Climate Change

A "Social-Impact Network" for Wildfire Adaptation

In the face of natural hazards, resource scarcity, climate change, and other social-ecological challenges, how does a community adapt, and how can communities combine forces to contribute to transformational change? Dr Bruce Goldstein, an associate professor in Environmental Design and Environmental Studies and core faculty at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research (CSTPR) at the University of Colorado Boulder, takes on this pressing question. Read more ...

Balancing Severe Decision Conflicts under Climate Extremes in Water Resource Management

Over the past several years there have been increasing calls for decision support tools in the area of climate and acknowledgement that changing extremes add to an already challenging decision environment for water managers. Recurring droughts, flood events, and concerns over extreme events in the future have created a strong interest among water managers in the Front Range of Colorado about how to plan in the face of these extremes. Traditional methods of identifying alternatives for water supply management may not fully capture the range of existing preferred alternatives, meaning that utilities may miss some of the solutions that appropriately balance among tradeoffs. Read more ...

Environmental Rights and Adaptation to Climate Change

Steve Vanderheiden, who specializes in normative political theory and environmental politics with a particular interest in equity issues, democratic issues, and environmental issues as they pertain to climate change, is exploring what environmental rights should now look like, particularly territorial and water rights. Read more ...

ICECaps: International Collective on Environment, Culture & Politics

Founded in 2012 at the University of Colorado Boulder, the International Collective on Environment, Culture and Politics is a research group that examines some of today’s most pressing environmental issues. ICE CaPs members and affiliates cross disciplines to apply a wide range of theories and perspectives to study issues at the human-environment interface. We work across scales from the individual to the global. Read more ...

Inside the Greenhouse

Max Boykoff and Beth Osnes of the Theater Department at University of Colorado Boulder are working to deepen our understanding of how issues associated with climate change are/can be communicated, by creating artifacts through interactive theatre, film, fine art, performance art, television programming, and appraising as well as extracting effective methods for multimodal climate communication. Read more ...

Interactions of Drought and Climate Adaptation (IDCA) for Urban Water

Municipalities have responded in various ways to past droughts, enacting a variety of policies to cope with temporary shortages in water supply. These measures have been largely successful at reducing short-term demand during drought events, as well as constraining the long-term per capita consumption of water even as population grows. Now, though, water systems also face the likelihood of long-term climate change, raising a fundamental question: have previous responses to short-term drought events led to more resilient urban water systems across climate time scales?
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Knowledge, Power and the Coproduction of Climate Information for Adaptation to Climate Change in Tanzania

Lisa Dilling, Meaghan Daly, Mara Goldman and Eric Lovell are conducting a project that aims to improve understanding of processes to effectively link climate information and adaptation at national and local scales in Tanzania. The approach is to explicitly recognize and examine the ways in which the varying epistemological traditions and relations of power among vulnerable communities, disaster management professionals, and climate experts influence the perceived value of climate information for improved early warning and climate adaptation. Read more ...

Media and Climate Change Observatory (MECCO)

Monthly updated figure tracking newspaper coverage of climate change or global warming in 50 newspapers across 20 countries and 6 continents. Max Boykoff (University of Colorado) and Maria Mansfield (University of Exeter) continue to track newspaper coverage of climate change or global warming in 50 newspapers across 20 countries and 6 continents. They update this figure on a monthly basis as a resource for journalists, researchers, and others who may be interested in tracking these trends. Max Boykoff also has a book coming out with Cambridge University Press in September 2011 titled Who Speaks for Climate? Making Sense of Media Reporting on Climate Change. Read more ...

Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre Internship Program

This program seeks to improve climate change communication and adaptation decision-making in response to climate variability and change within the humanitarian sector. It connects humanitarian practitioners from the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre [RC/RC CC] an affiliate of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies [IFRC] with science-policy graduate student researchers at the University of Colorado. Read more ...

Understanding the Drivers of Adaptation at the Municipal Level in CO, WY and UT

Lisa Dilling is co-leading this WWA-funded project to investigate why some local decision makers choose to adapt to climate-related stress and risk while others do not. Our idea is to systematically investigate the conditions under which local decision-makers in cities and large towns in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming decide to adapt (or not) to increased climate-related risk and hazards.
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