Jun 17, 2014 | Risk and resilience
By Junko Mochizuki, IIASA Risk, Policy, and Vulnerability Program
Catastrophic natural disasters such as Typhoon Haiyan of 2013 and Thailand’s flood of 2011 have highlighted the need for improved preparedness and proactive planning in developing countries. As population and economic activities continue to grow in hazard-prone areas, the economic costs of natural disasters are expected to rise globally, threatening the prospects for poverty alleviation and sustainable development.
Workshop participants learn to use IIASA’s CATSIM tool.
Cambodia is no exception. Frequent natural disasters continue to strain the country’s meager fiscal resources. Flood-related expenditure in particular has increased in recent years. In 2013, the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, in charge of major road construction, diverted approximately 20% of its non-maintenance budget for recovery and reconstruction. Ministry of Rural Development, in charge of rural sanitation, health and agricultural projects, faces similar constraints. Some of the costliest disasters have occurred in recent years: the 2013 flood cost $1 billion and the 2011 flood $624 million in damage and losses. The World Bank recently estimated that the annual average expected cost of natural disasters in Cambodia is approximately 0.7% of GDP.
On June 10-11, I participated in an IIASA workshop on this topic in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, along with IIASA researcher Keith Williges. Our goal was to train Cambodian policymakers on the concept of disaster risk and need for better fiscal preparedness, using IIASA’s CATSIM model. Like many low-income countries, Cambodia’s ability to access resources through taxation and external loans is limited. Using CATSIM, policymakers can evaluate alternative options for preparedness including hazard mitigation and reserve fund and assess how further accumulation of economic assets may raise risk in the longer term.
In 2011, Cambodia experienced heavy flooding after strong typhoons and heavy rain. Photo credit: Thearat Touch EU/ECHO
Risk-based planning is still uncommon globally and particularly so in developing countries like Cambodia. Year after year, scarce resources are wasted because national and local policymakers do not have access to good risk information such as risk maps and timely weather forecasts. This could change, however, as detailed risk maps are becoming available and a new standard operation procedure for early warning system is now being prepared under this project. The CATSIM workshop has also familiarized policymakers with the concept of economic and fiscal risk of natural disasters.
While policymakers understand the potential costs rising from natural disasters, the real challenge is to link such risk information strategically. Without concrete advice on how risk maps can prioritize budget allocation, for example, it is unlikely that decision makers will change their old practice of non-risk based planning. In addition to quantifying and communicating economic, social, and environmental benefits of risk reduction and management, further barriers including financial, institutional and cognitive gaps must also be addressed. Bridging science with policy implementation requires strategic linking, and the CATSIM training marked an important first step for improved risk-based planning and co-production of knowledge in Cambodia.
More information:
May 28, 2014 | Poverty & Equity
By Larry Willmore, IIASA Research Scholar
Until recently, all old-age pensions in Mexico were earnings-related, financed with government subsidies and payroll taxes. For this reason only 22% of older Mexicans had pensions in the year 2000. By 2013, thanks to social pensions, coverage had risen to 88%. Social pensions are non-contributory benefits, which do not require a record of employment or contributions to a retirement scheme.
An elderly woman sells flowers on the street of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
In a new paper published by HelpAge International, a London-based charity, I chronicle the rise of social pensions in Mexico, and discuss what remains to be done.
The rise in pension coverage began in 2001, with the introduction of a universal pension for residents of Mexico City (the Federal District) aged 70 and older. The scheme was extremely popular, and the governor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, left office with high approval ratings. He left to campaign for the presidency, promising to extend universal pensions to the rest of the country. He was the only candidate to support a social pension in the 2006 presidential race. Although the promise of a universal pensions resonated with voters, Mr López lost narrowly to Felipe Calderón, who disliked social pensions in general, and universal pensions in particular.
Despite President Calderón’s opposition to social pensions, members of Congress were able to launch a universal 70 y más pension scheme, providing monthly benefits of MX$500 (US$45) for rural Mexicans aged 70 and over. In January 2012 the unthinkable happened – Calderón in his last year of office extended the 70 y más scheme to urban Mexico. The target population (rural and urban) increased from 2.0 to 3.5 million, even though the program now excluded those with earnings-related pensions, so was no longer universal.
In the meantime, 17 of Mexico’s 31 states had followed Mexico City’s lead by introducing social pensions on their own. The federal entities that introduced social pensions are diverse, and have little in common in terms of health, education, income or coverage by earnings-related pensions. Sub-national schemes also vary significantly in terms of coverage and benefit level. Interestingly, the only two federal entities to introduce universal pensions were, respectively, the most developed (Federal District) and the least developed (Chiapas).
By 2012 social pensions in Mexico had shifted from a marginal political issue supported by a single political party, to one supported by the presidential candidate of each major party. Enrique Peña Nieto promised to lower the age of eligibility from 70 to 65 years. He won the election and, on assuming office, immediately extended social pensions to those aged 65-69 while continuing to exclude recipients of an earnings-related pension.
Mexico has moved quickly from limited to near universal pension coverage, but progress is urgently needed in three areas:
- Pension coverage is incomplete. Nearly one million older people have no pension. They should be added to the social pension registry as soon as possible.
- The social pension currently covers only half the cost of food needed for bare subsistence. It should be doubled immediately, to reach the extreme poverty line.
- The social pension should be extended to those with an earnings-related pension, restoring the ideal of a universal pension. Without universality, it will be difficult, perhaps impossible, to increase the size of Mexico’s social pension to the extreme poverty line or higher.
Reference
Larry Willmore (2014). Towards universal pension coverage in Mexico. Pension watch briefing no. 13, HelpAge International, May 2014. http://www.helpage.org/download/537ccce61a7b6
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
May 19, 2014 | Energy & Climate, IIASA Network
John Schellnhuber
Scientists who have worked for many years in the field of climate change sometimes grow cynical about the possibility that the world will address the problem. After over 40 years of research on the subject, there is still no global agreement on climate change, and greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase. This despite growing evidence of the severity of the problem.
But John Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) since its founding in 1992, remains hopeful.
“The odds are against us, but they are not zero,” he told an audience of IIASA researchers on 13 May. In a wide-ranging lecture for IIASA staff, Schellnhuber highlighted some of the most recent findings on climate change from PIK researchers, but also shared his thoughts on the potential for the world to take action to mitigate the emissions that are leading to climate warming.
The human race has blossomed on this planet only in the last 11,000 years, a period of very stable climate known as the Holocene. Without this stability, Schellnhuber pointed out, humans would not have been able to develop agriculture, let alone the technological advances of the industrial revolution or the population explosions that followed from these developments. Destabilizing this climate that has led to such success could be dangerous—and evidence suggests that it will be most dangerous to people in developing countries, who did the least to cause the problem.
Some of the more worrisome research to come out of PIK and other climate research centers in recent years focuses on possible tipping points or “non-linearity” in the climate system. For example, changes in the jet stream, related to declining Arctic sea ice cover and warming in the Arctic, are already proving to have major effects on weather, possibly contributing to recent heat waves like the 2010 heat wave in Russia, as well as floods in more southern regions—such extreme weather events are likely to become more frequent, said Schellnhuber, in a world with greater warming.
A new study from PIK researchers shows that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet may also be in danger of melt that would raise sea levels. (Image courtesy NASA Goddard)
At the same time, a new study from PIK scientists suggests that the glaciers which serve as the outlet for the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet might melt, effectively unplugging the passages that hold the ice sheet in place. Schellnhuber said, “If global warming removes that plug, there could be an unstoppable flow of ice into the ocean.”
New research from NASA announced this week suggests that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may already have been so destabilized. Schellnhuber points out that the countries that will experience the greatest impacts of sea level rise—primarily in the tropics—contributed the least to the problem.
A moral issue
Many researchers at both IIASA and PIK work closely with policymakers to help define the costs and benefits of climate action. But Schellnhuber argued that only a social movement will provide the push that policymakers need in order to support strong action. When he talks to heads of government, he said, they listen to what he has to say. But without broad support, they cannot or will not act.
“I think it is a moral issue in the end. People have to decide whether they want to do something,” he said. “The older I get and the more I learn about the challenges, the more I think this is the only way.”
References
Tang, Q, Zhang X, Francis JA. (2014). Extreme summer weather in northern mid-latitudes linked to a vanishing cryosphere. Nature Climate Change 4, 45–50 (2014) doi:10.1038/nclimate2065
Levermann, A., Bamber, J., Drijfhout, S., Ganopolski, A., Haeberli, W., Harris, N.R.P., Huss, M., Krüger, K., Lenton, T., Lindsay, R.W., Notz, D., Wadhams, P., Weber, S. (2012): Potential climatic transitions with profound impact on Europe – Review of the current state of six ‘tipping elements of the climate system’. Climatic Change 110 (2012), 845-878, [DOI 10.1007/s10584-011-0126-5]
Joughin, I, Smith BE, Medley B. (2014) Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Underway for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica. Science. 10.1126/science.1249055
Rignot E, Mouginot J, Morlighem M, Seroussi H, and Scheuchl B. (2014) Widespread, rapid grounding line retreat of Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith and Kohler glaciers, West Antarctica from 1992 to 2011. Geophysical Research Letters. DOI: 10.1002/2014GL060140
Apr 30, 2014 | Alumni, Food & Water
Eric F. Wood is a hydrologist at Princeton University, well-known for his work in hydrology, climate, and meteorology. He worked as a research scholar in IIASA’s Water program from 1974 to 1976. On 30 April, 2014, he received the European Geophysical Union’s Alfred Wegener Medal in Vienna, Austria.
Eric F. Wood (Credit: Princeton University)
IIASA: How did you get interested in hydrology? What drew you to the field?
EW: I came to IIASA after I finished my doctorate at MIT. I worked in the areas of system analysis and statistics related to water resources. During my first sabbatical leave at the Institute of Hydrology in the UK (now the Center for Hydrology and Ecology), I started to collaborate with Keith Beven on hydrological modeling, which started my transition towards the physical side of the water cycle from the policy and systems analysis side.
A few years later, Robert Gurney, then at NASA and now at the University of Reading (UK), asked if I would be on the Science Advisory Committee for NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS), which was just starting to be planned. This started my research activities in terrestrial remote sensing. Over the next 25 years these elements have played heavily in my research activities.
What have been the biggest changes in hydrology and earth science over your career – either in terms of new understandings, or in how the science is done?
I can name three huge changes, all inter-connected: One is the increase in computational resources. High performance computing—petabyte computing using 500,000+ cores—is now available that allows us to simulate the terrestrial water and energy budgets using physics resolving land surface models at 100m to 1km resolutions over continental scales, and soon at global scales. The second big change is the availability of remotely sensed observations. There are satellite missions that have lasted far beyond their planned lifetimes, such as the NASA EOS Terra mission, where we now have over 15 years of consistent observations. These observations have been reprocessed as algorithms have improved so we can now use the information to understand environmental change at regional to global scales. The third major shift has been computer storage. Large amounts are available at low prices. We have about 500 Terabytes of RAID storage, and can acquire 150TB for about $10,000 or less. This allows us to store model simulations, remote sensing data, and do analyses that were once impossible. Together, these three changes have transformed my field, and the field of climate change related to terrestrial hydrology. Going forward, we have the data, the projections and analytical tools to look at water security in the 21st Century under environmental change.
What insights has remote sensing brought to hydrology?
Remote sensing offers a global consistency that is unavailable with in-situ observations, and offers observations over regions without ground data. This permits us to analyze hydrologic events such as droughts within a global context, and relate these hydrologic events to other drivers like ENSO (tropical Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies) that affect weather and seasonal climate patterns.
Wood’s work has focused in part on drought and climate change. Badwater, California, a huge salt flat drainage system for the Death Valley desert. Credit: Carolina Reyes (distributed via imaggeo.egu.eu)
What do you see as the key questions currently facing water resources?
The biggest question I see over the next decades is how water security will be affected by environmental change. By environmental change I mean climate change, global urbanization, increasing demand for food, land use and land cover change, pollution, etc. Water security is coupled to food and energy security, and water security is and it is intrinsically linked to the climate system and how that may be changing.
How did IIASA influence your research interests or career?
I made many friendships during my stay at IIASA and I was exposed to world-class research and researchers. This helped me in thinking about important research questions and the types of problems and research that will have impact.
What do you think is the role for IIASA in the worldwide research community?
There are many answers to this question. IIASA plays an important role in providing critical scientific information and analyses related to global issues that go beyond countries – transboundary analyses, and therefore that can provide the scientific basis for global policies. There is an urgent need for more global policies on environmental change and adaptation, food and water security, and environmental refugees, to name just a couple examples in my area.
IIASA has also developed scientific methods and data that can be applied by various groups. For example, IIASA’s world renowned integrated assessment models have been used in climate change modeling for the IPCC and Coupled Model intercomparison Project (CMIP).
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Apr 23, 2014 | Alumni, Energy & Climate
By Alan McDonald, IIASA Alumnus (1979-82 and 1997-2000) and member of the IIASA Alumni Advisory Board
I stumbled on IIASA in 1975. I was 24 and working for General Electric’s Fast Breeder Reactor Department. I was supposed to figure out how safe General Electric should make its new breeder reactor, a type of nuclear reactor (The project later died when Jimmy Carter came to the White House and the uranium price plummeted). We researched what was going on around the world on determining acceptable risks. The best stuff was coming from this place outside Vienna called the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. We didn’t know IIASA was only two years old. We only knew its papers on determining acceptable risks were better than anyone else’s.
In 1977 I look a leave from GE to go to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. In my second year I was a teaching assistant for Howard Raiffa and took his seminar on the art and science of negotiation. After graduation, I asked if I could get a job at IIASA. Perhaps in an administrative capacity, he thought, since I didn’t have a PhD. If I wrote a page about why IIASA should consider me, he might forward it to Laxenburg.
Wolf Häfele hired me for what was then called the Energy Systems Program (ENP). It was 1979, six years after the Arab oil embargo, the creation of OPEC, and an explosion of energy studies in the US and other oil importing countries. All those national studies projected national oil demands exceeding supplies by varying amounts depending on the policies being modeled. Then they labeled the unmet demand “imports.” IIASA was the first to check if all those imports might add up to more than the oil exporters could export, and what might be done about it if they did. In addition, ENP developed the energy supply model MESSAGE, now used in multiple national and international studies. Cesare Marchetti’s logistic model taught humility about dreams of quick policy-driven transitions away from oil. And ENP still had some of the world’s best work on risk acceptance — which had the added benefit of provoking Mike Thompson to analyze the issue through the lens of cultural anthropology and generate a whole new set of useful insights.
I met my wife, Sue, at IIASA. She was in Personnel and, when I arrived, briefed me about leave slips and all the rest. Part way through, she stopped. “You’re not listening,” she said. “If I have questions, I can come back,” said I. I did, and I did.
Two and a half years later we left IIASA, got married and did a 5-month road-trip honeymoon around the US on the theory it might be another 50 years before we were again so unburdened with obligations (right so far). The trip ended in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The US membership in IIASA was being exiled from Washington to Cambridge due to Dick Pearle’s and President Reagan’s animosity. I joined up to pitch IIASA’s virtues to foundations, US corporations and anyone who’d listen in Washington. In pitching IIASA’s virtues, there was a lot to work with.
Now there’s even more.
IIASA Alumni Day will take place on April 29, 2014, and we are inviting alumni to send their memories and photos of their time at IIASA. For more alumni memories, see the IIASA Alumni Web page.
From left, Alan McDonald, Sue (Buffery) McDonald, David McDonald (no relation), Walter Foith, Linda Foith, and Bill Godwin-Toby taking a break during the July 4th games, 1980.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
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