RESUMEN
While global negotiations regarding climate change between nations are underway around the world, locally scaled policies and measures for climate protection and resilience are drafted and implemented by municipalities across the globe. These political units, with their small contributions to the much larger issue at hand are unable to fully receive adequate gains of their policies for their local stakeholders, as theory states that local level administrators would find it difficult to reduce emissions for the benefit of the global citizenry. In other words, municipalities are concerned with the provision of locallybased public goods and services. For climate policies however, they are locally producing a global public good. On the other hand, local level leaders have an advantage as they control many of the factors related to emissions, such as land use decisions, residential and commercial regulations, transit options and solid waste disposal. This is perhaps fitting due to the nature of the place-based vulnerability where impacts are experienced in the forms of inundation, heat waves, bushfires or rising sea levels. Additionally, due to their structure, it is comparatively easier to implementing such policies successfully than many international policy makers who have struggled with such goals or milestones due to added complications. This essay will explore the rudimentary complexities at the city level and observe the paradox of participation and engagement in sustainable addressing global climate change.
RESUMEN
Aims: Global change studies need to manipulate large volume of observation and prediction data, most likely from multiple sources. From the researchers’ perspective, the whole research process consists of the follow stages: data discovery, data access, data processing, data analysis and result dissemination. The aim of paper is to review the state-of-the-art of geospatial data systems to reveal the way towards a better support of global change studies. Methodology: This paper reviews the capabilities of exemplar geospatial data systems. It further analyzes the needs of manipulating large volume of diverse data when performing global change studies. By comparing the available capabilities with the real needs, this study shows the strengths and limitations of existing data systems when supporting global change studies. Results: The analysis shows that data systems are helpful for researchers to fulfill data discovery and access, while most of them do not provide further functionalities to cover other stages in the whole research process. This suggests that a new generation of data systems is highly needed to provide efficient and enough support for scientists to perform global change studies. Instead of simply moving data from sources to researchers’ local archives, it will enable more on-line data manipulation functionality and the interoperability of data and systems. Conclusion: Traditional geospatial data systems are designed to operate locally without built-in interoperability and sharing capabilities. Such systems are operated under the paradigm of “everything-locally-owned-and-operated”. Conducting global change studies using such a system requires moving a large volume of data from providers’ sites to researchers’ site. Such a system does not provide strong support for the entire research process. Since climate research requires manipulating a huge volume of complex and diverse multi-source data, a new paradigm of “everything-shared-over-the-Web” is promising when designing a new generation of geospatial data systems, which are standard-based, interoperable, and sharable, for global change studies.
RESUMEN
Water in the XXI century has become the primary factor for sustainable development, eradication of poverty and reversal of ecosystem degradation. Increasing water demand for agriculture and urbanisation, combined with pollution, eutrophication and amplification of the stochastic character of climatic processes, increases water limitations for ecosystems and societies. The transdisciplinary science of Ecohydrology, which has been developed in the framework of the International Hydrological Programme of UNESCO, provides a systemic approach, to regulate hydrology-ecosystem-society interplay towards: 1) slowing down the transfer of water from the atmosphere to the sea, still considered as a priority to reduce the severity of floods and droughts impact; 2) reducing input and regulating the allocation of excess nutrients and pollutants to aquatic ecosystems, toward reversing ecosystems degradation and improvement of human well being; and 3) harmonisation of ecosystem potential with societal needs within the framework of IWRM.
A Água no século XXI tornou-se o fator primordial para o desenvolvimento sustentável, a erradicação da pobreza e as iniciativas para reverter à degradação dos ecossistemas. O aumento da demanda de águas para a agricultura e urbanização, eutrofização e poluição e a amplificação do caráter estocástico dos processos climáticos aumenta o limite de água disponível para os ecossistemas e as sociedades. A ciência transdisciplinar da Ecohidrologia, que se desenvolve no arcabouço do Programa Hidrológico Internacional da UNESCO, proporciona uma abordagem sistêmica na regulação das interações hidrologia-ecossistema e sociedade. Esta abordagem dá-se através dos seguintes processos e ações: 1) iminuindo a transferência da água da atmosfera para os oceanos, considerando-se esta ação como prioridade para reduzir a severidade das enchentes e secas; 2) Reduzindo a eutrofização e poluição dos sistemas aquáticos continentais revertendo a degradação do ecossistema e melhorando o bem estar humano; e 3) Harmonização do potencial dos ecossistemas com as necessidades da sociedade no arcabouço do programa Gerenciamento Integradas de Recursos Hídricos.
Asunto(s)
Conservación de los Recursos Naturales/métodos , Ecosistema , Restauración y Remediación Ambiental/métodos , Agua Dulce , Contaminación del Agua/prevención & control , Biodiversidad , Eutrofización , Abastecimiento de AguaRESUMEN
Water in the XXI century has become the primary factor for sustainable development, eradication of poverty and reversal of ecosystem degradation. Increasing water demand for agriculture and urbanisation, combined with pollution, eutrophication and amplification of the stochastic character of climatic processes, increases water limitations for ecosystems and societies. The transdisciplinary science of Ecohydrology, which has been developed in the framework of the International Hydrological Programme of UNESCO, provides a systemic approach, to regulate hydrology-ecosystem-society interplay towards: 1) slowing down the transfer of water from the atmosphere to the sea, still considered as a priority to reduce the severity of floods and droughts impact; 2) reducing input and regulating the allocation of excess nutrients and pollutants to aquatic ecosystems, toward reversing ecosystems degradation and improvement of human well being; and 3) harmonisation of ecosystem potential with societal needs within the framework of IWRM.
A Água no século XXI tornou-se o fator primordial para o desenvolvimento sustentável, a erradicação da pobreza e as iniciativas para reverter à degradação dos ecossistemas. O aumento da demanda de águas para a agricultura e urbanização, eutrofização e poluição e a amplificação do caráter estocástico dos processos climáticos aumenta o limite de água disponível para os ecossistemas e as sociedades. A ciência transdisciplinar da Ecohidrologia, que se desenvolve no arcabouço do Programa Hidrológico Internacional da UNESCO, proporciona uma abordagem sistêmica na regulação das interações hidrologia-ecossistema e sociedade. Esta abordagem dá-se através dos seguintes processos e ações: 1) iminuindo a transferência da água da atmosfera para os oceanos, considerando-se esta ação como prioridade para reduzir a severidade das enchentes e secas; 2) Reduzindo a eutrofização e poluição dos sistemas aquáticos continentais revertendo a degradação do ecossistema e melhorando o bem estar humano; e 3) Harmonização do potencial dos ecossistemas com as necessidades da sociedade no arcabouço do programa Gerenciamento Integradas de Recursos Hídricos.