The ocean and climate change tools and guidelines for action

Authors: Herr,D.; Galland,G.
Produced by: International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (World Conservation Union) (2009)

The ocean plays a critical role in the climate system and is significantly affected by climate change and ocean acidification. Key alterations are occurring to the environment with adverse effects like rising sea levels, increased intensity of storms, changes in ocean resource availability and altered freshwater supply and quality. The changes are occurring at an alarming rate and are affecting food security, human health, livelihoods and global economies. Tainting food and water supplies through unsustainable development increases the likelihood of disease epidemics threatening the well being of rural and urban populations. Climate change induced migration, which is indirectly caused by ocean change, is likely to put people at risk of ethnic and political persecution over resources. This report sets out to engage, inform and guide decision makers on the development and implementation of marine and coastal climate change strategies and programmes.

A Handbook of Ideas

Responses to the Global Crisis: charting a progressive path
Published in 2009 by Policy Network, London

• FREE to download from: http://progressive-governance.net/

The global financial crisis has dealt a shattering blow to the neo-liberal faith in laissez-faire as the dominant guiding principle for the organisation of markets. The crisis has also exposed the fragility of globalisation: as sources of financing dry up, we are witnessing a dramatic collapse in world trade, shrinking capital flows and a worrying rise in anti-immigrant sentiment.These developments have huge implications for the future of the progressive project. On the one hand, progressive governments and policymakers around the world will need to re-build an international economic and financial order at a time when the tendency is to focus on state-level solutions. On the other hand, as faith in unregulated markets crumbles, they will need to fill an ideological vacuum which risks being taken over by populists.

  

The Ninth International Coral Reef Symposium had been successfully held in the Bali Convention Center, Bali, Indonesia, during 23-27 October 2000. Notwithstanding the political instability and internal conflict that had been plaguing Indonesia since the past several years, the symposium seemed not to lose its charm. This was apparent from the markedly high number of registrants, which was noted to reach 1500 persons coming from 74 countries in the world. Featuring the theme, “World Coral Reefs in the New Millenium: Bridging Research and Management for Sustainable Development” – a total of 1048 scientific papers were presented in groups of 58 mini-symposia, while around 353 posters were displayed throughout the 4 days of the symposium.

For the 9th ICRS Proceedings, click here.

Lars Håkanson and Andreas C. Bryhn discuss in this book practically useful (operational) bioindicators for sustainable coastal management, criteria for coastal area sensitivity to eutrophication and an approach set a “biological value” of coastal areas. These bioindicators should meet defined criteria for practical usefulness, e.g., they should be simple to understand and apply to managers and scientists with different educational backgrounds. Central aspects for this book concern effect-load-sensitivity analyses. One and the same nutrient loading may cause different effects in coastal areas of different sensitivity. Remedial measures should be carried out in a cost-effective manner and this book discusses methods and criteria for this. Remedial strategies should generally focus on phosphorus rather than nitrogen because the effects of nitrogen reductions can rarely be predicted well and nitrogen reductions may favour the bloom of harmful cyanobacteria.

Three case-studies exemplify the practical use of the bioindicators and concepts discussed in the book. The first concerns how local emissions of nutrients affect the receiving waters when all important nutrient fluxes are accounted for. The second concerns how to find reference values for “good” ecological status to set targets for remedial actions. The third gives a reconstruction of eutrophication. If the development during the last 100 years can be understood, key prerequisites to turn the development would be at hand.

This book should attract considerable interest from researchers in marine ecology, consultants and administrators interested in management and studies of coastal systems.

Product Details

Hardcover: 292 pages
Publisher: Springer; 1 edition (June 1, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 354078361X
ISBN-13: 978-3540783619

Source: Amazon

Granville Allen Mawer, an Australian author, has written a rousing, largely anecdotal and occasionally elegant ”saga” of what he calls South Seas whaling. His work describes the details of the whaling trade and the life of the whalers in all its brutality and misery. It is profusely illustrated with period drawings, paintings and photographs. 

His book is one of complete documentary on whaling: the tools of the trade; the techniques for tracking and hunting whales; the methods for extracting whale oil; the difficult relationships among shipowners, captains and crewmen; the fluctuating economics of the whaling trade and its long decline into the 20th century. His tale begins about 1650, with shore-based whaling on the eastern end of Long Island, and ends with the wreck of the bark Wanderer off New Bedford, Mass., in 1924. Except for a brief epilogue, he suspends attention to modern mechanized whaling.Mawer provides an (at times overly) exhaustive account of South Sea whaling, a lucrative commercial enterprise that had its heyday in the early 19th century.

The Timor-Leste and Indonesian Commission of Truth and Friendship (CTF) launch its final report “Too Much Friendship, Too Little Truth: Monitoring Report on the Commission of Truth and Friendship in Indonesia and Timor-Leste” . This report is a ground-breaking report by the ICTJ’s program in Indonesia and Timor-Leste. It carefully examines the creation of the CTF, its constitutive instruments, and its flawed public hearing process.

The report reveals:

• The CTF was created not with truth-telling and interpersonal reconciliation in mind, but as a means to ignore calls for international
  criminal justice already made by the UN and the international community.

I found this interesting book from the ACT Dickson Public Library. A Dictionary of Sea Quotations of historian Edward Duyker is a compilation of important quotations on marine and sea. His valuable reference book contains quotations from the ancient Greeks and Romans; the Old and New Testaments and the Qur’an; the plays of Shakespeare; the poetry of Baudelaire, Coleridge, Dickinson, Goethe and Lawrence; the novels of Austen, Conrad, Dickens, Hugo, Melville, Verne and a multitude of other writers; voices from the mutiny on the Bounty, the sinking of the Titanic and the voyage of the Kon-Tiki. This is an anthology of extraordinary breadth.

Environmental Action Driving Global Economy

Learn more or purchase your copy of State of the World 2008

Go beyond the book with additional resources from Worldwatch institute

Environmental issues were once regarded as irrelevant to economic activity, but today they are dramatically rewriting the rules for business, investors, and consumers. Around the world, innovative responses to climate change and other environmental problems are affecting more than $100 billion in annual capital flows as pioneering entrepreneurs, organizations, and governments take steps to create the Earth’s first “sustainable” global economy.

In State of the World 2008: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy, researchers with the Worldwatch Institute and other leading experts highlight an array of economic innovations that offer new opportunities for long-term prosperity. For example:

• In 2006, an estimated $52 billion was invested in wind power, biofuels, and other renewable energy sources, up 33 percent from 2005. Preliminary estimates indicate that the figure soared as high as $66 billion in 2007.
• Carbon trading is growing even more explosively, reaching an estimated $30 billion in 2006, nearly triple the amount traded in 2005.
• Innovative companies are revolutionizing industrial production while also saving money: for example, chemical giant DuPont cut its greenhouse gas emissions 72 percent below 1991 levels by 2007, saving $3 billion in the process.

Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus launched his new book, Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism. In this book, he expands his vision with the pioneering idea of social businesses. He offers a glimpse of his vision for a world completely transformed by thousands of social businesses.

Yunus has proved that the concept of doing business can be transformed from the hard driving, profit-motivated executive, into an unwavering advocate of ‘social businesses’. To many people, this sounds like the impossible dream. But, drawing on his own experiences launching the world’s first purposely designed social businesses, Yunus shows how it can be done.

Book detail:

Hardcover: 261 pages
Publisher: PublicAffairs (December 31, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1586484931
ISBN-13: 978-1586484934

This handbook is intended to serve the needs of those coastal and ocean managers confronted with the daily tasks of measuring the progress of their programmes and projects and isolating their ecological and socioeconomic outcomes. The handbook aims to contribute to the sustainable development of coastal and marine areas by promoting a more outcome-oriented, accountable and adaptive approach to ICOM.