climate change

Social Mobilisation for Climate Solutions Research Workshop

| Olaf Schroth

Last week, the Social Mobilisation for Climate Solutions Research Workshop took place at the Peter Wall Institute at the University of British Columbia. The workshop started with the “Changing Perceptions of Climate Change through Community Action” public sessions by Rob Hopkins (Transition Network), Elke Weber (Columbia University) and Stephen Sheppard (University of British Columbia). The event can be watched as webcast recording at http://www.socialmobilisation.pwias.ubc.ca.

After a number of workshop sessions, the series closed with a demo session, sponsored by GRAND. The DIGITAL MEDIA DEMO SESSION featured tools from leading local developers and academics who are advancing digital tools to communicate and mobilize meaningful action on issues of environmental sustainability and climate change.

Demo stations and presenters included:

Tools for the understanding of spatio-temporal climate scenarios in local planning: Kimberley (BC) case study

| Olaf Schroth
Major adaptation and mitigation
Major adaptation and mitigation

Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF, and in collaboration with the Collaborative for Advanced Landscape Planning (CALP), particularly Ellen Pond, the City of Kimberley, and the Columbia Basin Trust (CBT), I analysed the benefits and limitations of interactive virtual globes for stakeholder engagement in climate related scenario planning over the last 12 months. The results have now been published as SNSF report and can be downloaded here.

ETH-Klimablog

| Olaf Schroth

Now that the Copenhagen Summit comes close, ETH Zurich has started a Climate Blog with contributions by 20 ETH professors and numerous student and guest authors. Unfortunately, the blog is in German but due to the high impact of climate change for our future landscapes and with regard to our work on climate change visualization at CALP, I inlcuded the ETH climate blog in the LVIZ blogroll. Please follow the blogroll on the right or go directly to http://blogs.ethz.ch/klimablog/.

Low Carbon Cities

| Olaf Schroth
45th ISOCARP International Congress
Porto – Portugal, 18-22 October 2009
www.isocarp.org
“For our 2009 congress in Porto, we focus upon the environmental effects of man’s activities, in the context of the world’s expanding cities and city regions.
It is those cities and agglomerations that are undoubtedly the source of a large share of the greenhouse gas emissions that underlie climate change; at the same time, these are the places that are often the most vulnerable to its effects.
Time is short and if we are to avoid the worst effects of anthropogenic climate change, we must act and act quickly.
The challenge is to use (and reuse) our resources, including land, far more efficiently and, in particular, to move towards low carbon cities.”
(Chris Gossop – General Rapporteur)