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HP recognizes that climate change represents perhaps the most significant conservation challenge of our era. As such, HP has joined forces with WWF (known as the World Wildlife Fund in the USA and Canada) to design an innovative private sector-NGO partnership which represents a comprehensive approach to help reduce the causes and consequences of climate change both locally and globally.
Responding to climate change and reducing greenhouse gases calls for the use of technology in new and innovative approaches. We are already demonstrating our leadership in this field by working in collaboration with WWF to reduce our own emissions and the emissions of our products. However, addressing climate change also involves working on the ground to build resilience in communities and ecosystems around the world, so they are able to cope with the unavoidable effects of climate change. WWF and HP are initiating such work in a number of countries where both organizations have a presence. Many of these countries, such as the Unites States, Japan, Brazil, India and China, also happen to be some of the most important regions in shaping the future use of energy and responding to climate change. In these countries, HP ICT technology allows WWF staff and local communities to communicate more effectively with each other, and to document and share the impacts of climate change on the lives of community members and to connect local WWF staff and communities with the global on-line Climate Witness community.
Our commitment to WWF equates to more than US$2 million in cash and HP equipment — including notebooks (for field staff), servers, printers, scanners, wireless points, and HP consulting services to support IT infrastructure. This contribution will help establish projects aimed at addressing the causes and consequences of climate change on a global level, focusing on analysis, research and data collection.
The projects include:
- Climate Witness — an online forum soliciting and sharing stories of individuals and communities affected by climate change with a purpose of raising global awareness of the consequences of climate change, and;
- The Epicenter for Climate Adaptation — a project that assesses the impacts of climate change on natural systems, in order to create climate adaptation and resiliency strategies that will help protect these systems.
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Climate Witness |
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The Climate Witness project communicates personal accounts of the impacts of climate change, with web-based projects in strategically selected countries around the world. Many people are unaware of the high stakes that climate change poses and the dramatic affects that climate change is already having on the day-to-day lives of ordinary people everywhere. Climate Witness seeks to raise this awareness by providing a public forum through which the experiences of people impacted directly by climate change are broadcast to audiences across the region and around the world. This brings a "real-life" perspective to what many view as a somewhat ambiguous and distant threat.
By identifying how climate change is affecting a community, responses can be developed that help at-risk places and communities adapt to the effects, while also promoting actions that address the causes. In addition, by learning how climate change is affecting other people around the planet, people can identify how climate change is affecting or will affect their own lives, livelihoods and cultures.
The virtual Climate Witness community is powered by HP technology and developed with collaboration from HP technical advisors/collaborators. The website is a tool for engaging members of the public about the impacts of climate change, thereby creating a place where the public can exchange experiences, learn more about climate science, monitoring and solutions which people can be part of.
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| China and India — key Climate Witness communities |
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Two of the four global key Witness communities are located within the APJ region — China and India.
China's growing economy and massive population mean that energy use is on the rise, and subsequently the country is feeling the effects of climate change. Climate Witness will highlight the social, environmental and economic cost of climate change in this region, as told by the people of the region, to inspire China and others to plan for a low carbon future and for building resilience to climate change.
Like China, India has a rapidly growing economy, population base and carbon footprint. At the same time, India is also experiencing some of the very real effects of climate change, from the melting glaciers of the Himalayas where communities worry about glacial lake outbursts as water builds behind tentative earthen dams (while villagers downstream wonder what will happen when the glacier is gone and their water supply diminishes), to the island villages of the Sunderbans along the Indian Ocean where rising sea levels have already overtaken whole islands, to the heat waves soaring above 120ºF. India presents dramatic, yet little known cases of climate change impacts however these will now be brought to life through Climate Witness.
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| EpiCenter for Climate Adaptation |
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In order for WWF to meet its conservation goals, it has determined that it now must integrate climate change responses into everything it does. This means that in addition to continuing its work to limit the rate and extent of climate change (so that the global average temperature does not reach 2ºC above pre-industrial levels), WWF will now also include adaptation or resilience-building into all of its conservation activities. WWF and HP are partnering to design an EpiCenter for Climate Adaptation that will assess the impacts of climate on natural systems around the world in a bid to advance conservation strategies and tools to consider, predict and prepare for climate change.
The purpose of the EpiCenter for Climate Adaptation is to catalyze the next wave of conservation, which will move beyond geographic boundaries and begin to consider the most effective methods for protecting biodiversity and the environment from climate change. Driven by HP technology invention, the EpiCenter will allow trained, innovative conservation practitioners to distribute key information, gather, receive and synthesize new information, and actively share and promote new conservation approaches. HP will provide guidance regarding appropriate and innovative technology to maximize the efficacy of the Center staff in their mission.
After the initial creation of the EpiCenter, focus will be placed on developing and implementing regional resilience building strategies in some of the most important places to biodiversity conservation on earth.
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Forecasting climate change impacts on India's Sunderbans |
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A primary focus of the EpiCenter will be in fielding research projects across six key regions, with a focus on modeling the impacts of climate change within each. Within the APJ region one of the key pilot projects includes assessing how climate change will affect sea level rise and the loss of critical habitat for biodiversity and people in India's Sunderbans. Formed where the Ganges and Brahmaputra River join and flow into the Bay of Bengal, the Sunderbans host the largest estuarine delta in the world. The Sunderbans are declared as a biosphere reserve and a World Heritage Site for its large mangrove forests and high populations of Bengal tigers.
The region's rich mangrove forests, which form the basis of the entire ecosystem, are at increasing risk from sea level rise, as are the region’s islands, some of which have already been lost due to rising sea levels, with another 12 islands expected to disappear by 2020. The Sunderbans’ rich mangrove swamps account for nearly 60 percent of India’s mangrove habitat and they serve as a nursery for a number of fish and shellfish, which form the base of the food chain that supports entire coastal fishing villages in Eastern India. People living in and around this landscape depend on the mangroves for honey, firewood, deer meat, thatch, fish and shrimp. The mangroves also serve as a key buffer for an increasingly volatile sea.
Rising sea levels causes the loss of habitat for all coastal dwelling organisms, increases coastal erosion and affects the intensity of storm surge. Throughout this project, WWF will work to model and assess the projected loss from rising oceans and the implications for protected areas and critical habitat already designated in the Sunderbans. The information collected will be used to help prioritize new protected areas, determine what locations are most at-risk and begin to develop new management strategies to respond to this threat.
Following the work of scoping and modeling the climate change vulnerability of this region in 2007, work will commence to implement on-the-ground solutions in 2008.
Commenting on the unique private sector-NGO partnership, WWF's Climate Witness Initiative Manager Alexander Quarles van Ufford said "HP and WWF have a shared commitment in addressing the causes of climate change and limiting its impact on the planet. Climate Witness connects the issue of climate change to real people and real experiences and we believe, by creating such a global understanding, that this will result in people taking action to stop climate change and in recognition that the world in fact has the means to solve the problem. On the other hand, The EpiCenter for Climate Conservation represents the next wave of conservation, bringing together leading climate experts to monitor at-risk ecosystems in order to tailor adaptation and resilience efforts to help protect some of the most valuable and threatened places on earth."
HP APJ's Corporate Social Responsibility Manager, Rita Sully, said "HP's investment in these projects highlights our ongoing commitment to WWF and forms part of our social investment and environmental strategy to use technology to help reduce our environmental impact, as well as that of our customers, partners and suppliers. Our contribution to these innovative projects will generate greater understanding of the climate challenge that we hope will encourage action from corporations, governments and individuals - not only in our APJ region, but around the world." |
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