Program for Social Impact Assessment sessions
Climate Change and Impact Assessment Symposium - Aalborg, Denmark 25-26 October 2010
Theme leader: Ana Maria Esteves, Community Insights Pty. Ltd.
Each presenter will have 20 minutes to present, to be followed by 40 minutes of participant discussion and 10 mins of report-back.
Session 1: Assessing resource-dependency & vulnerability
Community Sensitivity Index to assess the capacity of remote communities to adapt to climate change
Andreas Sadler, Coakes Consulting, Australia
Using the concept of resource dependency to understand climate change impacts in primary enterprises and industries
Dr Nadine Marshall, CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences and Climate Adaptation Flagship, Townsville Australia
Round table discussions: What needs to be done to improve the integration of ‘vulnerability to climate change’ into IA practice?
Facilitated by Dr Ana Maria Esteves, Director Community Insights Pty Ltd, The Netherlands
Session 2: Responsiveness to climate change adaptation policies
Social impacts of climate change and climate adaptation in Finnish rural areas
Rauno Sairinen, Professor, University of Eastern Finland
Towards a typology to analyze the successful implementation of climate mitigation policies in urban areas.
Thomas Hoppe, Assistant Professor, University of Twente, Institute for Governance Studies/CSTM, The Netherlands
Round table discussions: What needs to be done to improve understanding of community adaptation in the development of climate change policies?
Facilitated by Frank Vanclay, Professor, University of Groningen, The Netherlands
1. Community Sensitivity Index to assess the capacity of remote communities to adapt to climate change
Andreas Sadler, Coakes Consulting - E-mail: asadler@coakesconsulting.com
The impacts of climate change will likely affect different communities in different ways. However, it is also likely that some communities will be better placed than others to respond and adapt to change. Therefore, in the context of climate change, it is useful to consider the predicted community-level impacts of climate change in relation to an assessment of a community’s capacity to adapt to those impacts.
Within the social sciences, much research has been undertaken to consider the nature of communities, how they function and their ability to manage and respond to change. In this vein, the sustainable livelihood approach and its focus on community capitals (natural, economic, social, physical and human) is particularly useful, providing a fundamental basis for identifying and further enhancing community capacity and resilience.
This presentation will outline how such capitals may be assessed at a local level, through the development of a “Community Sensitivity Index” (CSI), and how such an approach can be used to inform decision making and the development of structural adjustment and enhancement initiatives at regional and community levels. Following an overview of the methodology, the practical application of the index will be illustrated through an example of how it has been applied in the north west of Australia to assess the capacity of remote communities to adapt to changes resulting from the impacts of climate change on the Pilbara oil and gas industry.
2. Using the concept of resource dependency to understand climate change impacts in primary enterprises and industries
Dr Nadine Marshall, CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences and Climate Adaptation Flagship,Townsville Australia, E-mail: Nadine.Marshall@csiro.au, Tel +61 439 073 010
Climate change is altering the quality and availability of natural resources with far-reaching implications for resource users and the extensive social and economic systems that they support. More than ever, resource-users will need to anticipate, and prepare for, climate-related changes, and institutions will need to be particularly supportive, if resource industries and the extended social systems dependent on them are to be sustained. A strategy for industries, communities and decision-makers to adequately support the capacity of resource-users to cope and adapt to climate change, is through identifying climate risk, or the likely social impacts that climate change may infer. I use the cattle grazing and commercial fishing industries in Australia to illustrate how the concept of resource dependency can provide vital information about the vulnerability of resource-users to climate change. I assess dependency in terms of (i) attachment to place, (ii) attachment to occupation, (iii) family circumstances, (iv) employability, (v) networks, (vi) financial circumstances, (vii) business characteristics, (viii) local knowledge and skills, and (ix) attitudes and behaviour. Strategies to assist primary enterprises and industries to cope and adapt to the impacts of climate change may require identifying ways to reduce the dependency on natural resources through increasing strategic skill sets and networks.
3. Social impacts of climate change and climate adaptation in Finnish rural areas
Rauno Sairinen, Professor, University of Eastern Finland - e-mail: rauno.sairinen@uef.fi; Tel (mobile): (358)-50-4423146, Johanna Kohl & Suvi Järvinen, University of Eastern Finland
The paper introduces results from a recently completed project, which was part of the Finnish national research programme for climate adaptation (ISTO). In Finland, the climate change adaptation has to date been studied mainly from the perspectives of environment, economy and infrastructure. There is a clear lack of studies which concern the social and community dimensions of climate change adaptation. These questions refer to concrete impacts in people's everyday life, cultural and social practices and community capacities for future changes. The aim of the project was to study how rural areas are affected by climate change and climate adaptation policies and what kind of social and community impacts there possibly exist.
Research tasks included the following: 1) How we should analyse and make typologies about the social impacts of climate change and adaptation into it? 2) How are climate impacts understood in rural areas of the region of Varsinais-Suomi (land use practices and natural resource usage)? 3) How and through which mechanisms are these impacts intertwined to people's everyday life, welfare, and future expectations (social impact mechanisms)? 4) Who are the relevant actors concerning the social and community impacts?
The research approach was based on futures studies and social impact studies. The main method was argumentative Delphi method (with 15 experts from various areas of rural development, the focus area being the region of Varsinais-Suomi in Southern Finland). The main results relate to the issues of vulnerable population groups, livelihoods and areas; relevant dimensions of social impacts; and relevant actors for coping with difficult situations (such as floods and storms) and other future problems.
4. Towards a typology to analyze the successful implementation of climate mitigation policies in urban areas.
Thomas Hoppe, Assistant Professor, University of Twente, Institute for Governance Studies/CSTM, The Netherlands - E-mail: t.hoppe@utwente.nl, Tel +31 53 489 3242
Keywords: climate mitigation, environmental policy implementation, process management, urban renewal, sustainabable cities, policy analysis.
Realizing environmental and climate mitigation goals in dense urban areas in the Netherlands is a difficult challenge. In this paper a typology will be presented that supports the analysis and understanding of processes concerning the implementation of policies that stimulate the adoption of climate mitigation measures in urban areas. The main hypotheses are that a high degree of process management will lead to an increasing likelihood regarding successful implementation of such a policy, whereas a high degree of institutionalized interests from other policy areas - especially urban renewal - will lead to failure in the implementation of policy strategies aimed at the adoption of climate mitigation measures. The typology will be empirically tested by presenting four case studies in which high energy efficiency measures are to be adopted in gallery flat buildings. This paper contributes to further insights in the fields of environmental energy policy implementation and sustainable cities.