New Zealand climate change expert, Dr Peter Urich from the International Global Change Institute of the University of Waikato, Hamilton, will address the ASEAN-JAPAN PROJECT ON MULTIFUNCTIONALITY OF AGRICULTURE AND THE 3 UN CONVENTIONS ON BIODIVERSITY, CLIMATE CHANGE AND LAND DEGRADATION in the Philipines in a few weeks time. Please see the abstract below

Experience from adaptive and community-based resource management suggests that building resilience into both human and ecological systems is an effective way to cope with environmental change both of the incremental long-term variety and that characterized by extreme or short duration events. We argue that a multi-dimensional approach is required that encompasses, in the broadest sense, policies and strategies that reflect the long and short-term nature of global change. In this paper we bring into focus elements of resilience for one aspect of global environmental change – short-term climatic change associated with El Niño in the western Pacific Basin. El Niño phenomena are increasingly signaled in advance of their onset, yet the estimates of their duration, severity and geographic extent remain imprecise. In spite of uncertainty, we argue that it is beneficial to heed warnings of potential harm and to intervene in society to possibly avert extreme negative ecological and social impacts which can trigger socio-political stress and widespread human suffering. The El Niño of 2004 in the Philippines and specifically, the response to it in the Central Visayan island of Bohol, is used as a vehicle to explore strategies and barriers to foster more effective and timely interventions with future El Niño events, both in terms of governance and social and ecological technologies. Lessons learned in Bohol in 2004 may be applicable to other provinces of the Philippines and communities in SE Asia.