending instead of resisting. We have the technology to build earthquake proof houses, yet continue to build rigid homes on earthquake zones around the world (often demolishing more resilient traditional constructions in the the name of progress). The only resilience we have seen in the face of the volcano has been a surge in video conferencing.
There is a story (possibly apocryphal) that the internet was designed to be resilient to nuclear strikes in the US, by automatically routing data through surviving paths. I think we need to design all our systems along similar lines rather than relying on a single route or a single style of housing working everywhere. And we need to get our adaptation to climate change started very soon.
Resilience. It's the future.
Labels: adaptation, resilience, volcano
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:28
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Friday, 16 October 2009
Business Opportunities in Climate Change Adaptation
I was running a CSR workshop with a major international engineering firm yesterday. Given the traditional engineers' reactive (and sometimes reactionary) approach to such 'soft issues' (I'm an engineer - I can say this!), their proactive, progressive attitude was a breath of fresh air. Interestingly enough, as well as the business opportunities we identified in climate change mitigation (cutting emissions), we discovered they were well placed to exploit opportunities in climate change adaptation - adapting to the inevitable changes that are already in the system.Adaptation is going to become more and more important. If someone has cooling or refrigeration plant, it is going to have to work harder and become more expensive unless you can develop innovative new solutions. Resilience to rising sea levels, floods and extreme weather events will require new engineering solutions (or relocation). Heathcare services will have to adapt to new patterns in the spread of diseases. All these changes are business opportunities for someone.
Labels: adaptation, climate change, csr, workshops
# posted by Gareth Kane : 07:57
1 Comments
Monday, 30 July 2007
Now the rain has gone...
While I must repeat the mantra of "no one weather event can be directly attributed to climate change", the recent floods across England have shifted the emphasis from climate change mitigation (reducing the likelihood of rising temperatures) to its less glamorous cousin, adaptation (reducing the impact of those raised temperatures).The first thing we have to do is stop siting new developments in places susceptible to flooding. The Housing Minister's statement on the Today programme last week that "it is unrealistic not to build on flood plains" must have raised howls of incredulity from the soggy households of the West Midlands and Yorkshire, and her logic is baffling under any circumstances. Flood plain. The clue is in the name.
The next thing that has to be done is to slow down and reverse the concreting of our country so rainwater does not run off so quickly. There are plenty of proven technical solutions from permeable hardstanding to full blown Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems. Unfortunately the latter take up a large amount of space and cannot be easily shoehorned into existing towns and cities.
Lastly we have to provide physical protection to key infrastructure under threat from flooding. The problem with barriers is they have a tendency to shift the problem elsewhere and this must be taken into consideration.
There is evidence that climate change impacts lag carbon emissions by about 50 years, so even if we went zero carbon right now, we're stuck with changing weather patterns for the foreseeable future. It looks as if we will be hearing a lot more about adaptation in the months and years to come.
Labels: adaptation, climate change, flooding, suds
# posted by Gareth Kane : 08:21
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A highly accessible, practical guide to those who want to introduce sustainability into their business or organization quickly and effectively.
