adaptation techniwue s Flashcards
water managemnet
Smart irrigation uses minimal amounts of water whilst ensuring optimum yield productivity. This has led to less water usage, as well as less fertiliser and pesticides. Another way to continue to thrive with its increasing population is by reusing treated black water (sewage) for farms.
Solar Radiation Management
Geoengineering involves ideas and plans to deliberately intervene in the climate system to counteract global warming. The proposal is to use orbiting satellites to reflect some of the inward radiation into space. It would cool the Earth within months.
Land Use Planning
This is a method that allocates different land-uses to different areas. The areas closest to an environmental hazard will be of the lowest value and have few or no people. The areas furthest from the potential hazard will have the highest value or the highest density of people. Planning would need to consider zoning as a method, whilst incorporating changes that promote resilience from the hazards of climate change such as sea level rise and storms.
Use of crops that are suited to the changing climate ensures that crop yield is kept high. There is also the use of conversion cropping. This is the growing of crops that require no ploughing and requires less fertiliser. These crops require less labour, which is economically beneficial for the farmer. Further benefits of conversion crops include improved yields and soil health. The environmental benefits will promote better yields in the future and therefore continue to economically support the farmer.
Resilient Agricultural Systems
Use of crops that are suited to the changing climate ensures that crop yield is kept high. There is also the use of conversion cropping. This is the growing of crops that require no ploughing and requires less fertiliser. These crops require less labour, which is economically beneficial for the farmer. Further benefits of conversion crops include improved yields and soil health. The environmental benefits will promote better yields in the future and therefore continue to economically support the farmer.
Flood Risk Management
Urban areas can be made more resilient to floods by making the infrastructure more flood proof. This can include raising floors and using water-resistant material.
Managing the timing of water release from reservoirs is crucial in protecting communities downstream. Another non-geo-engineering option is relocating those who live in vulnerable flood planes or zoning the urban area. However, this may cause property values to fall, resulting in issues for homeowners
water managment costs and benifits
Benefits
Fewer resources used, less groundwater abstraction
Attitudinal change operates on a long-term basis: use more grey (recycled) water
Costs and Risks
Efficiency and conservation cannot match increased demands for water
Changing cultural habits of a large water footprint needs promotion and enforcement by governments, e.g. smart meters
solar radiation costs and benifits
Benefits
Geoengineering involves ideas and plans to deliberately intervene in the climate system to counteract global warming
The proposal is to use orbiting satellites to reflect some inward radiation back into space, rather like a giant sunshade
It could cool the Earth within months and be relatively cheap compared with mitigation
Costs and Risks
Untried and untested
Would reduce but not eliminate the worst effects of GHGs: for example, it would not alter acidification
Involves tinkering with a very complex system, which might have unintended consequences or externalities
Would need to continue geoengineering for decades or centuries as there would be a rapid adjustment in the climate system if SRM stopped suddenly
land use planning ocst an beifits
Benefits
Soft management: land-use zoning, building restrictions in vulnerable flood plains and low-lying coasts
Enforcing strict runoff controls and soakaways
Costs
Public antipathy
Abandoning high-risk areas and land-use resettling is often unfeasible, as in megacities such as Dhaka, Bangladesh or Tokyo-Yokohama
A political ‘hot potato’
Needs strong governance, enforcement and compensation
resliliant agricultural systems cost sans benifits
Benefits
Higher-tech, drought-tolerant species help resistance to climate change and increase in diseases
Low-tech measures and better practices generate healthier soils and may help carbon dioxide sequestration and water storage: selective irrigation, mulching, cover crops, crop rotation, reduced ploughing, agroforestry.
More ‘indoor’ intensive farming
Costs and risks
More expensive technology, seeds and breeds unavailable to poor subsistence farmers without aid
High energy costs from indoor and intensive farming
Genetic modification is still debated, but frequently used to crease resistant strains, e.g. rice and soya
Growing food insecurity in many places adds pressure to find ‘quick fixes’
flood risk mangament cos and beniiftds
Benefits
Hard-management traditionally used: localised flood defences, river dredging
Simple changes can reduce flood risk, e.g. permeable tarmac
Reduced deforestation and more afforestation upstream to absorb water and reduce downstream flood risk
Costs and Risks
Debate over funding sources, especially in times of economic austerity
Land owners may demand compensation for afforestation or ‘sacrificial land’ kept for flooding
Constant maintenance is needed in hard management, e.g. dredging; lapses of management can increase risk
Ingrained culture of ‘techno-centric fixes’: a disbelief that technology cannot overcome natural processes
