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Climate Adaptation 2.0

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The Idea:

What will change in the world because this Project happens?

Climate Adaptation 2.0 will empower people to develop their own climate adaptation strategies at the individual, family, and community level by combining local knowledge and frames of reference with existing data layers and models.

This project will produce a working model on one island in the eastern Caribbean demonstrating how communities can become empowered to develop their own climate change scenarios and strategies. This will be applicable in small island developing countries in general, and in coastal zones worldwide.

Inhabitants of coastal zones everywhere are vulnerable to natural hazards linked to climate change. Nowhere is this vulnerability more acute than on small tropical islands. In the eastern Caribbean, natural hazards usually take the form of extreme weather events. Climate models suggest that the intensity of tropical storms will increase, and also that dry seasons may become more pronounced, resulting in both floods and droughts. In addition, sea level rise is expected to hasten coastal erosion, and the rise in sea surface temperature is expected to further impact already stressed coral reef environments. All these factors are expected to have profound implications for livelihoods of island inhabitants, either directly (e.g., stressed reef resources result in declining fisheries) or indirectly (the quality of tourism destinations erodes, leading to a loss of revenues and jobs).

Government efforts to address natural hazards have a general myopia with regard to needs and concerns at the scale of communities. Communities cannot find their reference points in official maps and strategies. This project will mash up "official" geography, climate models, and community maps to develop a climate vulnerability atlas that is accessible at the community level.

What information will people interact with to make this change?

Community mapping is a method used to assist communities to self-identify key resources and areas of concern. We would work with target communities using handheld GPS units to collect data points for each feature of the community-generated map. Georeferenced photos would be taken to provide a visual baseline. Features identified as significant by communities are often missing from “conventional” maps. They may include natural resources that are economically important, culturally important, or linked to other amenities, such as recreational sites or places of shelter.

Data from community mapping will be incorporated into a base map, using an open source mapping tool or API, complete with annotated data points. Georeferenced photos would also be added. Additional data layers to be added include available remote sensing imagery, data layers derived from downscaled global climate models, and available GIS layers showing land use/land cover, infrastructure, hydrological features, physical features, etc. Combining these data will enable the community to “find itself” in the “official” geography.

What else have you done in this Cause Area?

The Trust for Sustainable Livelihoods is a Trinidad-based non-governmental organization working to alleviate poverty and reduce natural resources degradation locally, throughout the insular Caribbean, and through global policy fora. We emphasize fresh yet pragmatic thinking on integrating these issues, through leadership training, empowerment, self-assessment, and information management. Our staff and network expertise lies in:

natural resources and protected area planning and management
development of national strategies, action plans, and guidelines, including for natural resource management and for climate change
effective governance at local levels through transparency, access to information, and decision-support systems

Cause Area:
- Environment
Cause Area Tags:
Supporting Organization:
Trust for Sustainable Livelihoods
Supporting Organization URL:
http://sustrust.org
Financial support?:
No
City:
Port of Spain (regional, eastern Caribbean)
Country:
Trinidad and Tobago

The Assessment

What kind of help or resources do you need to turn your project idea into a completed mashup?

Help is sought in converting data derived from climate models into map layers and reference tables for use in the community map. We also need to incorporate data layers from disparate sources such as community maps, the USGS Terralook service, the Nasa OnEarth service as layers in a geowiki such as Open Street Map or Mapufacture. Finally we need help in the design of the user interface to achieve visual before and after representations of climate conditions under various scenarios, and linkages to social networking tools to provide a forum for discussions on next steps, including media services such as Flickr and Youtube, and a blog and/or wiki.