CAPACITY BUILDING research

Capacity building activities will encompass research, education, and training. Research areas will seek to improve understanding of how societies and social institutions respond to environmental conditions, climate- and weather-related events, and potential climate change. Some areas that will be developed, or will continue development, are as follows:

Coastal Urban Affairs as a new activity is being developed by CCB for the next fiscal year starting in October 2005. The initial focus is on large (mega) cities in low-lying coastal areas. They are extremely vulnerable to sea level rise, damage to infrastructure resulting from increasingly intense tropical storms, costlier storm surges, and salt-water intrusion into urban water supplies. The CCB will hold a planning meeting in 2006 as the tenth "Usable Science" workshop. More information will be forthcoming as plans develop. To become involved, contact us.

Climate Change, Seasonality, and Environmental Hazards. This is a follow-up activity to the Asia Pacific Network (APN) for Global Change Research and World Health Organization (WHO) Public Forum ("Climate Calamaties and Human Health") held at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Japan in January 2005. The APN has joined with NCAR to sponsor this workshop in early 2006 as a prototype training activity. This workshop will bring together university lecturers from different disciplines and countries in Southeast Asia (Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam) to receive training from experts in order to provide them with the tools to develop Climate Affairs activities at their respective universities and to develop course materials and curricula.

Disaster Diplomacy is a conceptual framework (with a comprehensive website) managed by Ilan Kelman, who joins CCB on 1 July 2005. Disaster Diplomacy will be further developed in CCB to determine how all risk- and disaster-related activities might assist in diplomatic efforts, international relations, human rights, conflict resolution, environmental management, and sustainability.

Creeping Environmental Problems (CEPs) were first identified during a workshop held in 1994 and have been described in several articles and books; i.e., slow-onset, low-grade changes to the environment that are incremental and accumulate over time. Such changes may be invisible in the early stages and are therefore neglected. As it is much easier to address CEPs early, policy makers need to be made aware of the potential downstream impacts if these changes are allowed to continue. CCB will develop methods to catalyze governments (local to national) to take CEPs more seriously.

Creeping Environmental Problems and Sustainable Development in the Aral Sea Basin (Glantz, 1999, Cambridge University Press). Available on line at CUP.

Superstorm '93: Scientists in several NCAR divisions began a study in 2003 of a major winter storm that affected 26 states, Cuba, and eastern Canada. Several reports are on line at the website. This research will continue into 2006, examining a "season of superstorms." A "supercyclone" that occurred in Orissa, India, in 1999 was also studied, with a comprehensive website created about the findings.