Views from the Alps: Regional Perspectives on Climate Change (Politics, Science, and the Environment) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 026251981X ISBN 13: 9780262519816

Publisher: The MIT Press, 1998

Synopsis

Focusing on the Alpine region to look at climate change's regional manifestations.

Although climate change is a global problem, there is a growing recognition of the need to look at its regional manifestations and management. This book takes such a regional approach to the Alpine region. The result of the ongoing Swiss research program Climate and Environment in the Alpine Region (CLEAR), it incorporates the work of an independent network of approximately fifty researchers from a variety of disciplines.

The Alpine region is the perfect focus for such a study because of the wealth of historical and contemporary data. The contributors avoid impractical "absolute" solutions to the problem of climate change. They explicitly recognize that climate policy involves not just environmental policy but also economic, agricultural, social, and urban policy. The science required for climate policy need not provide a single definitive answer to the problem of climate change. Rather, it can contribute a variety of insights, explanations, scenarios, and open questions to the public debate. The authors aim at a science for policy that helps to develop realistic options in an ongoing debate involving scientists as well as policymakers and ordinary citizens.Topics covered include past and current climate dynamics, scenarios for future climate development, the sensitivity of plant and soil ecosystems to climate change, scenarios for future ecosytem development, and creative policy responses to mobilize regional action for industrial innovation. The topics are addressed in the spirit of Integrated Assessment (IA), a method that combines scientific and social expertise to explore political and technical strategies for dealing with environmental problems such as climate change.

About this title

About the Author

Carlo C. Jaeger is Head of the Social Systems Department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).

Review

An assessment of responses to global climate change is only meaningful within the context of local impacts and opportunities. This book is the fruit of a pioneering effort to bring together the critical social and natural science elements of such a study focused on the Alps. I see this book as compulsory reading for those trying to translate the IPCC's global assessments into concrete policy options at a regional scale.

―Hadi Dowlatabadi, Director, Center for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change, Department of Engineering & Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University

About this edition

• Publisher: The MIT Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 026251981X
• ISBN 13: 9780262519816
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 531
• Editor: Cebon Peter, Dahinden Urs, Davies Huw, Imboden Dieter, Jaeger Carlo C.