Global rallying points for mitigation and adaptation
At 4CMR, we and our global Partners have selected several large, difficult and highly visible projects through which to explore the practical challenges of climate change mitigation and adaptation. These projects represent our committment to bringing our expertise and the covening power of the University of Cambridge to bear on demonstrating that the world can meet these challenges in ways that balance economic vitality, energy security, environmental integrity and a high quality of life for the global population.
In each of these projects, our expertise and resources play only a small role, although we believe it is a role that catalyses others to more dramatic and far-reaching action. By sponsoring and helping to guide these projects, we seek to draw in a much larger group of partners, and their vastly richer set of resources, to show the world that climate change can indeed be tackled through creative and yet quite practical actions. We consider them iconic because they stand as examples of what can be accomplished in communities, nations and lives globally when scholarly study, political will and private action are brought to the table around a few ambitious projects. Through these projects, and the media coverage they bring, we seek to set the template for thousands of similarly ambitious projects elsewhere.
For the next several years (beginning Autumn 2011), our Iconic Projects are:
Retrofitting Cambridge for Carbon Reduction: The Climate Change Risk Mitigation Project is a national collaborative effort mobilising the resources of the public and private sectors to move forward on large projects delivering on national aspirations in climate change, sustainability and a low carbon economy. We are committed to facilitating at-scale engineering of the built and natural environments of communities, with a focus on reduction of carbon emissions. The initial project is retroftting of the historical buildings of the City of Cambridge to move towards an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, demonstrating that reaching climate change targets while conserving our historical heritage is achievable.
Mobilising Global Will by Saving Venice: Decarbonising the global economy will be an incredibly large challenge requiring mobilising the resources and will of public and private sector actors world-wide. This calls for an iconic project to save a world heritage site familiar to everyone and emblematic of what is at stake if mitigation actions fail. Venice is such a site, increasingly under threat both as it sinks and as sea levels rise. We have chosen to focus the world's attention onto the connections between the collective actions of nations and reducing the risks to Venice, joining with Venetian resident Jane da Mosto's Saving Venice studies to mobilise the global will to action on climate change.
Adapting London to a Changing Climate: ARCADIA (Adaptation and Resilience in Cities: Analysis and Decision making using Integrated Assessment) is developing a complete climate impacts model of the City of London, including a macroeconomic model to assess the effects of climate change events (floods, heatwaves, etc) on the economy. Through this analysis, we are identifying ways in which London can be amoungst the first major cities of the world to adapt to climate change and reduce the vulnerability of its economy. The modelling is being led through the Environmental Change Institute of the University of Oxford, with public and private sector partners throughout London and the UK drawing on the findings.
Saving the World's Forests, Livelihoods and Sequestered Carbon: Deforestation is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and a lost opportunity to sequester carbon in vegetation. There is an immediate need to slow, stop and reverse deforestation. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (otherwise known as “REDD+”) has therefore emerged as an area of international climate change policy. At 4CMR, we have joined with public and private sector organisations world-wide to set the legal, political, social and economic frameworks for REDD+ to be effective on a global scale, allowing for forest preservation while maintaining and enhancing the livelihoods of indigenous peoples.
Would you like to join us in any of these Iconic Projects in climate change mitigation and adaptation? Please Contact Us..
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