School of Geography and the Environment

Latest from COP

6 December - ECI side event on Governing and Implementing REDD+ has over 150 attendees.
Read the event summary here

3 December - Side Event receives coverage on official COP16 website.
The side event co-organized by Oxford, University of Arizona and the National Institute of Ecology in Mexico has received good coverage on the official COP16 website.

1 December - Oxford researchers get a top billing in the ECO.
The new special edition of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society compiled and edited by leading international scholars from Oxford's "4 Degrees and Beyond" conference is receiving considerable attention in several meetings at COP, and is discussed in today's ECO, read by many in Cancun.

ECI Research @ COP

Read more about the ECI and University of Oxford research of direct relevance to the COP negotiations.

• REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation)
• Climate Science
• Technology Transfer
• Agriculture
• Adaptation and mitigation
• Communication & Citizen Engagement

REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation)

Analyzing cross-level interactions among local, national and international actors and drivers of deforestation and applying the analytic theme of agency in earth system governance to the case of international forest governance. The aim is to gain understanding of who shapes the REDD process and what implications this may have for the effectiveness of this emerging mechanism.

Forest governance: actors, institutions and decision making
The ECI Forest Governance Group seeks to strengthen our understanding of how state and non-state institutions and actors shape decisions about the conservation and use of forest resources around the world. This research encompasses a wide diversity of governance institutions and networks, from intergovernmental processes, to government agencies, to forest and carbon certification schemes, to community-based and indigenous forest user groups.

Agriculture

The Global Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS) project aims to determine strategies to cope with the impacts of global environmental change on food systems and to assess the environmental and socio-economic consequences of adaptive responses aimed at improving food security.

• Food Security and Global Environmental Change, a book edited by John Ingram, Polly Ericksen and Diana Liverman of GECAFS, has just been published. The book provides a major, accessible synthesis of the current state of knowledge and thinking on the relationships between GEC and food security. Further information and information on book ordering.
• GECAFS is featured in the latest UNESCO-SCOPE-UNEP Policy Brief - No. 12 entitled Global environmental change and food security. The brief reviews current knowledge, highlight trends and controversies, and is a useful reference for policy planners, decision makers and stakeholders in the community.

Climate Science

These research developments open up interesting new ways to examine interactions between human decisions and the climate response on timescales from decades to centuries.

• 4Degrees conference
• Four degrees and beyond: the potential for a global temperature change of four degrees and its implications
  Special edition of the Philosophical Transactions A of the Royal Society where leading international scholars explore the likelihood of large climate changes, the potential impacts of these changes, and challenges involved in both avoiding high levels of warming, and in adapting should we fail to do so. Read more


• Weatherathome.net, Dr Myles Allen

Adaptation and mitigation

Managing and adapting to future climate changes will be critical for the welfare of humans and non-humans in various parts of the world. This adaptation may be in advising businesses of future impacts, exploring the adaptation of societies or ecological communities at present with questions about how and why some societies or communities adapt to changes more readily than others. Current policy debates focus on reducing emissions at personal and corporate level, the potential of markets to efficiently reduce emissions and the mechanisms that link lower carbon economies with developmental aid. Informing these policies post-2012 is a critical arena for contemporary work.

• Policymakers must aim to avoid a 2 degrees temperature rise, but plan to adapt to 4 degrees. Mark New, Diana Liverman & Kevin Anderson
• GECAFS are organising the Resilience 2011 conference which will take place 11-16 March 2011 at Arizona State University, USA. The theme of the conference is Resilience, Innovation and Sustainability: Navigating the Complexities of Global Change.
• Climate Policy Special Issue: Personal Carbon Trading - ECI researchers publish a collection of papers on Personal Carbon Trading in this special journal edition.
• Biodiversity special issue. ECI edited special edition of Biodiversity and Conservation Journal, September 2010
• National and regional adaptation plans: the UK Climate Impacts Programme UKCIP is a pioneering adaptation initiative funded by the UK Government to provide the public, private and voluntary sectors as well as the scientific community with a range of tools and datasets which support climate impact assessment and adaptation planning.
• Incongruence: Climate change and business’ challenge – an in-depth look. A series of four seminars which take an in-depth look at how climate change will affect the role, management and success of business over the coming decades.
• Biodiversity adaptation under new climate scenarios The ECI's Biodiversity and Climate Change Group is a leading centre for modelling and understanding the responses of biodiversity to changing climates.

Technology Transfer

• Climate governance in an socio-economic transformation: The Chinese perspective The China Environment and Energy Programme supports systematic, interdisciplinary study of China’s major environmental and energy issues, examining the evolution and effectiveness of China’s environmental and energy governance during a period of rapid socio-economic transformation.
• Moving to a Low-carbon Economy in China under Different Economic Circumstances
  A research project aiming to help the Chinese government to understand its capacity to address climate change by scaling up work at the city level. The project researchers will study how differences in capabilities to respond to climate change at the city level are associated with differences in city size and level of economic development, and how to balance economic development and carbon reduction.
• Climate politics and climate justice in India
  ECI Research Fellow Kamal Kapadia is researching climate politics in India from a social sciences perspective. Read more about Kamal's research.
• Lower Carbon Futures Research Team
  The ECI's LCF team carries out a range of projects on the linkages between consumer behaviour, new technologies, policy formulation and the markets in the move towards a low carbon future.

Communication & Citizen Engagement

Climate change communications have been increasingly recognized as key contributors – among a number of factors – that affect climate change science and policy discourse as well as shape actions. Translation has taken shape through many media, from news publishers, editors, and journalists who disseminate information, largely through newspapers, magazines, television, radio and the internet, to graphic designers, architects, painters and sculptors.

• Engaging the public in climate change
• James Painter, Reporting Climate Change at Copenhagen and beyond