South American climate change think tank launched

Daniela Hirschfeld in SciDev.net: South America has got its first think-tank aimed at providing climate change knowledge to decision-makers to help them design tools tailored to local needs. The Regional Centre for Climate Change and Decision-Making was launched earlier this year (19 March) in Montevideo, Uruguay, where it will have its headquarters and where it is organising its first training event for policymakers.

The centre is a joint initiative by the Panama-based Avina Foundation, which promotes sustainable development in Latin America, and UNESCO (the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Its programmes will be implemented through an interagency partnership of ten universities and academic foundations from five countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay.

During the first two years of the four-year initiative, UNESCO will provide a total of US$150,000 and the Avina Foundation a further US$80,000 for the centre's operation, Ramiro Fernández, energy and climate change director for Latin America at the foundation tells SciDev.Net.

The first training event to take place in Uruguay — chosen to run the initiative because of the interest shown by its government in tackling climate change and the progress in its climate-change adaptation plans — will consist of a symposium and workshop in October with senior representatives and decision-makers....

The Uruguayan legislatiure building in Montevideo, shot by http://www.flickr.com/photos/libertinus/, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Uruguay's climate vulnerabilities

International Organization for Migration: With migration and population displacement caused by climate change high on the Uruguayan Government's agenda, IOM, UNESCO, the UN's Inter-Agency Group UNETE, Uruguay's National Emergency Preparedness System and the Ministry of Housing and Territorial Zoning and the Environment are today hosting a conference to find ways to mitigate climate induced population displacement.

As a country with an extensive coast line and dependent on its natural resources, Uruguay is already feeling the effects of climate change and population displacement. According to Uruguay's National Emergency Preparedness System, between 1997 and 2005 a total of 47,181 persons of a total population of 3.3 million were displaced due to drought, floods and other natural disasters.

Official records indicate that since 2004 rainfall has increased causing more flooding, while periods of drought have become longer.

This week, Uruguay's Minister of Livestock, Agriculture and Fishing reported that adapting to climate change and biodiversity constitute great challenges for Uruguay, and added that the country should brace for a rise in minimum temperatures and an increase in rainfall.

More than 60 participants from international organizations, government officials, civil society and researchers will discuss climate change and natural disasters, population displacement, population at risk, and sustainable development, exchange best practices, and draft a work plan that will allow for capacity building and, institutional strengthening at the national level in order to be better prepared for natural disasters….

Fighting climate change from the Uruguayan countryside

Inés Acosta in IPS: "We would get up and go to bed every day looking up at the sky, hoping for something to fall, but nothing happened, not even a drop fell," says María Inés Queiros, who makes artisanal cheese in the southern Uruguayan province of San José. "What we went through in those months was burned into our memory for life. It was a horrible situation," Queiros tells IPS.

Small-scale producers like her were hit hardest by the drought that devastated a large part of this South American country in the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. The social and economic consequences of the severe drought are still being felt, as well as fears of a repeat. Rural associations estimate that farmers lost 868 million dollars in that period.

…Agriculture, the engine of the Uruguayan economy, is highly vulnerable to climate change, which is causing greater weather variability and more extreme natural events like droughts and flooding, in a country otherwise free of catastrophes like hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.

The idea was to develop an adaptation strategy to strengthen the sectors most exposed to the effects of drought and flooding and help farmers remain in the countryside. Besides the "climate change response plan" that functions at a national level, a programme was designed to operate at a local level, with the aim of cutting greenhouse gas emissions and helping local areas adapt to climate change.

The programme, funded with 1.5 million dollars donated by various international bodies, is sponsored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and covers the metropolitan region, which includes the semi-rural and rural areas around the capital, Montevideo, as well as the neighbouring provinces of Canelones and San José.

"This initiative, which will serve as a pilot plan, constitutes the first concrete regional-level experience of analysis and application of climate change adaptation and mitigation measures," Paul Moizo, head of the Agenda Metropolitana, through which the plan is implemented, explained to IPS…

Bella Unión Farm, in Artigas Department, Uruguay. Shot by Libertinus, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Pilot adaptation project in Uruguay

Raul Pierri in Upside Down World via IPS: Fighting the front line battle against global warming, with the participation of all sectors of society, is the cornerstone of a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) pilot project in Uruguay that is drawing attention from the rest of the world.

The idea is to identify the most vulnerable areas and design mitigation and adaptation strategies, based not only on expert opinions, but particularly on the input of all the people involved, project coordinator Federico Ferla told IPS. "Strategies will be developed through participatory working methods, unlike the few projects that have been carried out so far, mostly in industrialised countries, where in general teams of experts just hand over a report to be considered by the authorities," he said.

"The process will be participative, with the involvement of relevant actors at the local level. Naturally experts and authorities will play a leading role, but so will representatives of the private sector, non-governmental organisations, universities, local representatives of international bodies, public enterprises and local communities," he said.

The UNDP project is supported by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and implemented through the Support to Territorial Networks (ART) programme, an aid plan that links UNDP with local and national authorities.

…These three provinces, which include the metropolitan region of the capital city, "have great socioeconomic weight, with about two million people (in a country with a population of 3.3 million) producing around two-thirds of GDP," Ferla said.

…The three provinces selected represent a fairly broad spectrum of Uruguay's main vulnerabilities to climate change. They face risks from rising sea levels, for instance, which pose an important threat in coastal areas and wetlands. "Social vulnerability is also a problem. The area includes most of the country's informal urban settlements (shanty towns) which are home to over 150,000 people," says Ferla….

Satellite image of Rio del Plata, NASA