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Preparing for climate change will enhance the safety, well-being, and livelihoods of American citizens and minimize disruption of the services on which they depend. With leadership and coordination from the Task Force, Federal agencies are making important progress on identifying and managing risks associated with climate change. In particular, significant interagency efforts are underway to make information on climate impacts more accessible and useful to communities and decision makers across the country, effectively manage natural resources and critical U.S. infrastructure, and enhance efforts to promote adaptation internationally.
Freshwater resources are critical to the health of people, the environment, and the economy. Recent studies and assessments of climate change impacts, including the 2009 "Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States" prepared by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, identify several major impacts of a changing climate on the Nation's fresh- water resources. For instance, projected increases in air temperatures will lead to warmer waters. Rainfall amounts are expected to decline in some areas and increase in others, while the propor- tion of precipitation that falls as snow decreases. Rainfall and storms are expected to be more intense. In some areas rising sea level is projected to inundate water infrastructure, such as water treatment facili- ties, and degrade coastal groundwater resources. These impacts of a changing climate pose significant challenges for managers of freshwater resources. Ensuring adequate water supply will be more difficult. New problems will arise for water managers working to protect human life, health, and property. Changing water-resources conditions will also make protecting the quality of freshwater resources, habitats, and aquatic life more complex. In October 2010, the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force published a Progress Report to the President describing Federal agency actions needed to better prepare the Nation to respond to the impacts of a changing climate. The Progress Report directed the Task Force's Water Resources and Climate Change Adaptation Workgroup to lead the development of a national action plan to identify steps that Federal agencies can take to improve management of freshwater resources in a changing climate.
As concentrations of greenhouse gases and heat-trapping particles increase in the atmosphere, it is becoming ever more urgent to understand and prepare for the resulting changes in climate. These changes include not only temperature increases but also shifts in precipitation patterns, storm tracks, and other parameters. Climate change affects human health, water and energy supplies, food production, coastal communities, ecosystems, and many other aspects of society and the environment. This book presents an overview of the national strategy and progress that the federal government is taking in adapting to climate change with a focus on the progress report of the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force.
Climate change poses risks to many environmental and economic systems, including agriculture, infrastructure, and ecosystems. This report examines: (1) federal funding for climate change activities and how these activities are organized; (2) the extent to which methods for defining and reporting climate change funding are interpreted consistently across the federal government; (3) federal climate change strategic priorities, and the extent to which funding is aligned with these priorities; and (4) what options, if any, are available to better align federal climate change funding with strategic priorities. Includes recommendations. Charts and tables. This is a print on demand edition of an important, hard-to-find publication.
Public policy analysts and political pundits alike tend to describe the policymaking process as a reactive sequence in which government develops solutions for clearly evident and identifiable problems. While this depiction holds true in many cases, it fails to account for instances in which public policy is enacted in anticipation of a potential future problem. Whereas traditional policy concerns manifest themselves through ongoing harms, "anticipatory problems" are projected to occur sometime in the future, and it is the prospect of their potentially catastrophic impact that generates intense speculation and concern in the present. Anticipatory Policymaking: When Government Acts to Prevent Problems and Why It Is So Difficult provides an in depth examination of the complex process through which United States government institutions anticipate emerging threats. Using contemporary debates over the risks associated with nanotechnology, pandemic influenza, and global warming as case study material, Rob A. DeLeo highlights the distinctive features of proactive governance. By challenging the pervasive assumption of reactive policymaking, DeLeo provides a dynamic approach for conceptualizing the political dimensions of anticipatory policy change.
As the world shifts away from the unquestioned American hegemony that followed in the wake of the Cold War, the United States is likely to face new kinds of threats and sharper resource constraints than it has in the past. However, the country's alliances, military institutions, and national security strategy have changed little since the Cold War. American foreign and defense policies, therefore, should be assessed for their fitness for achieving sustainable national security amidst the dynamism of the international political economy, changing domestic politics, and even a changing climate. This book brings together sixteen leading scholars from across political science, history, and political economy to highlight a range of American security considerations that deserve a larger role in both scholarship and strategic decision-making. In these chapters, scholars of political economy and the American defense budget examine the economic engine that underlies U.S. military might and the ways the country deploys these vast (but finite) resources. Historians illuminate how past great powers coped with changing international orders through strategic and institutional innovations. And regional experts assess America's current long-term engagements, from NATO to the chaos of the Middle East to the web of alliances in Asia, deepening understandings that help guard against both costly commitments and short-sighted retrenchments. This interdisciplinary volume sets an agenda for future scholarship that links politics, economics, and history in pursuit of sustainable security for the United States - and greater peace and stability for Americans and non-Americans alike.