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Sunday, March 3, 2019

Intensive farming

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Intensive farming involves various types of [agriculture] with higher levels of input and output per cubic unit of [agricultural land] area. It is characterized by a low [ley farming|fallow] ratio, higher use of inputs such as capital and labour, and higher crop yields per cubic unit land area. This contrasts with traditional agriculture, in which the inputs per unit land are lower. The term "intensive" involves various meanings, some of which refer to organic farming methods (such as biointensive agriculture and French intensive gardening), and others that refer to nonorganic and industrial methods. Intensive animal farming involves either large numbers of animals raised on limited land, usually concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), often referred to as factory farms, or managed intensive rotational grazing (MIRG), which has both organic and non-organic types. Both increase the yields of food and fiber per acre as compared to traditional animal husbandry. In CAFO, feed is brought to the seldom-moved animals, while in MIRG the animals are repeatedly moved to fresh forage.

Most commercial agriculture is intensive in one or more ways. Forms that rely heavily on industrial methods are often called industrial agriculture, which is characterised by innovations designed to increase yield. Techniques include planting multiple crops per year, reducing the frequency of fallow years, and improving cultivars. It also involves increased use of fertilizers, plant growth regulators, and pesticides and mechanised agriculture, controlled by increased and more detailed analysis of growing conditions, including weather, soil, water, weeds, and pests. This system is supported by ongoing innovation in agricultural machinery and farming methods, genetic technology, techniques for achieving economies of scale, logistics, and data collection and analysis technology. Intensive farms are widespread in developed nations and increasingly prevalent worldwide. Most of the meat, dairy, eggs, fruits, and vegetables available in supermarkets are produced by such farms.

Smaller intensive farms usually include higher inputs of labor and more often use sustainable intensive methods. The farming practices commonly found on such farms are referred to as appropriate technology. These farms are less widespread in both developed countries and worldwide, but are growing more rapidly. Most of the food available in specialty markets such as farmers markets is produced by these small holder farms.

History

Early 20th-century image of a tractor ploughing an alfalfa field
 
Agricultural development in Britain between the 16th century and the mid-19th century saw a massive increase in agricultural productivity and net output. This in turn supported unprecedented population growth, freeing up a significant percentage of the workforce, and thereby helped enable the Industrial Revolution. Historians cited enclosure, mechanization, four-field crop rotation, and selective breeding as the most important innovations.

Industrial agriculture arose along with the Industrial Revolution. By the early 19th century, agricultural techniques, implements, seed stocks, and cultivars had so improved that yield per land unit was many times that seen in the Middle Ages.

The industrialization phase involved a continuing process of mechanization. Horse-drawn machinery such as the McCormick reaper revolutionized harvesting, while inventions such as the cotton gin reduced the cost of processing. During this same period, farmers began to use steam-powered threshers and tractors, although they were expensive and dangerous. In 1892, the first gasoline-powered tractor was successfully developed, and in 1923, the International Harvester Farmall tractor became the first all-purpose tractor, marking an inflection point in the replacement of draft animals with machines. Mechanical harvesters (combines), planters, transplanters, and other equipment were then developed, further revolutionizing agriculture. These inventions increased yields and allowed individual farmers to manage increasingly large farms.

The identification of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK) as critical factors in plant growth led to the manufacture of synthetic fertilizers, further increasing crop yields. In 1909, the Haber-Bosch method to synthesize ammonium nitrate was first demonstrated. NPK fertilizers stimulated the first concerns about industrial agriculture, due to concerns that they came with serious side effects such as soil compaction, soil erosion, and declines in overall soil fertility, along with health concerns about toxic chemicals entering the food supply.

The identification of carbon as a critical factor in plant growth and soil health, particularly in the form of humus, led to so-called sustainable agriculture, as well as alternative forms of intensive agriculture that also surpassed traditional agriculture, without side effects or health issues. Farmers adopting this approach were initially referred to as humus farmers, later as organic farmers.

The discovery of vitamins and their role in nutrition, in the first two decades of the 20th century, led to vitamin supplements, which in the 1920s allowed some livestock to be raised indoors, reducing their exposure to adverse natural elements. Chemicals developed for use in World War II gave rise to synthetic pesticides.

Following World War II, synthetic fertilizer use increased rapidly, while sustainable intensive farming advanced much more slowly. Most of the resources in developed nations went to improving industrial intensive farming, and very little went to improving organic farming. Thus, particularly in the developed nations, industrial intensive farming grew to become the dominant form of agriculture.

The discovery of antibiotics and vaccines facilitated raising livestock in confined animal feeding operations by reducing diseases caused by crowding. Developments in logistics and refrigeration as well as processing technology made long-distance distribution feasible.

Between 1700 and 1980, "the total area of cultivated land worldwide increased 466%" and yields increased dramatically, particularly because of selectively-bred, high-yielding varieties, fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, and machinery. Global agricultural production doubled between 1820 and 1920; between 1920 and 1950; between 1950 and 1965; and again between 1965 and 1975 to feed a global population that grew from one billion in 1800 to 6.5 billion in 2002. The number of people involved in farming in industrial countries dropped, from 24 percent of the American population to 1.5 percent in 2002. In 1940, each farmworker supplied 11 consumers, whereas in 2002, each worker supplied 90 consumers. The number of farms also decreased and their ownership became more concentrated. In the year 2000 in the U.S., four companies produced 81 percent of cows, 73 percent of sheep, 57 percent of pigs, and 50 percent of chickens, which was cited as an example of "vertical integration" by the president of the U.S. National Farmers Union. Between 1967 and 2002, the one million pig farms in America consolidated into 114,000, with 80 million pigs (out of 95 million) produced each year on factory farms, according to the U.S. National Pork Producers Council. According to the Worldwatch Institute, 74 percent of the world's poultry, 43 percent of beef, and 68 percent of eggs are produced this way.

Concerns over the sustainability of industrial agriculture, which has become associated with decreased soil quality, and over the environmental effects of fertilizers and pesticides, have not subsided. Alternatives such as integrated pest management (IPM) have had little impact because policies encourage the use of pesticides and IPM is knowledge-intensive. These concerns sustained the organic movement and caused a resurgence in sustainable intensive farming, as well as funding for the development of appropriate technology.

Techniques and technologies

Livestock

A commercial chicken house raising broiler pullets for meat

Confined animal feeding operations

Intensive livestock farming, also called "factory farming", is a term referring to the process of raising livestock in confinement at high stocking density. "Concentrated animal feeding operations" (CAFO), or "intensive livestock operations", can hold large numbers (some up to hundreds of thousands) of cows, hogs, turkeys, or chickens, often indoors. The essence of such farms is the concentration of livestock in a given space. The aim is to provide maximum output at the lowest possible cost and with the greatest level of food safety. The term is often used pejoratively. However, CAFOs have dramatically increased the production of food from animal husbandry worldwide, both in terms of total food produced and efficiency. 

Food and water is delivered to the animals, and therapeutic use of antimicrobial agents, vitamin supplements, and growth hormones are often employed. Growth hormones are not used on chickens nor on any animal in the European Union. Undesirable behaviors often related to the stress of confinement led to a search for docile breeds (e.g., with natural dominant behaviors bred out), physical restraints to stop interaction, such as individual cages for chickens, or physical modification such as the de-beaking of chickens to reduce the harm of fighting. 

The CAFO designation resulted from the 1972 U.S. Federal Clean Water Act, which was enacted to protect and restore lakes and rivers to a "fishable, swimmable" quality. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) identified certain animal feeding operations, along with many other types of industry, as "point source" groundwater polluters. These operations were subjected to regulation.

In 17 states in the U.S., isolated cases of groundwater contamination were linked to CAFOs. For example, the ten million hogs in North Carolina generate 19 million tons of waste per year. The U.S. federal government acknowledges the waste disposal issue and requires that animal waste be stored in lagoons. These lagoons can be as large as 7.5 acres (30,000 m2). Lagoons not protected with an impermeable liner can leak into groundwater under some conditions, as can runoff from manure used as fertilizer. A lagoon that burst in 1995 released 25 million gallons of nitrous sludge in North Carolina's New River. The spill allegedly killed eight to ten million fish.

The large concentration of animals, animal waste, and dead animals in a small space poses ethical issues to some consumers. Animal rights and animal welfare activists have charged that intensive animal rearing is cruel to animals. 

Other concerns include persistent noxious odor, the effects on human health, and the role of antibiotic use in the rise of resistant infectious bacteria. 

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), farms on which animals are intensively reared can cause adverse health reactions in farm workers. Workers may develop acute and/or chronic lung disease, musculoskeletal injuries, and may catch ( zoonotic) infections from the animals.

Managed intensive rotational grazing

Managed Intensive Rotational Grazing (MIRG), also known as cell grazing, mob grazing, and holistic management planned grazing, is a variety of foraging in which herds or flocks are regularly and systematically moved to fresh, rested grazing areas to maximize the quality and quantity of forage growth. MIRG can be used with cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, turkeys, ducks, and other animals. The herds graze one portion of pasture, or a paddock, while allowing the others to recover. Resting grazed lands allows the vegetation to renew energy reserves, rebuild shoot systems, and deepen root systems, resulting in long-term maximum biomass production. MIRG is especially effective because grazers thrive on the more tender younger plant stems. MIRG also leaves parasites behind to die off, minimizing or eliminating the need for de-wormers. Pasture systems alone can allow grazers to meet their energy requirements, and with the increased productivity of MIRG systems, the animals obtain the majority of their nutritional needs, in some cases all, without the supplemental feed sources that are required in continuous grazing systems.

Pasture intensification

Pasture intensification is the improvement of pasture soils and grasses to increase the food production potential of livestock systems. It is commonly used to reverse pasture degradation, a process characterized by loss of forage and decreased animal carrying capacity which results from overgrazing, poor nutrient management, and lack of soil conservation. This degradation leads to poor pasture soils with decreased fertility and water availability and increased rates of erosion, compaction, and acidification. Degraded pastures have significantly lower productivity and higher carbon footprints compared to intensified pastures.

Management practices which improve soil health and consequently grass productivity include irrigation, soil scarification, and the application of lime, fertilizers, and pesticides. Depending on the productivity goals of the target agricultural system, more involved restoration projects can be undertaken to replace invasive and under-productive grasses with grass species that are better suited to the soil and climate conditions of the region. These intensified grass systems allow higher stocking rates with faster animal weight gain and reduced time to slaughter, resulting in more productive, carbon-efficient livestock systems.

Another technique to optimize yield while maintaining the carbon balance is the use of integrated crop-livestock (ICL) and crop-livestock-forestry (ICLF) systems, which combine several ecosystems into one optimized agricultural framework. These synergies between these systems provide benefits to pastures through optimal plant usage, improved feed and fattening rates, increased soil fertility and quality, intensified nutrient cycling, integrated pest control, and improved biodiversity. The introduction of certain legume crops to pastures increases carbon accumulation and nitrogen fixation in soils, while their digestibility helps animal fattening and reduces methane emissions from enteric fermentation. ICLF systems yield beef cattle productivity up to ten times that of degraded pastures, additional crop production from maize, sorghum, and soybean harvests, and greatly reduced greenhouse gas balances due to forest carbon sequestration.

Crops

The Green Revolution transformed farming in many developing countries. It spread technologies that had already existed, but had not been widely used outside of industrialized nations. These technologies included "miracle seeds", pesticides, irrigation, and synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.

Seeds

In the 1970s, scientists created strains of maize, wheat, and rice that are generally referred to as high-yielding varieties (HYV). HYVs have an increased nitrogen-absorbing potential compared to other varieties. Since cereals that absorbed extra nitrogen would typically lodge (fall over) before harvest, semi-dwarfing genes were bred into their genomes. Norin 10 wheat, a variety developed by Orville Vogel from Japanese dwarf wheat varieties, was instrumental in developing wheat cultivars. IR8, the first widely implemented HYV rice to be developed by the International Rice Research Institute, was created through a cross between an Indonesian variety named “Peta” and a Chinese variety named “Dee Geo Woo Gen.”

With the availability of molecular genetics in Arabidopsis and rice the mutant genes responsible (reduced height (rht), gibberellin insensitive (gai1) and slender rice (slr1)) have been cloned and identified as cellular signalling components of gibberellic acid, a phytohormone involved in regulating stem growth via its effect on cell division. Photosynthetic investment in the stem is reduced dramatically as the shorter plants are inherently more mechanically stable. Nutrients become redirected to grain production, amplifying in particular the yield effect of chemical fertilizers.

HYVs significantly outperform traditional varieties in the presence of adequate irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizers. In the absence of these inputs, traditional varieties may outperform HYVs. They were developed as F1 hybrids, meaning seeds need to be purchased every season to obtain maximum benefit, thus increasing costs.

Crop rotation

Satellite image of circular crop fields in Haskell County, Kansas, in late June 2001. Healthy, growing crops of corn and sorghum are green (sorghum may be slightly paler). Wheat is brilliant gold. Fields of brown have been recently harvested and plowed under or have lain in fallow for the year.
 
Crop rotation or crop sequencing is the practice of growing a series of dissimilar types of crops in the same space in sequential seasons for benefits such as avoiding pathogen and pest buildup that occurs when one species is continuously cropped. Crop rotation also seeks to balance the nutrient demands of various crops to avoid soil nutrient depletion. A traditional component of crop rotation is the replenishment of nitrogen through the use of legumes and green manure in sequence with cereals and other crops. Crop rotation can also improve soil structure and fertility by alternating deep-rooted and shallow-rooted plants. A related technique is to plant multi-species cover crops between commercial crops. This combines the advantages of intensive farming with continuous cover and polyculture.

Irrigation

Overhead irrigation, center-pivot design
 
Crop irrigation accounts for 70% of the world's fresh water use.

Flood irrigation, the oldest and most common type, is typically unevenly distributed, as parts of a field may receive excess water in order to deliver sufficient quantities to other parts. Overhead irrigation, using center-pivot or lateral-moving sprinklers, gives a much more equal and controlled distribution pattern. Drip irrigation is the most expensive and least-used type, but delivers water to plant roots with minimal losses.

Water catchment management measures include recharge pits, which capture rainwater and runoff and use it to recharge groundwater supplies. This helps in the replenishment of groundwater wells and eventually reduces soil erosion. Dammed rivers creating reservoirs store water for irrigation and other uses over large areas. Smaller areas sometimes use irrigation ponds or groundwater.

Weed control

In agriculture, systematic weed management is usually required, often performed by machines such as cultivators or liquid herbicide sprayers. Herbicides kill specific targets while leaving the crop relatively unharmed. Some of these act by interfering with the growth of the weed and are often based on plant hormones. Weed control through herbicide is made more difficult when the weeds become resistant to the herbicide. Solutions include:
  • Cover crops (especially those with allelopathic properties) that out-compete weeds or inhibit their regeneration
  • Multiple herbicides, in combination or in rotation
  • Strains genetically engineered for herbicide tolerance
  • Locally adapted strains that tolerate or out-compete weeds
  • Tilling
  • Ground cover such as mulch or plastic
  • Manual removal
  • Mowing
  • Grazing
  • Burning

Terracing

Terrace rice fields in Yunnan Province, China

In agriculture, a terrace is a leveled section of a hilly cultivated area, designed as a method of soil conservation to slow or prevent the rapid surface runoff of irrigation water. Often such land is formed into multiple terraces, giving a stepped appearance. The human landscapes of rice cultivation in terraces that follow the natural contours of the escarpments, like contour ploughing, are a classic feature of the island of Bali and the Banaue Rice Terraces in Banaue, Ifugao, Philippines. In Peru, the Inca made use of otherwise unusable slopes by building drystone walls to create terraces.

Rice paddies

A paddy field is a flooded parcel of arable land used for growing rice and other semiaquatic crops. Paddy fields are a typical feature of rice-growing countries of east and southeast Asia, including Malaysia, China, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Indonesia, India, and the Philippines. They are also found in other rice-growing regions such as Piedmont (Italy), the Camargue (France), and the Artibonite Valley (Haiti). They can occur naturally along rivers or marshes, or can be constructed, even on hillsides. They require large water quantities for irrigation, much of it from flooding. It gives an environment favourable to the strain of rice being grown, and is hostile to many species of weeds. As the only draft animal species which is comfortable in wetlands, the water buffalo is in widespread use in Asian rice paddies.

Paddy-based rice-farming has been practiced in Korea since ancient times. A pit-house at the Daecheon-ni archaeological site yielded carbonized rice grains and radiocarbon dates indicating that rice cultivation may have begun as early as the Middle Jeulmun Pottery Period (c. 3500–2000 BC) in the Korean Peninsula. The earliest rice cultivation there may have used dry-fields instead of paddies. 

The earliest Mumun features were usually in naturally swampy, low-lying narrow gulleys and fed by local streams. Some Mumun paddies in flat areas were made of a series of squares and rectangles separated by bunds approximately 10 cm in height, while terraced paddies were long and irregular in shape, following the natural contours of the land at various levels.

Like today, Mumun period rice farmers used terracing, bunds, canals, and small reservoirs. Some paddy-farming techniques of the Middle Mumun period (c. 850–550 BC) can be interpreted from the well-preserved wooden tools excavated from archaeological rice paddies at the Majeon-ni site. Iron tools for paddy-farming were not introduced until sometime after 200 BC. The spatial scale of individual paddies, and thus entire paddy-fields, increased with the regular use of iron tools in the Three Kingdoms of Korea Period (c. AD 300/400–668).

A recent development in the intensive production of rice is System of Rice Intensification (SRI). Developed in 1983 by the French Jesuit Father Henri de Laulanié in Madagascar, by 2013 the number of smallholder farmers using SRI had grown to between 4 and 5 million.

Aquaculture

Aquaculture is the cultivation of the natural products of water (fish, shellfish, algae, seaweed, and other aquatic organisms). Intensive aquaculture takes place on land using tanks, ponds, or other controlled systems, or in the ocean, using cages.

Sustainable intensive farming

Sustainable intensive farming practices have been developed to slow the deterioration of agricultural land and even regenerate soil health and ecosystem services, while still offering high yields. Most of these developments fall in the category of organic farming, or the integration of organic and conventional agriculture.
Organic systems and the practices that make them effective are being picked up more and more by conventional agriculture and will become the foundation for future farming systems. They won't be called organic, because they'll still use some chemicals and still use some fertilizers, but they'll function much more like today's organic systems than today's conventional systems.
--Dr. Charles Benbrook Executive director US House Agriculture Subcommittee Director Agricultural Board - National Academy Sciences (FMR)
The System of Crop Intensification (SCI) was born out of research primarily at Cornell University and smallholder farms in India on SRI. It uses the SRI concepts and methods for rice and applies them to crops like wheat, sugarcane, finger millet, and others. It can be 100% organic, or integrated with reduced conventional inputs.

Holistic management is a systems thinking approach that was originally developed for reversing desertification. Holistic planned grazing is similar to rotational grazing but differs in that it more explicitly provides a framework for adapting to four basic ecosystem processes: the water cycle, the mineral cycle (including the carbon cycle), energy flow, and community dynamics (the relationship between organisms in an ecosystem) as equal in importance to livestock production and social welfare. By intensively managing the behavior and movement of livestock, holistic planned grazing simultaneously increases stocking rates and restores grazing land.

Pasture cropping involves planting grain crops directly into grassland without first applying herbicides. The perennial grasses form a living mulch understory to the grain crop, eliminating the need to plant cover crops after harvest. The pasture is intensively grazed both before and after grain production using holistic planned grazing. This intensive system yields equivalent farmer profits (partly from increased livestock forage) while building new topsoil and sequestering up to 33 tons of CO2/ha/year.

The Twelve Aprils grazing program for dairy production, developed in partnership with the USDA-SARE, is similar to pasture cropping, but the crops planted into the perennial pasture are forage crops for dairy herds. This system improves milk production and is more sustainable than confinement dairy production.

Integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (IMTA) is an example of a holistic approach. IMTA is a practice in which the by-products (wastes) from one species are recycled to become inputs (fertilizers, food) for another. Fed aquaculture (e.g. fish, shrimp) is combined with inorganic extractive (e.g. seaweed) and organic extractive aquaculture (e.g. shellfish) to create balanced systems for environmental sustainability (biomitigation), economic stability (product diversification and risk reduction), and social acceptability (better management practices).

Biointensive agriculture focuses on maximizing efficiency such as per unit area, energy input, and water input. 

Agroforestry combines agriculture and orchard/forestry technologies to create more integrated, diverse, productive, profitable, healthy, and sustainable land-use systems.

Intercropping can increase yields or reduce inputs and thus represents (potentially sustainable) agricultural intensification. However, while total yield per acre is often increased dramatically, yields of any single crop often diminish. There are also challenges to farmers relying on farming equipment optimized for monoculture, often resulting in increased labor inputs.

Vertical farming is intensive crop production on a large scale in urban centers, in multi-story, artificially-lit structures, using far less inputs and producing fewer environmental impacts. 

An integrated farming system is a progressive, biologically-integrated sustainable agriculture system such as IMTA or Zero waste agriculture, whose implementation requires exacting knowledge of the interactions of multiple species and whose benefits include sustainability and increased profitability. Elements of this integration can include:
  • Intentionally introducing flowering plants into agricultural ecosystems to increase pollen-and nectar-resources required by natural enemies of insect pests
  • Using crop rotation and cover crops to suppress nematodes in potatoes

Challenges

The challenges and issues of industrial agriculture for society, for the industrial agriculture sector, for the individual farm, and for animal rights include the costs and benefits of both current practices and proposed changes to those practices.] This is a continuation of thousands of years of invention in feeding ever-growing populations.
[W]hen hunter-gatherers with growing populations depleted the stocks of game and wild foods across the Near East, they were forced to introduce agriculture. But agriculture brought much longer hours of work and a less rich diet than hunter-gatherers enjoyed. Further population growth among shifting slash-and-burn farmers led to shorter fallow periods, falling yields and soil erosion. Plowing and fertilizers were introduced to deal with these problems - but once again involved longer hours of work and degradation of soil resources (Boserup, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth, Allen and Unwin, 1965, expanded and updated in Population and Technology, Blackwell, 1980.).
While the point of industrial agriculture is to profitably supply the world at the lowest cost, industrial methods have significant side effects. Further, industrial agriculture is not an indivisible whole, but instead is composed of multiple elements, each of which can be modified in response to market conditions, government regulation, and further innovation, and has its own side-effects. Various interest groups reach different conclusions on the subject.

Population growth

Population (estimate) 10,000 BCE–2000 CE

Very roughly:
Between 1930 and 2000, U.S. agricultural productivity (output divided by all inputs) rose by an average of about 2 percent annually, causing food prices to decrease. "The percentage of U.S. disposable income spent on food prepared at home decreased, from 22 percent as late as 1950 to 7 percent by the end of the century."

Other impacts

Environmental

Industrial agriculture uses huge amounts of water, energy, and industrial chemicals, increasing pollution in the arable land, usable water, and atmosphere. Herbicides, insecticides, and fertilizers are accumulating in ground and surface waters. "Many of the negative effects of industrial agriculture are remote from fields and farms. Nitrogen compounds from the Midwest, for example, travel down the Mississippi to degrade coastal fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico. But other adverse effects are showing up within agricultural production systems—for example, the rapidly developing resistance among pests is rendering our arsenal of herbicides and insecticides increasingly ineffective." Agrochemicals and monoculture have been implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder, in which the individual members of bee colonies disappear. Agricultural production is highly dependent on bees to pollinate many varieties of fruits and vegetables.

Social

A study done for the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment conducted by the UC Davis Macrosocial Accounting Project concluded that industrial agriculture is associated with substantial deterioration of human living conditions in nearby rural communities.

Environmental impact of agriculture

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 
The environmental impact of agriculture is the effect that different farming practices have on the ecosystems around them, and how those effects can be traced back to those practices. The environmental impact of agriculture varies based on the wide variety of agricultural practices employed around the world. Ultimately, the environmental impact depends on the production practices of the system used by farmers. The connection between emissions into the environment and the farming system is indirect, as it also depends on other climate variables such as rainfall and temperature. 

There are two types of indicators of environmental impact: "means-based", which is based on the farmer's production methods, and "effect-based", which is the impact that farming methods have on the farming system or on emissions to the environment. An example of a means-based indicator would be the quality of groundwater, that is effected by the amount of nitrogen applied to the soil. An indicator reflecting the loss of nitrate to groundwater would be effect-based. The means-based evaluation looks at farmers' practices of agriculture, and the effect-based evaluation considers the actual effects of the agricultural system. For example, means-based analysis might look at pesticides and fertilization methods that farmers are using, and effect-based analysis would consider how much CO2 is being emitted or what the Nitrogen content of the soil is.

The environmental impact of agriculture involves a variety of factors from the soil, to water, the air, animal and soil variety, people, plants, and the food itself. Some of the environmental issues that are related to agriculture are climate change, deforestation, genetic engineering, irrigation problems, pollutants, soil degradation, and waste.

Negatives

Climate change

Climate change and agriculture are interrelated processes, both of which take place on a worldwide scale. Global warming is projected to have significant impacts on conditions affecting agriculture, including temperature, precipitation and glacial run-off. These conditions determine the carrying capacity of the biosphere to produce enough food for the human population and domesticated animals. Rising carbon dioxide levels would also have effects, both detrimental and beneficial, on crop yields. Assessment of the effects of global climate changes on agriculture might help to properly anticipate and adapt farming to maximize agricultural production. Although the net impact of climate change on agricultural production is uncertain it is likely that it will shift the suitable growing zones for individual crops. Adjustment to this geographical shift will involve considerable economic costs and social impacts. 

At the same time, agriculture has been shown to produce significant effects on climate change, primarily through the production and release of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. In addition, agriculture that practices tillage, fertilization, and pesticide application also releases ammonia, nitrate, phosphorus, and many other pesticides that affect air, water, and soil quality, as well as biodiversity. Agriculture also alters the Earth's land cover, which can change its ability to absorb or reflect heat and light, thus contributing to radiative forcing. Land use change such as deforestation and desertification, together with use of fossil fuels, are the major anthropogenic sources of carbon dioxide; agriculture itself is the major contributor to increasing methane and nitrous oxide concentrations in earth's atmosphere.

Deforestation

Deforestation is clearing the Earth's forests on a large scale worldwide and resulting in many land damages. One of the causes of deforestation is to clear land for pasture or crops. According to British environmentalist Norman Myers, 5% of deforestation is due to cattle ranching, 19% due to over-heavy logging, 22% due to the growing sector of palm oil plantations, and 54% due to slash-and-burn farming.

Deforestation causes the loss of habitat for millions of species, and is also a driver of climate change. Trees act as a carbon sink: that is, they absorb carbon dioxide, an unwanted greenhouse gas, out of the atmosphere. Removing trees releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and leaves behind fewer trees to absorb the increasing amount of carbon dioxide in the air. In this way, deforestation exacerbates climate change. When trees are removed from forests, the soils tend to dry out because there is no longer shade, and there are not enough trees to assist in the water cycle by returning water vapor back to the environment. With no trees, landscapes that were once forests can potentially become barren deserts. The removal of trees also causes extreme fluctuations in temperature.

In 2000 the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that "the role of population dynamics in a local setting may vary from decisive to negligible," and that deforestation can result from "a combination of population pressure and stagnating economic, social and technological conditions."

Irrigation

Irrigation can lead to a number of problems:

Among some of these problems is the depletion of underground aquifers through overdrafting. Soil can be over-irrigated because of poor distribution uniformity or management wastes water, chemicals, and may lead to water pollution. Over-irrigation can cause deep drainage from rising water tables that can lead to problems of irrigation salinity requiring watertable control by some form of subsurface land drainage. However, if the soil is under irrigated, it gives poor soil salinity control which leads to increased soil salinity with consequent buildup of toxic salts on soil surface in areas with high evaporation. This requires either leaching to remove these salts and a method of drainage to carry the salts away. Irrigation with saline or high-sodium water may damage soil structure owing to the formation of alkaline soil.

Pollutants

Synthetic pesticides such as 'Malathion', 'Rogor', 'Kelthane' and 'confidor' are the most widespread method of controlling pests in agriculture. Pesticides can leach through the soil and enter the groundwater, as well as linger in food products and result in death in humans and non-targeted wildlife [DJS -- there is no evidence of this to any significant degree].  A wide range of agricultural chemicals are used and some become pollutants through use, misuse, or ignorance. The erosion of topsoil, which can contain chemicals such as herbicides and pesticides, can be carried away from farms to other places. Pesticides can be found in streams and ground water. Atrazine is a herbicide used to control weeds that grow among crops. This herbicide can disrupt endocrine production which can cause reproductive problems in mammals, amphibians and fish that have been exposed. Pollutants from agriculture have a huge effect on water quality. Agricultural nonpoint source (NPS) solution impacts lakes, rivers, wetlands, estuaries, and groundwater. Agricultural NPS can be caused by poorly managed animal feeding operations, overgrazing, plowing, fertilizer, and improper, excessive, or badly timed use of Pesticides. Pollutants from farming include sediments, nutrients, pathogens, pesticides, metals, and salts. Animal agriculture can also cause pollutants to enter the environment. Bacteria and pathogens in manure can make their way into streams and groundwater if grazing, storing manure in lagoons and applying manure to fields is not properly managed.

Listed below are additional and specific problems that may arise with the release of pollutants from agriculture.

Soil degradation

Soil degradation is the decline in soil quality that can be a result of many factors, especially from agriculture. Soils hold the majority of the world's biodiversity, and healthy soils are essential for food production and an adequate water supply. Common attributes of soil degradation can be salting, waterlogging, compaction, pesticide contamination, decline in soil structure quality, loss of fertility, changes in soil acidity, alkalinity, salinity, and erosion. Soil erosion is the wearing away of topsoil by water, wind, or farming activities. Topsoil is very fertile, which makes it valuable to farmers growing crops. Soil degradation also has a huge impact on biological degradation, which affects the microbial community of the soil and can alter nutrient cycling, pest and disease control, and chemical transformation properties of the soil.

Waste

Plasticulture is the use of plastic mulch in agriculture. Farmers use plastic sheets as mulch to cover 50-70% of the soil and allows them to use drip irrigation systems to have better control over soil nutrients and moisture. Rain is not required in this system, and farms that use plasticulture are built to encourage the fastest runoff of rain. The use of pesticides with plasticulture allows pesticides to be transported easier in the surface runoff towards wetlands or tidal creeks. The runoff from pesticides and chemicals in the plastic can cause serious deformations and death in shellfish as the runoff carries the chemicals towards the oceans.

In addition to the increased runoff that results from plasticulture, there is also the problem of the increased amount of waste form the plastic mulch itself. The use of plastic mulch for vegetables, strawberries, and other row and orchard crops exceeds 110 million pounds annually in the United States. Most plastic ends up in the landfill, although there are other disposal options such as disking mulches into the soil, on-site burying, on-site storage, reuse, recycling, and incineration. The incineration and recycling options are complicated by the variety of the types of plastics that are used and by the geographic dispersal of the plastics. Plastics also contain stabilizers and dyes as well as heavy metals, which limits the amount of products that can be recycled. Research is continually being conducted on creating biodegradable or photodegradable mulches. While there has been minor success with this, there is also the problem of how long the plastic takes to degrade, as many biodegradable products take a long time to break down.

Issues by region

The environmental impact of agriculture can vary depending on the region as well as the type of agriculture production method that is being used. Listed below are some specific environmental issues in a various different regions around the world.

Sustainable agriculture

Sustainable agriculture is the idea that agriculture should occur in a way such that we can continue to produce what is necessary without infringing on the ability for future generations to do the same. 

The exponential population increase in recent decades has increased the practice of agricultural land conversion to meet demand for food which in turn has increased the effects on the environment. The global population is still increasing and will eventually stabilise, as some critics doubt that food production, due to lower yields from global warming, can support the global population. Agriculture can have negative effects on biodiversity as well. Organic farming is a multifaceted sustainable agriculture set of practices that can have a lower impact on the environment at the small scale. However, in most cases organic farming results in lower yields in terms of production per unit area. Therefore, widespread adoption of organic agriculture will require additional land to be cleared and water resources extracted to meet the same level of production. A European meta-analysis found that organic farms tended to have higher soil organic matter content and lower nutrient losses (nitrogen leaching, nitrous oxide emissions and ammonia emissions) per unit of field area but higher ammonia emissions, nitrogen leaching and nitrous oxide emissions per product unit. It is believed by many that conventional farming systems cause less rich biodiversity than organic systems. Organic farming has shown to have on average 30% higher species richness than conventional farming. Organic systems on average also have 50% more organisms. This data has some issues because there were several results that showed a negative effect on these things when in an organic farming system. The opposition to organic agriculture believes that these negatives are an issue with the organic farming system. What began as a small scale, environmentally conscious has now become just as industrialized as conventional agriculture. This industrialization can lead to the issues shown above such as climate change, and deforestation.

Conservation tillage

Conservation tillage is an alternative tillage method for farming which is more sustainable for the soil and surrounding ecosystem. This is done by allowing the residue of the previous harvest's crops to remain in the soil before tilling for the next crop. Conservation tillage has shown to improve many things such as soil moisture retention, and reduce erosion. Some disadvantages are the fact that more expensive equipment is needed for this process, more pesticides will need to be used, and the positive effects take a long time to be visible. The barriers of instantiating a conservation tillage policy are that farmers are reluctant to change their methods, and would protest a more expensive, and time consuming method of tillage than the conventional one they are used to.

Climate resilience

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Climate resilience can be generally defined as the capacity for a socio-ecological system to: (1) absorb stresses and maintain function in the face of external stresses imposed upon it by climate change and (2) adapt, reorganize, and evolve into more desirable configurations that improve the sustainability of the system, leaving it better prepared for future climate change impacts.

With the rising awareness of climate change impacts by both national and international bodies, building climate resilience has become a major goal for these institutions. The key focus of climate resilience efforts is to address the vulnerability that communities, states, and countries currently have with regards to the environmental consequences of climate change. Currently, climate resilience efforts encompass social, economic, technological, and political strategies that are being implemented at all scales of society. From local community action to global treaties, addressing climate resilience is becoming a priority, although it could be argued that a significant amount of the theory has yet to be translated into practice. Despite this, there is a robust and ever-growing movement fueled by local and national bodies alike geared towards building and improving climate resilience.

Overview

Definition of climate resilience

In actuality, there is still a great deal of abstract discussion and debate regarding a number of subtle nuances associated with the precise definition of the climate resilience perspective, such as its relation to climate change adaptation, the extent to which it should encompass actor-based versus systems-based approaches to improving stability, and its relationship with the balance of nature theory or homeostatic equilibrium view of ecological systems.

Currently, the majority of work regarding climate resilience has been centered around examining the capacity for social-ecological systems to sustain shocks and maintain the integrity of functional relationships in the face of external forces. However, there is a growing consensus in academic literature which argues that greater attention needs to be focused on investigating the other critical aspect of climate resilience, which is the capacity for social-ecological systems to renew and develop, and to utilize disturbances as opportunities for innovation and evolution of new pathways that improve the system's ability to adapt to macroscopic changes.

Climate resilience vs. climate adaptation

The fact that climate resilience encompasses a dual function, to absorb shock as well as to self-renew, is the primary means by which it can be differentiated from the concept of climate adaptation. In general, adaptation is viewed as a group of processes and actions that help a system absorb changes that have already occurred, or may be predicted to occur in the future. For the specific case of environmental change and climate adaptation, it is argued by many that adaptation should be defined strictly as encompassing only active decision-making processes and actions - in other words, deliberate changes made in response to climate change.  Of course, this characterization is highly debatable: after all, adaptation can also be used to describe natural, involuntary processes by which organisms, populations, ecosystems and perhaps even social-ecological systems evolve after the application of certain external stresses. However, for the purposes of differentiating climate adaptation and climate resilience from a policymaking standpoint, we can contrast the active, actor-centric notion of adaptation with resilience, which would be a more systems-based approach to building social-ecological networks that are inherently capable of not only absorbing change, but utilizing those changes to develop into more efficient configurations.

Inter-connectivity between climate resilience, climate change, adaptability, and vulnerability

A graphic displaying the inter-connectivity between climate change, adaptability, vulnerability, and resilience.
 
A conversation about climate resilience is incomplete without also incorporating the concepts of adaptations, vulnerability, and climate change. If the definition of resiliency is the ability to recover from a negative event, in this case climate change, then talking about preparations beforehand and strategies for recovery (aka adaptations), as well as populations that are more less capable of developing and implementing a resiliency strategy (aka vulnerable populations) are essential. This is framed under the assumed detrimental impacts of climate change to ecosystems and ecosystem services.

Historical overview of climate resilience

Climate resilience is a relatively novel concept that is still in the process of being established by academia and policymaking institutions. However, the theoretical basis for many of the ideas central to climate resilience have actually existed since the 1960s. Originally an idea defined for strictly ecological systems, resilience was initially outlined by C.S. Holling as the capacity for ecological systems and relationships within those systems to persist and absorb changes to “state variables, driving variables, and parameters.”  This definition helped form the foundation for the notion of ecological equilibrium: the idea that the behavior of natural ecosystems is dictated by a homeostatic drive towards some stable set point. Under this school of thought (which maintained quite a dominant status during this time period), ecosystems were perceived to respond to disturbances largely through negative feedback systems – if there is a change, the ecosystem would act to mitigate that change as much as possible and attempt to return to its prior state. However, the idea of resilience began evolving relatively quickly in the coming years. 

As greater amounts of scientific research in ecological adaptation and natural resource management was conducted, it became clear that oftentimes, natural systems were subjected to dynamic, transient behaviors that changed how they reacted to significant changes in state variables: rather than work back towards a predetermined equilibrium, the absorbed change was harnessed to establish a new baseline to operate under. Rather than minimizes imposed changes, ecosystems could integrate and manage those changes, and use them fuel the evolution of novel characteristics. This new perspective of resilience as a concept that inherently works synergistically with elements of uncertainty and entropy first began to facilitate changes in the field of adaptive management and environmental resources, through work whose basis was built by Holling and colleagues yet again.

By the mid 1970s, resilience began gaining momentum as an idea in anthropology, culture theory, and other social sciences. Even more compelling is the fact that there was significant work in these relatively non-traditional fields that helped facilitate the evolution of the resilience perspective as a whole. Part of the reason resilience began moving away from an equilibrium-centric view and towards a more flexible, malleable description of social-ecological systems was due to work such as that of Andrew Vayda and Bonnie McCay in the field of social anthropology, where more modern versions of resilience were deployed to challenge traditional ideals of cultural dynamics.

Eventually by the late 1980s and early 1990s, resilience had fundamentally changed as a theoretical framework. Not only was it now applicable to social-ecological systems, but more importantly, resilience now incorporated and emphasized ideas of management, integration, and utilization of change rather than simply describing reactions to change. Resilience was no longer just about absorbing shocks, but also about harnessing the changes triggered by external stresses to catalyze the evolution the social-ecological system in question.

As the issues of global warming and climate change have gained traction and become more prominent since the early 1990s, the question of climate resilience has also emerged. Considering the global implications of the impacts induced by climate change, climate resilience has become a critical concept that scientific institutions, policymakers, governments, and international organizations have begun to rally around as a framework for designing the solutions that will be needed to address the effects of global warming.

Climate resilience and environmental justice

Applications of a resilience framework: addressing vulnerability

A climate resilience framework offers a rich plethora of contributions that can improve our understanding of environmental processes, and better equip governments and policymakers to develop sustainable solutions that combat the effects of climate change. To begin with, climate resilience establishes the idea of multi-stable socio-ecological systems. As discussed earlier, resilience originally began as an idea that extended from the stable equilibrium view – systems only acted to return to their pre-existing states when exposed to a disturbance. But with modern interpretations of resilience, it is now established that socio-ecological systems can actually stabilize around a multitude of possible states. Secondly, climate resilience has played a critical role in emphasizing the importance of preventive action when assessing the effects of climate change. Although adaptation is always going to be a key consideration, making changes after the fact has a limited capability to help communities and nations deal with climate change. By working to build climate resilience, policymakers and governments can take a more comprehensive stance that works to mitigate the harms of global warming impacts before they happen. Finally, a climate resilience perspective encourages greater cross-scale connectedness of systems. Climate change scholars have argued that solely relying on theories of adaptation is also limiting because inherently, this perspective does not necessitate as much full-system cohesion as a resilience perspective would. Creating mechanisms of adaptation that occur in isolation at local, state, or national levels may leave the overall social-ecological system vulnerable. A resilience-based framework would require far more cross-talk, and the creation of environmental protections that are more holistically generated and implemented.

Vulnerability

Negative impacts of climate change are those that are least capable of developing robust and comprehensive climate resiliency infrastructure and response systems. However what exactly constitutes a vulnerable community is still open to debate. The International Panel on Climate Change has defined vulnerability using three characteristics: the “adaptive capacity, sensitivity, and exposure” to the effects of climate change. The adaptive capacity refers to a community's capacity to create resiliency infrastructure, while the sensitivity and exposure elements are both tied to economic and geographic elements that vary widely in differing communities. There are, however, many commonalities between vulnerable communities.

Vulnerability can mainly be broken down into 2 major categories, economic vulnerability, based on socioeconomic factors, and geographic vulnerability. Neither are mutually exclusive.

Economic vulnerability

World gross national income per capita.
 
At its basic level, a community that is economically vulnerable is one that is ill-prepared for the effects of climate change because it lacks the needed financial resources. Preparing a climate resilient society will require huge investments in infrastructure, city planning, engineering sustainable energy sources, and preparedness systems. From a global perspective, it is more likely that people living at or below poverty will be affected the most by climate change and are thus the most vulnerable, because they will have the least amount of resource dollars to invest in resiliency infrastructure. They will also have the least amount of resource dollars for cleanup efforts after more frequently occurring natural climate change related disasters.

Geographic vulnerability

A second definition of vulnerability relates to geographic vulnerability. The most geographically vulnerable locations to climate change are those that will be impacted by side effects of natural hazards, such as rising sea levels and by dramatic changes in ecosystem services, including access to food. Island nations are usually noted as more vulnerable but communities that rely heavily on a sustenance based lifestyle are also at greater risk.

Abaco Islands- An example of a low elevation island community likely to be impacted by rising sea level associated with changing climate.
 
Roger E. Kasperson and Jeanne X. Kasperson of the Stockholm Environmental Institute compiled a list of vulnerable communities as having one or more of these characteristics.
  • food insecure
  • water scarce
  • delicate marine ecosystem
  • fish dependent
  • small island community

Vulnerability and equity: environmental justice and climate justice

Equity is another essential component of vulnerability and is closely tied to issues of environmental justice and climate justice. Who participates in and who has access to climate resiliency services and infrastructure are more than likely going to fall along historically unequitable patterns of distribution. As the most vulnerable communities are likely to be the most heavily impacted, a climate justice movement is coalescing in response. There are many aspects of climate justice that relate to resiliency and many climate justice advocates argue that justice should be an essential component of resiliency strategies. Similar frameworks that have been applied to the Climate Justice movement can be utilized to address some of these equity issues. The frameworks are similar to other types of justice movements and include- contractariansim which attempts to allocate the most benefits for the poor, utilitarianism which seeks to find the most benefits for the most people, egalitarianism which attempts to reduce inequality, and libertarianism which emphasizes a fair share of burden but also individual freedoms.

The Act for Climate Justice Campaign has defined climate justice as “a vision to dissolve and alleviate the unequal burdens created by climate change. As a form of environmental justice, climate justice is the fair treatment of all people and freedom from discrimination with the creation of policies and projects that address climate change and the systems that create climate change and perpetuate discrimination”.

Climate Justice can incorporate both grassroots as well as international and national level organizing movements.

Local level issues of equity

Many indigenous peoples live sustenance based lifestyles, relying heavily on local ecosystem services for their livelihoods. According to some definitions, indigenous peoples are often some of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and advocating for participation of marginalized groups is one goal of the indigenous people's climate justice movement. Climate change will likely dramatically alter local food production capacity, which will impact those people who are more dependent on local food sources and less dependent on global or regional food supplies. The greatest injustice is that people living this type of lifestyle are least likely to have contributed to the causes of global climate change in the first place. Indigenous peoples movements often involve protests and calling on action from world leaders to address climate change concerns.

Another local level climate justice movement is the adaptation finance approach which has been found in some studies to be a positive solution by providing resource dollars directly to communities in need.

International and national climate justice

The carbon market approach is one international and national concept proposed that tries to solve the issue by using market forces to make carbon use less affordable, but vulnerable host communities that are the intended beneficiaries have been found to receive little to no benefit. One problem noted with the carbon market approach is the inherent conflict of interest embedded between developed and sustenance based communities. Developed nations that have often prioritized growth of their own gross national product over implementing changes that would address climate change concerns by taxing carbon which might damage GDP. In addition the pace of change necessary to implement a carbon market approach is too slow to be effective at most international and national policy levels.

Alternatively, a study by V.N Mather, et al. proposes a multi-level approach that focuses on addressing some primary issues concerning climate justice at local and international levels. The approach includes:
  • developing the capacity for a carbon market approach
  • focusing on power dynamics within local and regional government
  • managing businesses in regard to carbon practices
  • special attention given to developing countries

Climate justice, environmental justice, and the United States

The issue of environmental justice and climate justice is relevant within the United States because historically communities of color and low socioeconomic communities have been under served and underrepresented in terms of distribution and participation. The question of “by and for whom” resiliency strategies are targeted and implemented is of great concern. Inadequate response and resiliency strategies to recent natural disasters in communities of color, such as Hurricane Katrina, are examples of environmental injustices and inadequate resilience strategies in already vulnerable communities.

New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina levee damage.
 
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has recently begun a Climate Justice campaign in response to events such as Hurricane Katrina and in preparation for future climate change related natural disasters. The goal of this campaign is to address the 3 R's of climate justice: resilience, resistance, and revisioning. The NAACP's climate justice initiative will address climate resilience through advocacy, outreach, political actions, research and education.
Climate gap
Another concept important for understanding vulnerability in the United States is the climate gap. The climate gap is the inequitably negative impact on poor people and people of color due to the effects of climate change. Some of these negative impacts include higher cost of living expenses, higher incidences of heat related health consequences in urban areas that are likely to experience urban heat island effects, increased pollution in urban areas, and decreases in available jobs for poor people and people of color. Some suggested solutions to close the climate gap include suggesting legislative policies that would reduce the impact of climate change by reducing carbon emissions with the emphasis of reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and toxic air pollution in neighborhoods that are already heavily impacted, usually urban centers. Other solutions include increasing access to quality health care for poor people and people of color, preparedness planning for urban heat island effects, identifying neighborhoods that are most likely to be impacted, investing in alternative fuel and energy research, and measuring the results of policy impacts.

Theoretical foundations for building climate resilience

As the threat of environmental disturbances due to climate change becomes more and more relevant, so does the need for strategies to build a more resilient society. As climate resiliency literature has revealed, there are different strategies and suggestions that all work towards the overarching goal of building and maintaining societal resiliency.

Urban resilience

There is increasing concern on an international level with regards to addressing and combating the impending implications of climate change for urban areas, where populations of these cities around the world are growing disproportionately high. There is even more concern for the rapidly growing urban centers in developing countries, where the majority of urban inhabitants are poor or “otherwise vulnerable to climate-related disturbances.” Urban centers around the world house important societal and economic sectors, so resiliency framework has been augmented to specifically include and focus on protecting these urban systems. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines resilience as “the ability of a social or ecological system to absorb disturbances while retaining the same basic structure and ways of functioning, the capacity of self-organization, and the capacity to adapt to stress and change.” One of the most important notions emphasized in urban resiliency theory is the need for urban systems to increase their capacity to absorb environmental disturbances. By focusing on three generalizable elements of the resiliency movement, Tyler and Moench's urban resiliency framework serves as a model that can be implemented for local planning on an international scale. 

The first element of urban climate resiliency focuses on “systems’ or the physical infrastructure embedded in urban systems. A critical concern of urban resiliency is linked to the idea of maintaining support systems that in turn enable the networks of provisioning and exchange for populations in urban areas. These systems concern both physical infrastructure in the city and ecosystems within or surrounding the urban center; while working to provide essential services like food production, flood control, or runoff management. For example, city electricity, a necessity of urban life, depends on the performance of generators, grids, and distant reservoirs. The failure of these core systems jeopardizes human well-being in these urban areas, with that being said, it is crucial to maintain them in the face of impending environmental disturbances. Societies need to build resiliency into these systems in order to achieve such a feat. Resilient systems work to “ensure that functionality is retained and can be re-instated through system linkages” despite some failures or operational disturbances. Ensuring the functionality of these important systems is achieved through instilling and maintaining flexibility in the presence of a “safe failure.” Resilient systems achieve flexibility by making sure that key functions are distributed in a way that they would not all be affected by a given event at one time, what is often referred to as spatial diversity, and has multiple methods for meeting a given need, what is often referred to as functional diversity. The presence of safe failures also plays a critical role in maintaining these systems, which work by absorbing sudden shocks that may even exceed design thresholds. Environmental disturbances are certainly expected to challenge the dexterity of these systems, so the presence of safe failures almost certainly appears to be a necessity.

Further, another important component of these systems is bounce-back ability. In the instance where dangerous climatic events affect these urban centers, recovering or "bouncing-back" is of great importance. In fact, in most disaster studies, urban resilience is often defined as "the capacity of a city to rebound from destruction." This idea of bounce-back for urban systems is also engrained in governmental literature of the same topic. For example, the former government's first Intelligence and Security Coordinator of the United States described urban resilience as "the capacity to absorb shocks and to bounce back into functioning shape, or at the least, sufficient resilience to prevent...system collapse." Keeping these quotations in mind, bounce-back discourse has been and should continue to be an important part of urban climate resiliency framework. Other theorists have critiqued this idea of bounce-back, citing this as privileging the status quo, rather advocating the notion of ‘bouncing forward’, permitting system evolution and improvement.

The next element of urban climate resiliency focuses on the social agents (also described as social actors) present in urban centers. Many of these agents depend on the urban centers for their very existence, so they share a common interest of working towards protecting and maintaining their urban surroundings. Agents in urban centers have the capacity to deliberate and rationally make decisions, which plays an important role in climate resiliency theory. One cannot overlook the role of local governments and community organizations, which will be forced to make key decisions with regards to organizing and delivering key services and plans for combating the impending effects of climate change. Perhaps most importantly, these social agents must increase their capacities with regards to the notions of “resourcefulness and responsiveness. Responsiveness refers to the capacity of social actors and groups to organize and re-organize, as well as the ability to anticipate and plan for disruptive events. Resourcefulness refers to the capacity of social actors in urban centers to mobilize varying assets and resources in order to take action. Urban centers will be able to better fend for themselves in the heat of climatic disturbances when responsiveness and resourcefulness is collectively achieved in an effective manner.

The final component of urban climate resiliency concerns the social and political institutions present in urban environments. Governance, the process of decision making, is a critical element affecting climate resiliency. As climate justice has revealed, the individual areas and countries that are least responsible for the phenomenon of climate change are also the ones who are going to be most negatively affected by future environmental disturbances. The same is true in urban centers. Those who are most responsible for climate change are going to disproportionately feel the negative effects of climatic disturbances when compared to their poorer, more vulnerable counterparts in society. Just like the wealthier countries have worked to create the most pollution, the wealthier subpopulations of society who can afford carbon-emitting luxuries like cars and homes undoubtedly produce a much more significant carbon footprint. It is also important to note that these more vulnerable populations, because of their inferior social statuses, are unable to participate in the decision-making processes with regards to these issues. Decision-making processes must be augmented to be more participatory and inclusive, allowing those individuals and groups most affected by environmental disturbances to play an active role in determining how to best avoid them. Another important role of these social and political institutions will concern the dissemination of public information. Individual communities who have access to timely information with regards to hazards are better able to respond to these threats.

Human resilience

Global climate change is going to increase the probability of extreme weather events and environmental disturbances around the world, needless to say, future human populations are going to have to confront this issue. Every society around the world differs in its capacity with regards to combating climate change because of certain pre-existing factors such as having the proper monetary and institutional mechanisms in place to execute preparedness and recovery plans. Despite these differences, communities around the world are on a level-playing field with regards to building and maintaining at least some degree “human resilience”.

Resilience has two components: that provided by nature, and that provided through human action and interaction. An example of climate resilience provided by nature is the manner in which porous soil more effectively allows for the drainage of flood water than more compact soil. An example of human action that affects climate resilience would be the facilitation of response and recovery procedures by social institutions or organizations. This theory of human resilience largely focuses on the human populations and calls for building towards the overall goal of decreasing human vulnerability in the face of climate change and extreme weather events. Vulnerability to climatic disturbances has two sides: the first deals with the degree of exposure to dangerous hazards, which one can effectively identify as susceptibility. The second side deals with the capacity to recover from disaster consequences, or resilience in other words. The looming threat of environmental disturbances and extreme weather events certainly calls for some action, and human resiliency theory seeks to solve the issue by largely focusing on decreasing the vulnerability of human populations.

How do human populations work to decrease their vulnerability to impending and dangerous climatic events? Up until recently, the international approach to environmental emergencies focused largely on post-impact activities such as reconstruction and recovery. However, the international approach is changing to a more comprehensive risk assessment that includes “pre-impact disaster risk reduction - prevention, preparedness, and mitigation.” In the case of human resiliency, preparedness can largely be defined as the measures taken in advance to ensure an effective response to the impact of environmental hazards. Mitigation, when viewed in this context, refers to the structural and nonstructural measures undertaken to limit the adverse impacts of climatic disturbances. This is not to be confused to mitigation with regards to the overall topic of climate change, which refers to reduction of carbon or greenhouse emissions. By accounting for these impending climate disasters both before and after the occur, human populations are able to decrease their vulnerability to these disturbances. 

A major element of building and maintaining human resilience is public health. The institution of public health as a whole is uniquely placed at the community level to foster human resilience to climate-related disturbances. As an institution, public health can play an active part in reducing human vulnerability by promoting “healthy people and healthy homes.”) Healthy people are less likely to suffer from disaster-related mortality and are therefore viewed as more disaster-resilient. Healthy homes are designed and built to maintain its structure and withstand extreme climate events. By merely focusing on the individual health of populations and assuring the durability of the homes that house these populations, at least some degree human resiliency towards climate change can be achieved.

Climate resilience in practice

The building of climate resilience is a highly comprehensive undertaking that involves of an eclectic array of actors and agents: individuals, community organizations, micropolitical bodies, corporations, governments at local, state, and national levels as well as international organizations. In essence, actions that bolster climate resilience are ones that will enhance the adaptive capacity of social, industrial, and environmental infrastructures that can mitigate the effects of climate change. Currently, research indicates that the strongest indicator of successful climate resilience efforts at all scales is a well-developed, pre-existing network of social, political, economic and financial institutions that is already positioned to effectively take on the work of identifying and addressing the risks posed by climate change. Cities, states, and nations that have already developed such networks are, as expected, to generally have far higher net incomes and GDP. 

Therefore, it can be seen that embedded within the task of building climate resilience at any scale will be the overcoming of macroscopic socioeconomic inequities: in many ways, truly facilitating the construction of climate resilient communities worldwide will require national and international agencies to address issues of global poverty, industrial development, and food justice. However, this does not mean that actions to improve climate resilience cannot be taken in real time at all levels, although evidence suggests that the most climate resilient cities and nations have accumulated this resilience through their responses to previous weather-based disasters. Perhaps even more importantly, empirical evidence suggests that the creation of the climate resilient structures is dependent upon an array of social and environmental reforms that were only successfully passed due to the presence of certain sociopolitical structures such as democracy, activist movements, and decentralization of government. 

Thus it can be seen that to build climate resilience one must work within a network of related social and economic decisions that can have adverse effects on the success of a resilience effort given the competing interests participating in the discussion. Given this, it is clear that the social and economic scale play a vital role in shaping the feasibility, costs, empirical success, and efficiency of climate resilience initiatives. There is a wide variety of actions that can be pursued to improve climate resilience at multiple scales – the following subsections we will review a series of illustrative case studies and strategies from a broad diversity of societal contexts that are currently being implemented to strengthen climate resilience.

Local and community level

Housing and workplace conditions

alt text
Improving housing conditions in Kenya is a prime target for local climate resilience efforts
 
Housing inequality is directly related to the ability for individuals and communities to sustain adverse impacts brought on by extreme weather events that are triggered by climate change, such as severe winds, storms, and flooding. Especially for communities in developing nations and the Third World, the integrity of housing structures is one of the most significant sources of vulnerability currently.  However, even in more developed nations such as the US, there are still multitudes of socioeconomically disadvantaged areas where outdated housing infrastructure is estimated to provide poor climate resilience at best, as well as numerous negative health outcomes. 

Efforts to improve the resiliency of housing and workplace buildings involves not only fortifying these buildings through use of updated materials and foundation, but also establishing better standards that ensure safer and health conditions for occupants. Better housing standards are in the course of being established through calls for sufficient space, natural lighting, provision for heating or cooling, insulation, and ventilation. Another major issue faced more commonly by communities in the Third World are highly disorganized and inconsistently enforced housing rights systems. In countries such as Kenya and Nicaragua, local militias or corrupted government bodies that have reserved the right to seizure of any housing properties as needed: the end result is the degradation of any ability for citizens to develop climate resilient housing – without property rights for their own homes, the people are powerless to make changes to their housing situation without facing potentially harmful consequences. 

Grassroots community organizing and micropolitical action

Modern climate resilience scholars have noted that contrary to conventional beliefs, the communities that have been most effective in establishing high levels of climate resilience have actually done so through “bottom-up” political pressures. “Top-down” approaches involving state or federal level decisions have empirically been marred with dysfunction across different levels of government due to internal mismanagement and political gridlock. As a result, in many ways it is being found that the most efficient responses to climate change have actually been initiated and mobilized at local levels. Particularly compelling has been the ability of bottom-up pressures from local civil society to fuel the creation of micropolitical institutions that have compartmentalized the tasks necessary for building climate resilience. For example, the city of Tokyo, Japan has developed a robust network of micropolitical agencies all dedicated to building resilience in specific industrial sectors: transportation, workplace conditions, emergency shelters, and more. Due to their compact size, local level micropolitical bodies can act quickly without much stagnation and resistance from larger special interests that can generate bureaucratic dysfunction at higher levels of government.

Low-cost engineering solutions

Equally important to building climate resilience has been the wide array of basic technological solutions have been developed and implemented at community levels. In developing countries such as Mozambique and Tanzania, the construction of concrete “breaker” walls and concentrated use of sandbags in key areas such as housing entrances and doorways has improved the ability of communities to sustain the damages yielded by extreme weather events. Additional strategies have included digging homemade drainage systems to protect local infrastructure of extensive water damage and flooding. 

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An aerial view of Dehli, India where urban forests are being developed to improve the weather resistance and climate resilience of the city
 
In more urban areas, construction of a “green belt” on the peripheries of cities has become increasingly common. Green belts are being used as means of improving climate resilience – in addition to provide natural air filtering, these belts of trees have proven to be a healthier and sustainable means of mitigating the damages created by heavy winds and storms.

State and national level

Climate-resilient infrastructure

Infrastructure failures can have broad-reaching consequences extending away from the site of the original event, and for a considerable duration after the immediate failure.  Furthermore, increasing reliance infrastructure system interdependence, in combination with the effects of climate change and population growth all contribute to increasing vulnerability and exposure, and greater probability of catastrophic failures.  To reduce this vulnerability, and in recognition of limited resources and future uncertainty about climate projections, new and existing long-lasting infrastructure must undergo a risk-based engineering and economic analyses to properly allocate resources and design for climate resilience.
  
Incorporating climate projections into building and infrastructure design standards, investment and appraisal criteria, and model building codes is currently not common.  Some resilience guidelines and risk-informed frameworks have been developed by public entities.  For instance, the New York City Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency, New York City Transit Authority and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have each developed independent design guidelines for the resiliency of critical infrastructure.
  
To address the need for consistent methodologies across infrastructure sectors and to support development of standards for adaptive design and risk management owing to climate change, the American Society of Civil Engineers has published a Manual of Practice on Climate-Resilient Infrastructure.  The manual offers guidance for adaptive design methods, characterization of extremes, development of flood design criteria, flood load calculation and the application of adaptive risk management principals account for more severe climate/weather extremes.

Infrastructural development disaster preparedness protocols

At larger governmental levels, general programs to improve climate resiliency through greater disaster preparedness are being implemented. For example, in cases such as Norway, this includes the development of more sensitive and far-reaching early warning systems for extreme weather events, creation of emergency electricity power sources, enhanced public transportation systems, and more.  To examine another case study, the state California in the US has been pursuing more comprehensive federal financial aid systems for communities afflicted by natural disaster, spurred in part by the large amounts of criticism that was placed on the US federal government after what was perceived by many to be a mishandling of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy relief.

Additionally, a key focus of action at state and federal levels is in improving water management infrastructure and access. Strategies include the creation of emergency drinking water supplies, stronger sanitation technology and standards, as well as more extensive and efficient networks of water delivery.

Social services

Climate resilience literature has also noted that one of the more indirect sources of resilience actually lies in the strength of the social services and social safety net that is provided for citizens by public institutions. This is an especially critical aspect of climate resilience in more socioeconomically disadvantaged communities, cities, and nations. It has been empirically found that places with stronger systems of social security and pensions oftentimes have better climate resiliency.  This is reasoning in the following manner: first of all, better social services for citizens translates to better access to healthcare, education, life insurance, and emergency services. Secondly, stronger systems of social services also generally increase the overall ownership of relevant economic assets that are correlated with better quality of life such as savings, house ownership, and more. Nations where residents are on more stable economic footing are in situations where there is a far higher incentive for private investment into climate resilience efforts.

Global level

International treaties

At the global level, most action towards climate resilience has been manifested in the signing of international agreements that set up guidelines and frameworks to address the impacts of climate change. Notable examples include the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC, and the 2010 Cancun Agreement. In some cases, as is the case with the Kyoto Protocol for example, these international treaties involve placing legally binding requirements on participant nations to reduce processes that contribute to global warming such as greenhouse gas emissions. In other cases, such as the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, proposals for the creation of international funding pools to assist developing nations in combating climate change are seen. However, that enforcement of any of the requirements or principles that are established in such international treaties has ambiguous: for example, although the 2010 Cancun conference called for the creation of a 100 billion dollar “Green Climate Fund” for developing nations, if and how this fund will actually be created still remains unclear.

Case studies

As the looming threat of climate change and environmental disturbances becomes more and more immediate, so does the need for policy to combat the issue. As a relatively new phenomenon, climate change has yet to receive the political attention it deserves. However, the climate justice and climate change movements are gaining momentum on an international scale as both grass roots campaigns and supranational organizations begin to gain influence. However, the most significant and impacting changes come from national and state governments around the world, as they have the political and monetary power to more effectively enforce their proposals.

United States (as a country)

As it stands today, there is no country-wide legislation with regards to the topic of climate resiliency in the United States. However, in mid February 2014, President Barack Obama announced his plan to propose a $1 billion “Climate Resilience Fund”. The details of exactly what the fund will seek to accomplish are vague since the fund is only in the stage of being proposed for Congress's approval in 2015. However, in the speech given the day of the announcement of this proposal, Obama claimed he will request “...new funding for new technologies to help communities prepare for a changing climate, set up incentives to build smarter, more resilient infrastructure. And finally, my administration will work with tech innovators and launch new challenges under our Climate Data Initiative, focused initially on rising sea levels and their impact on the coasts, but ultimately focused on how all these changes in weather patterns are going to have an impact up and down the United States - not just on the coast but inland as well - and how do we start preparing for that.” Obama's fund incorporates facets of both urban resiliency and human resiliency theories, by necessarily improving communal infrastructure and by focusing on societal preparation to decrease the country's vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.

Phoenix, Arizona

Phoenix's large population and extremely dry climate make the city particularly vulnerable to the threats of drought and extreme heat. However, the city has recently incorporated climate change into current (and future) water management and urban design. And by doing so, Phoenix has taken steps to ensure sustainable water supplies and to protect populations that are vulnerable to extreme heat, largely through improving the sustainability and efficiency of communal infrastructure. For example, Phoenix uses renewable surface water supplies and reserves groundwater for use during the instance when extended droughts arise. The city is also creating a task force to redesign the downtown core to minimize the way buildings trap heat and increase local temperatures.

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The outdated infrastructure pictured here in the Phoenix downtown will be undergoing drastic changes geared towards improvements in efficiency.

Denver, Colorado

The city of Denver has made recent strides to combat the threat of extreme wildfires and precipitation events. In the year 1996, a fire burned nearly 12,000 acres around Buffalo Creek, which serves as the main source of the city's water supply. Two months following this devastating wildfire, heavy thunderstorms caused flash floods in the burned area, having the effect of washing sediment into the city's reservoir. In fact, this event washed more sediment into the reservoir than had accumulated in the 13 years prior. Water treatment costs were estimated to be $20 million over the next decade following the event. Denver needed a plan to make sure that the city would not be devastated by future wildfire and flash flood events. DenverWater and the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region are working together to restore more than 40,000 acres of National Forests lands through processes like reforestation, erosion control, and the decommissioning of roads. Further, Denver has installed sensors in the reservoirs in order to monitor the quality of the water and quantity of debris or sediment. These accomplishments will have the effect of building a more resilient Denver, Colorado towards the impending increase of extreme weather events such as wildfire and flooding.

China

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Pictured here is the conversion of three large rivers in Ningbo, China. The country is taking substantial measures to combat the flash floods predicted to intensify in the future.
 
China has been rapidly emerging as a new superpower, rivaling the United States. As the most populated country in the world, and one of the leaders of the global economy, China's response to the impending effects of climate change is of great concern for the entire world. A number of significant changes are expected to affect China as the looming threat of climate change becomes more and more imminent. Here's just one example; China has experienced a seven-fold increase in the frequency of floods since the 1950s, rising every decade. The frequency of extreme rainfall has increased and is predicted to continue to increase in the western and southern parts of China. The country is currently undertaking efforts to reduce the threat of these floods (which have the potential effect of completely destroying vulnerable communities), largely focusing on improving the infrastructure responsible for tracking and maintaining adequate water levels. That being said, the country is promoting the extension of technologies for water allocation and water-saving mechanisms. In the country's National Climate Change Policy Program, one of the goals specifically set out is to enhance the ability to bear the impacts of climate change, as well as to raise the public awareness on climate change. China's National Climate Change Policy states that it will integrate climate change policies into the national development strategy. In China, this national policy comes in the form of its "Five Year Plans for Economic and Social Development". China's Five Year Plans serve as the strategic road maps for the country's development. The goals spelled out in the Five Year Plans are mandatory as government officials are held responsible for meeting the targets.

India

As the world's second most populous country, India is taking action on a number of fronts in order to address poverty, natural resource management, as well as preparing for the inevitable effects of climate change. India has made significant strides in the energy sector and the country is now a global leader in renewable energy. In 2011 India achieved a record $10.3 billion (USD) in clean energy investments, which the country is now using to fund solar, wind, and hydropower projects around the country. In 2008, India published its National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC), which contains several goals for the country. These goals include but are not limited to: covering one third of the country with forests and trees, increasing renewable energy supply to 6% of total energy mix by 2022, and the further maintenance of disaster management. All of the actions work to improve the resiliency of the country as a whole, and this proves to be important because India has an economy closely tied to its natural resource base and climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, water, and forestry.

Accelerating change

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