Spatial Roundtable Conversation Focusing on Climate Change with Vietnams' Dr. Ninh

Esri president Jack Dangermond opened a discussion, known as the Spatial Roundtable, about the value of geographic information system (GIS) technology and GeoDesign in responding to the effects of climate change. The conversation runs concurrently with the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP17) in Durban, South Africa. Esri’s hosted Spatial Roundtable provides an engaging online venue for environmental professionals who wish to weigh in on their visions for geospatial technologies’ role in addressing the challenges of climate change adaptation.

“GeoDesign is a framework for understanding the complex relationships between human-designed settlements and the changing environment,” said Dangermond. “I invite environmental professionals who use GIS in their work to visit the Spatial Roundtable to discuss how organizations and businesses should use this technology to respond to climate change.”

Dangermond began the climate change adaptation conversation by asking, “How can GeoDesign best be applied to climate adaptation in the next 15 years?” A number of thought leaders have already joined the conversation.

The Brunei Times/Asia News Network

Sunday, Nov 13, 2011

The public and private sectors signed a joint statement of intent at Apec to strengthen regional disaster risk reduction and resilience, following US Secretary of State's High-Level Policy Dialogue on Disaster Resiliency yesterday.

The Asia-Pacific Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilient Collaboration joint statement, which was signed by nine organisations at the Sheraton Waikiki, intends to use public private partnership as means to help save lives, ensure economic vitality, and enhance human well-being across the region.

The members also urged more organisations from Apec members to get on-board with their effort to reduce disaster risks and increase resilience in the the Asia-Pacific region.

WASHINGTON, D.C. Oct. 18, 2011 — According to Dr. Peter Gleick and his colleagues in the newest volume of the most important assessment of global water challenges and solutions, more and more regions of the world, including the United States, may be reaching the point of "peak water." To conserve this critical resource without harming the economy or public health, businesses, communities, governments, and individuals are looking for new techniques to move to sustainable water management.

The World's Water, Vol. 7 offers discussion and analysis for developing those reforms. For more than a decade, this biennial report has provided key data and expert insights into freshwater issues. In the seventh volume in the series, Gleick and his colleagues at the Pacific Institute address such issues as increased conflicts over water resources, "fracking" natural gas contamination, corporate risks and responsibilities around water, and the growing risks of climate change. They specifically explore:

Emerging insights from adaptive and community-based resource management suggest that building resilience into both human and ecological systems is an effective way to cope with environmental change characterized by future surprises or unknowable risks. In this paper, originally published in Ecology and Society, authors Emma Tompkins argue that these emerging insights have implications for policies and strategies for responding to climate change. The authors review perspectives on collective action for natural resource management to inform understanding of climate response capacity. They demonstrate the importance of social learning, specifically in relation to the acceptance of strategies that build social and ecological resilience. Societies and communities dependent on natural resources need to enhance their capacity to adapt to the impacts of future climate change, particularly when such impacts could lie outside their experienced coping range. This argument is illustrated by an example of present-day collective action for community-based coastal management in Trinidad and Tobago.