Climate change,

climate adaptation

and monitoring

Created and delivered by WCS Conservation Planning

(Executive Director: Dr. Rachel Neugarten)

Agenda and outline

9:00-10:15 - Basics of climate change

How do we know climate change is happening? How do we study the expected effects of climate change? What are some of the important effects of climate change on people and ecosystems?  What are some of the specific predictions for climate change in Belize?

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10:15-10:30 - Break

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10:30-12:00 - Climate vulnerability and adaptation

What are exposure, sensitivity, adaptive capacity and vulnerability? What are mitigation and adaptation? What are resistance, resilience and transformation? What are nature-based solutions?

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12:00-1:00 - Lunch

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1:00-3:00 - Monitoring and data collection

Why is data collection important? What data (marine and terrestrial) have we already collected that can be used to quantitatively or qualitatively assess vulnerability? What changes might we make to our ongoing data collection efforts to better enable us to assess climate impacts and vulnerability?

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3:00-3:20 - Break

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3:20-5:00 - Community outreach, communication and surveys

What are some of the best practices in working with communities on climate change issues? What kinds of data (qualitative and quantitative) can communities provide?

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Basics of Climate Change

What does “climate change” mean to you?

Warming

Extremes

Natural disasters

Migration

Threats to ecosystems

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Opportunity?

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The Carbon Cycle -

pools and fluxes

• Pools - carbon stores, such as fossil fuels, atmosphere

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• Fluxes - transfers of carbon between pools

What do we know?

We have known for a very long time that:

• The climate is changing
• The major cause is human activity

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Reconstructing past climate

• Ice cores

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• Sediments

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• Tree and coral rings

Evidence for human-caused climate change

• Modelled past climate changes do not correlate with natural solar/Earth cycles
• They do correlate with levels of greenhouse gasses!

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• Chemical analysis of atmospheric CO₂ links it to fossil fuels
• Increase in atmospheric CO₂ lines up with increase in industrial activity

What will climate change do to people and ecosystems?

• Communities:
• Impacts to livelihoods
• Reduced access to resources (hospitals, schools, jobs, etc.)
• Extreme weather events and natural hazards

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• Ecosystems:
• Changes to species' ranges and populations
• Loss of habitat, e.g. wildfires
• Flooding and storm surges

Exercise

How would you try to explain to someone that climate change is caused by humans?

Why is this important to do in the first place?

Discussion

Climate change

• Changes to temperature

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• Changes to precipitation

Climate models

• Geophysical models that represent the major climate systems:
• Land surface
• Atmosphere
• Oceans
• Sea ice

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• Broadly, temperature easier to predict than precipitation

Scenarios

• Emissions projections
• Representative concentration pathways (RCP)
• Shared socioeconomic pathways (SSP)

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• Time horizons
• E.g. historical, present, midcentury, endcentury

Temperature changes

Precipitation changes

What else matters?

• Seasonality

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• Extremes

Precipitation changes

Lots of other data available

• Atmospheric variables
• Relative humidity
• Surface air pressure
• Wind speed
• Cloud cover

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• Oceanic variables:
• Sea surface temperature
• Sea surface salinity

• Radiation variables:
• Surface downward shortwave radiation
• Surface downward longwave radiation
• Surface upward heat flux

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…and much more!

Data availability

• Global fine-scale projections - CHELSA, WorldClim

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• Coarser projections - World Bank Climate Knowledge Portal
• More specific variables

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• Historical information - Belize National Meteorological Service (on request)

Break (15 minutes)

Climate Vulnerability and Adaptation

Recap

• Climate change is a major threat, caused by human activity

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• Climate change will affect different places in different ways - understanding the specific risks matters

Thinking systematically about climate risks

Important terms

• Exposure - how much climate change will a place or system experience?

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• Sensitivity - what effect will a given amount of change have?

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• Adaptive capacity - how much can a system reduce the potential effects?

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• Vulnerability - what is the difference between impacts and the system’s ability to adjust to those impacts?

What did the maps of Belize from session one show?

What are some things that can contribute to

exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity?

Share

Climate change action

• Mitigation - reducing the magnitude of climate change (exposure)

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• Adaptation - reducing the effects of climate change (exposure or sensitivity)

Nature-based Solutions

• Nature-based Solutions (NbS) - using natural features and processes to respond to climate change
• Can be used for mitigation, adaptation or both

The Resistance, Resilience and Transformation scale

• How much do you want to allow for change?

What are some NbS actions?

Where do they fall on the RRT scale?

Share

Lunch (1 hour)

Monitoring and Data Collection

Recap

• Vulnerability is the difference between potential impact (exposure and sensitivity) and adaptive capacity

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• Nature-based Solutions use natural processes to adjust to climate change

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• The RRT scale provides a framework to understand adaptation options

Monitoring and

data collection

• Why do we need to collect data?

Data collection

• Understanding vulnerability

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• Monitoring effectiveness and impact

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• Deciding on adaptation actions

What datasets can be collected to

understand vulnerability?

Share

Projecting future risks

• Generally, future data focuses on exposure

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• Need to find a way to link current data to trends that can be projected

Data collection practices

• Quantitative data - needs to be amenable to statistical interpretation
• E.g. fisheries data - need to know fishing effort, proportion of catch represented
• E.g. species data - need to know survey effort

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• Assessments should be systematic and continuous

Of the datasets you’ve identified for understanding vulnerability, which are currently being collected? How might we need to adjust the collection methods?

Share

Monitoring and impact

• Challenge - baseline data may be available, but trends not always available

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• How do we make sure things are working?

Why monitor?

• Measuring progress: are we getting better?
• Can we do better (adaptive management)?
• Encouraging accountability
• Encouraging appropriate resource allocation

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• Quality assurance: are our actions efficient and appropriate?

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Elements of a results chain

Objective

Indicator

Indicator

Indicator

Objective

Objective

Objective

Indicator

Understand why you need the data

4) By 2027, there’s a 10% increase from 2005 levels of nesting turtles.

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1) By July 2025, fishers equal or better their target catch and reduce turtle bycatch by 50% using circle hooks.

2) By January 2026, �> 60% fishers are using circular hooks.

Objective 1

Objective 2

Objective 3

3) By October 2026, �turtle capture rates are below 50% of 2005 rates.

Obj 4

I

I

I

I

Creating a monitoring plan

Understanding impact

• What would have happened if we didn’t do anything?

Evaluating impact

Evaluating impact

Look at the set of NbS actions suggested for addressing vulnerability. How can we monitor effectiveness?

Share

Break (20 minutes)

Community Outreach, Communication

and Surveys

Recap

• It is crucial to understand the specific impacts of climate change, and the effects of our conservation efforts

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• The best way to understand these things is through systematic, replicable, long-term data collection and monitoring

Working with communities

• People are at the center of our conservation efforts

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• What information do we need from the communities we work with? What information do they need from us?
• How can that information be effectively communicated?

What are some challenges you’ve encountered in discussing climate change?

Challenges in communicating about climate change

• Spatial/temporal disconnect

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• Powerlessness/fatigue

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• Uncertainty

Some solutions

• Focus on shared local context

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• Connections to seemingly unrelated aspects of everyday life

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• Admitting we don’t know everything

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• Creating a hopeful future by providing resources and pathways to create change

Look at some of the vulnerability indicators and the data and monitoring ideas. How would you try to communicate the data with communities?

Share

Learning from communities

• Information on indicators of importance

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• Information on adaptive capacity/other socioeconomic factors

Review your data collection strategies. For any of them, would communities be able to contribute relevant data? How could you incorporate that data?

Share

What information do we need from communities?

• Can design whatever adaptation strategies

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• Need to understand community capacity and willingness

Ethical practices

• Institutional Review Boards

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• Consent (free, prior, informed)

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• Maintain confidentiality as default

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• Protect vulnerable people

Other best practices

• Understand your objectives/theory of change
• What is the goal of the project?
• What information is needed to meet the goal?

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• Who do you need to talk to?
• Who are the critical stakeholders involved that have needed information?

Types of data collection

Types of questions

Working on multiple objectives

Look at your list of community indicators. Think about who you might target to get the information you need. For each, design 1-2 questions that would help get that information.

Share

Wrapping up

• Climate change affects all of our work

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• Understanding the details of climate risks matters

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• Data collection, including from communities, is central to understanding both risks and impact

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• Need to consider how best to communicate information to communities

Thank you!