Possible effects of climate change on the spread of invasive marine species and implications for maritime industries

Global climate change stands to have major implications for maritime industries, including fisheries and aquaculture, recreation and tourism, and shipping and ports. Amongst these implications are the possible effects of climate change on the dispersal and distribution of marine species, as environmental conditions in the world’s seas and oceans change with climate change. This paper explores, in an introductory manner only, the potential impacts of climate change on marine bio-invasions, the possible effect of these impacts on maritime industries, and the possible implications for the way that we manage these industries, including ship’s ballast water and sediments and hull fouling, to prevent and reduce marine bio-invasions. The paper presents the case for the inclusion of this topic on the programme of 1st International Conference on the Impacts of Climate Change on Maritime Industries (ICCMI 2008), planned to be held in Malmö, Sweden in June 2008, where international experts in the science of climate change and marine bio-invasions might present more detailed scientific and technical papers on the issue.     

Port Decision Maker Perceptions on the Effectiveness of Climate Adaptation Actions

Effective adaptation to climate change impacts is rapidly becoming an important research topic. Hitherto, the perceptions and attitudes of stakeholders on climate adaptation actions are under researched, partly due to the emphasis on physical and engineering aspects during the adaptation planning process. Building on such considerations, the paper explores the perceptions of port decision makers on the effectiveness of climate adaptation actions. The findings suggest that while port decision makers are aware of potential climate change impacts and feel that more adaptation actions should be undertaken, they are skeptical about their effectiveness and value. This is complemented by a regional analysis on the results, suggesting that more tailor-made adaptation measures suited to local circumstances should be developed. The study illustrates the complexity of climate adaptation planning and of involving port decision makers under the current planning paradigm.     

Integrating Climate and Ocean Change Vulnerability into Conservation Planning

Tropical coastal and marine ecosystems are particularly vulnerable to ocean warming, ocean acidification, and sea-level rise. Yet these projected climate and ocean change impacts are rarely considered in conservation planning due to the lack of guidance on how existing climate and ocean change models, tools, and data can be applied. Here, we address this gap by describing how conservation planning can use available tools and data for assessing the vulnerability of tropical marine ecosystems to key climate threats. Additionally, we identify limitations of existing tools and provide recommendations for future research to improve integration of climate and ocean change information and conservation planning. Such information is critical for developing a conservation response that adequately protects these ecosystems and dependent coastal communities in the face of climate and ocean change.     

Institutional and Conceptual Barriers to Climate Change Adaptation for Coastal Cultural Heritage

Climate change is increasing the speed at which tangible coastal cultural heritage is changing in character or being lost through weathering, erosion, and inundation. Damages to coastal archeological sites, loss of access to historical sites, and the alteration of cultural landscapes will force changes in the way researchers can study sites, tourists can enjoy places, and descendant communities who have lived in particular areas for time immemorial, and local community members can utilize and relate to landscapes. In the USA, the National Park Service is a primary coastal cultural resource management organization. The National Park Service has been working on climate change adaptation for cultural resources for over a decade; however, there are few examples of parks in which long range climate change adaptation plans for cultural resources have been implemented. Building from 20 semi-structured interviews with cultural resource managers in three parks, we found that institutional structures within the National Park Service, as well as historical conceptual framings specific to the research, recreational, and interpretive values of cultural resources act as barriers to managers’ ability to design and implement climate change adaptation plans. Institutional barriers managers discussed include the dependence of climate change adaptation decisions partnership projects and the leveraging of budgetary and staff resources within NPS that may affect climate change adaptation capacity. We found that park managers often saw impacts in parks that may be associated with climate change, but found it difficult to separate normal maintenance from climate change affected deterioration, which may lead to status quo management actions rather than revised planning for a changing future regime. Conceptual barriers managers discussed revealed a conflict between preservation needs of research versus interpretive uses and while NPS guidance recommends prioritization of cultural resources for preservation at the park level, regional managers were more focused on this topic than park managers. As NPS moves forward with climate change adaptation planning, opportunities to develop and improve cultural resource preservation with new technologies, improved prioritization schemes, and include public input in resource preservation may help coastal managers overcome these barriers.     

Climate change and the prospects of increased navigation in the Canadian Arctic

There is wide recognition that the process of climate change may be affecting the Arctic region at a faster pace than other regions. What is uncertain is the full impact of climate change on ice cover, and in particular whether there will be a significant decrease of summer ice from the current three months to a longer period and accompanied by navigation conditions suitable and safe for commercial shipping. New international navigation routes through the Canadian and Russian Arctic sectors could significantly reduce the length of sea voyages from Asia to North America and Europe. However, on the basis of what is known to date, there are significant differences of view as to the feasibility of international commercial navigation in the Northwest Passage.     

Climate Change and Tourist Comfort on Europe's Beaches in Summer: A Reassessment

Major impacts of climate change have been projected for tourism in Europe. Typically, these projections took general tourism activities such as sight-seeing and their climate requirements as their point of reference. The purpose of this study is to reassess the impact of climate change, by looking specifically at beach tourism in summer, a crucial market segment in Europe and more specifically in the Mediterranean. As beach tourism requires relatively high temperatures, relatively modest shifts in attractiveness are found. With respect to climate, the Mediterranean is likely to remain Europe's prime region for summer-time beach tourism for at least the next 50 years. Coastal managers in Mediterranean destinations are advised to focus some of their attention on other climate change impacts such as sea-level rise or water availability, and include environmental quality and diversification of activities in their deliberations. In non-Mediterranean regions, a promising strategy may be to focus on short- and medium-distance visitors who can take advantage of the new opportunities for beach tourism, and to explore the merits of seasonal climate forecasting.     

Visual Communication of Climate Change: Local Framing and Place Attachment

To examine the effects of local versus global message framing concerning climate change, data were gathered from 114 undergraduate students at a Southern US coastal university. The experiment accounted for participants' perceived attachment to their environments (place attachment) to observe whether it related to increased engagement and risk perceptions. Messages were most effective in eliciting environmental action when local effects of climate change were emphasized. Those reporting more connection to their local environments perceived more risks and intended more mitigating actions. The results may assist practitioners, researchers, and decision makers in developing more effective approaches to climate change mitigation.     

Warming Seas in the Coral Triangle: Coral Reef Vulnerability and Management Implications

The highest diversity coral reefs in the world, located in the Coral Triangle, are threatened by a variety of local stresses including pollution, overfishing, and destructive fishing in addition to climate change impacts, such as increasing sea surface temperatures (SSTs), and ocean acidification. As climate change impacts increase, coral reef vulnerability at the ecoregional scale will have an increasingly important influence on conservation management decisions. This project provides the first detailed assessment of past and future climatic stress, thermal variability, and anthropogenic impacts in the Coral Triangle at the ecoregional level, thus incorporating both local (e.g., pollution, development, and overfishing) and global threats (increasing SSTs). The development of marine protected area (MPA) networks across the Coral Triangle is critical for the region to address these threats. Specific management recommendations are defined for MPA networks based on the levels of vulnerability to thermal and local stress. For example, coral reef regions with potentially low vulnerability to thermal stress may be priorities for establishment of MPA networks, whereas high vulnerability regions may require selection and design principles aimed at building resilience to climate change. The identification of climate and other human threats to coral reef systems and ecoregions can help conservation practitioners prioritize management responses to address these threats and identify gaps in MPA networks or other management mechanisms (e.g., integrated coastal management).     

Climate Change and Coastal Management Decisions: Insights from Christchurch Bay,UK

The integration of climate change adaptation considerations into management of the coast poses major challenges for decision makers. This article reports on a case study undertaken in Christchurch Bay, UK, examining local capacity for strategic response to climate risks, with a particular focus on issues surrounding coastal defense. Drawing primarily on qualitative research with local and regional stakeholders, the analysis identifies fundamental disjunctures between generic concerns over climate change and the adaptive capacity of local management institutions. Closely linked with issues of scale, the problems highlighted here are likely to have broad and continuing relevance for future coastal management elsewhere.     

Stakeholder Perceptions of Seaport Resilience Strategies: A Case Study of Gulfport (Mississippi) and Providence (Rhode Island)

Climate change is having and will continue to have a range of negative impacts on social–environmental systems. Many ports, with their coastal locations and essential roles in regional and national economies, face particular exposure to storm impacts that may worsen with climate change. Currently in the United States port resilience planning falls primarily on port operators. Engaging a wider range of stakeholders in long-term seaport functioning may reduce risks from disruptive and potentially irreversible impacts of climate change. This study uses empirical data gathered through two case studies of highly exposed U.S. ports, Gulfport (MS) and Providence (RI), to identify strategies that port planners and external stakeholders consider feasible for enhancing their port's resilience. This article categorizes these resilience strategies and suggests the potential role that different stakeholders could play in facilitation and implementation.     

Types of cluster adaptation to climate change. Lessons from the port and logistics sector of Northwest Germany

In this article, we argue that sectoral adaptation efforts to climate change, e.g. of the ports sector, are also struggles to reshape economic space according to sectoral needs. Addressing globalisation, the effects on economic spatial hierarchies among regions and the active promotion of regionalisation are seen as important. Applied to the port industry, this allows approaching the fierce competition among European north range ports from an action- and power-oriented perspective. Climate adaptation of ports is predominantly referred to as technical responses to extreme events (e.g. coastal protection). A differentiated conceptualisation (based on still ongoing research), however, also addresses impacts on specific elements of the transport chain, and effects on the spatial function of a port (e.g. the changing competitiveness within the European port system). Hence, the ability of a specific port to adapt will also encompass the management of regional target conflicts, and of multi-level relations. Thus, climate adaptation becomes part of positional struggles in spatial hierarchies among regions and of conflicts about political priorities within them. At the same time, the limits of exclusively regional approaches in addressing sustainability issues without higher level support become evident. The article gives an overview of the literature on climate adaptation and its application to ports and provides a preliminary typology of forms of sectoral adaptation to climate change.     

Cost-Benefit Analysis of Seawalls in South Korea: A Bottom-Up Assessment

We present a cost-benefit analysis of coastal protection via seawalls in South Korea against climate-change-induced sea level rise. This is the first bottom-up analysis for South Korea, deriving the optimal solution from extensive geographical and financial databases with detailed street-address-level information. Our analysis indicates that the net benefit is maximized if seawalls are built along 21% of the South Korean coast. By comparing the bottom-up solution to the aggregate solution and utilizing a comprehensive sensitivity analysis, we highlight two implications for the climate change economics literature. First, the country-level aggregate analysis adopted by many existing studies may include a sizable aggregation bias. Second, relative to the climate change mitigation problem, the coastal protection problem is less sensitive to the choice of the discount rate.     

Spatial and Temporal Modeling of Beach Use: A Case Study of East Anglia,UK

As tourists are sensitive to weather conditions and changes to the environments they visit, it is likely that climate change will affect coastal recreation in the future. To understand these impacts, it is first important to quantify how visitor numbers are associated with beach characteristics and weather patterns. Using the East Anglian coastline, UK, as a case study, information on the spatial distribution of visitors recorded from aircraft flights is combined with beach characteristic data in a Geographical Information System. In addition, surveys are undertaken at two beaches to assess temporal variations in visitation. The study finds a diverse range of characteristics are associated with visitor numbers. These findings are evaluated alongside the anticipated effects of climate change and management policies. Although it is predicted that warmer weather will increase visitor numbers overall, sea-level rise may reduce numbers at wide sandy beaches, which are currently most preferred by tourists.     

21世纪欧盟海事综合政策的管理框架解析

为直面21世纪的全球化竞争、气候变化、海洋环境和海上安保、能源安全和可持续发展等挑战，欧盟委员会在各成员国为期一年的专题磋商和分析之后，于2007年10月颁布了欧盟海事综合政策，以确保海洋资源的综合管理。文中从根本原则，基本理论和最终目标，主要内容这三方面，对21世纪欧盟海事综合政策的管理框架进行详细全面的阐述.     

ABSTRACTS

Energy transformation is the only way of the transformation of the world economy Describing and explaining from different view of the world from the angle of political, economic, cultural and environmental development, the presentation of the transformation, change, adjustment, conversion and a series of concept reflects that the current world situation is undergoing profound changes, multi-polarization and globalization. The global problems such as financial crisis, recession, climate change, energy transformation and the environment change,     

Testing the Effects of Constraints on Climate Change–Friendly Behavior among Groups of Australian Residents

This study explores the relationship between Australian's attitudes toward climate change impacts on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) and environmentally responsible behavior (ERB). We hypothesize that general attitudes toward climate change, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control predict intended and reported behavior, and that attitude negatively influences constraints on adopting ERB. The moderating effect of residential condition (urban vs. rural contexts) was tested across these hypothesized relationships. We randomly selected 200 individuals from eight regions: Five within 50 km of the GBR Coastline and three from the Statistical Metropolitan Areas in Australia. We yielded 1,623 surveys by telephone interviews. Findings confirm our hypotheses and suggest the most important predictor of intentions is perceived behavioral control. The two groups of respondents (urban vs. rural) illustrate different relationships. This study offers insight on how managers of the GBR can effectively shape residents' behavioral tendencies that minimize human impacts on the natural environment.     

Review of fishing safety policies in Canada with respect to extreme environmental conditions and climate change effects

Fishing is one of the most dangerous occupations in the world. Numerous research studies have been carried out to improve fishing safety from many different perspectives. Several of these studies focused on the relationship between environmental factors, climate change effects, and fishing safety. This paper aims to suggest a knowledge mobilization structure that translates findings of this type of research into input of evidence-based decision making and consequently improve and update fishing policies with respect to fishing safety and environmental conditions. Significant safety factors extracted from related literature are stability of vessels, fisheries management, safety equipment, communication, insurance, training, safety information and culture, weather forecasts, fatigue, and search and rescue planning. The paper then reviews policies related to these factors to examine if they address extreme environmental conditions and climate change effects. The paper presents recommendations to improve general fishing safety with respect to short- and long-term environmental considerations.     

Analysis of Ocean-Space and Sea-Level Rise Policy in Two Coastal Cities

Global sea-level rise (SLR) is among the most alarming aspects of anthropogenic climate change. The human impacts of SLR are experienced unequally between and within municipalities. Existing research has identified social variables that predict municipal adoption of adaptive SLR policy, but this work does not account for the locally specific social factors that shape particular policies to fit particular cases. This study describes social conceptions of the ocean and SLR policy for two coastal cities in western Washington: Aberdeen and Bainbridge Island. Examining conceptions of marine spaces provides insight into the complex process by which local physical and socio-demographic characteristics shape local policy. The study uses a grounded theoretical approach to content analyses, resulting in localized typologies of marine spaces as well as SLR policy profiles for each case. Results indicate that municipalities vary by both social conception of the ocean and SLR policy form. These findings elaborate upon the relationship between socioeconomic conditions and municipal climate change policy adoption, suggesting that in local media and policy discourse, the absence of relevant resources is related to adversarial conceptions of local marine spaces, while abundance of relevant resources is associated with a conception of marine spaces as natural resources.     

Reframing Engagement Methods for Climate Change Adaptation

Climate change poses known and unknown risks for coastal communities and also challenges for university faculty and local government staff who communicate about cli- mate sciences. Conceived as a way to move beyond traditional models of science communication, this project involved public and private decision makers in specific at-risk communities in Oregon (U.S. Pacific coast) and Maine (Atlantic coast). Both state projects sought to move behavior toward decisive action that results in coastal communities that are more resilient to climate variability at all scales. To promote engagement between project staffs and publics, a dialogic model of communication was advanced, beginning with interviews and focus groups that in turn shaped further engagement through workshops and targeted video products. This means of communication led to a deeper understanding of participants’ knowledge, beliefs, perceptions, values, and barriers to action related to climate change and its effects. Coinciding with this, project participant evaluations in both Oregon and Maine indicate that the workshops and videos were successful at informing them on this complex issue; and in both states, project participation led to action outcomes. We believe that applied elsewhere our multifaceted and adaptive approach will garner similar results, provided sufficient dedicated staffing and attention to methods.