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On 11 November 2014, a remarkable event occurred. President Barack Obama of the United States and President Xi Jinping of China announced a bilateral agreement to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) that cause global warming by their respective nations. On 12 December 2015, a year and a month later, representatives of 195 countries attending the 21st Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Paris, France, announced the Paris Climate Agreement. The goal of the Paris Climate Agreement is to limit the future emission of GHGs such that the rise in global mean surface temperature will be no more than 1.5 °C (target) or 2.0 °C (upper limit) above the pre-industrial level. The Paris Climate Agreement utilizes an approach for reducing the emissions of GHGs that is distinctly different than earlier efforts. The approach for Paris consists of a series of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), submitted by the world’s nations, reflecting either a firm commitment (unconditional INDCs) or a plan contingent on financial and/or technological support (conditional INDCs). The Obama–Xi announcement was instrumental in the framing of the Paris Climate Agreement. The INDCs submitted by the USA and China were built closely upon the November 2014 bilateral announcement. China and the USA rank number one and two, respectively, in terms of national emission of GHGs. Practically speaking, unified global action to combat global warming required these two nations to get on the same page.

Large-scale environmental problems have become prominent byproducts of the interactions between human activities and the biophysical settings in which they occur. Some of these problems, such as the destruction of tropical forests, arise in areas within the jurisdiction of individual states but have consequences (e.g., biodiversity loss, climate change) that are regional to global in scope. Other problems, including the seasonal thinning of the stratospheric ozone layer, occur in areas that lie beyond the jurisdiction of nation states. Still others, like marine dead zones, originate in areas within the jurisdiction of individual states but can spread and have impacts on areas outside these jurisdictional boundaries. In all these cases, efforts to come to terms with the relevant problems require international (often global) responses that call for transboundary cooperation and, more often than not, eventuate in the development of regulatory arrangements designed to limit or even prohibit the human actions that give rise to the problems.

This edited volume is part of a project funded under the Asian Development Bank’s Research and Development Technical Assistances (TAs): TA 7907 on Drivers of Poverty Reduction in Asia and the Pacific and TA 8239 on Addressing Knowledge and Statistical Gaps in Relation to Poverty Reduction, Inequality, and Inclusive Growth.

Human-caused climate change is perhaps the defining environmental issue of the early twenty-first century. We observe the earth’s climate in the present, but observations of future climate are not available yet. So in order to predict the future, we rely on simulation models to predict future climate. This book is designed to be a guide to climate simulation and prediction for the non-specialist and an entry point for understanding uncertainties in climate models. The goal is not to be simply a popular guide to climate modeling and prediction, but to help those using climate models to understand the results. This book provides background on the earth’s climate system and how it might change, a detailed qualitative analysis of how climate models are constructed, and a discussion of model results and the uncertainty inherent in those results. Throughout the text, terms in bold will be referenced in the glossary. References are provided as footnotes in each chapter. Who uses climate models? Climate model users are practitioners in many fields who desire to incorporate information about climate and climate change into planning and management decisions. Users may be scientists and engineers in fields such as ecosystems or water resources. These scientists are familiar with models and the roles of models in natural science. In other cases, the practitioners are engineers, urban planners, epidemiologists, or architects. Though not necessarily familiar with models of natural science, experts in these fields use quantitative information for decision-making. These experts are potential users of climate models. We hope in the end that by understanding climate models and their uncertainties, the reader will understand how climate models are constructed to represent the earth’s climate system. The book is intended to help the reader become a more competent interpreter or translator of climate model output.

This book is about governance for drought resilience. But that simple sentence alone might rouse several questions. Because what do we mean with drought, and how does that relate to water scarcity? And what do we mean with resilience, and why is resilience needed for tackling drought? And how does governance enter this equation? We argue that governance assessment—the study of restricting and facilitating characteristics of a governance setting—can greatly aid implementation of drought adaptation measures, thereby increasing drought resilience. In this chapter we will first discuss the occurrence of drought in (Northwest) Europe, and why governance matters for increasing drought resilience (Sect. 1.1). Second, we will shed more light on the notion of governance and how governance is dealt with by us (Sect. 1.2). Third, we will review existing governance assessment methods (Sect. 1.3). Fourth, we will use this knowledge on governance and governance assessment to introduce our key principles in governance assessment, and discuss how we have applied these in a real-life project setting (Sect. 1.4). Fifth, and last, this chapter ends with an outlook into the rest of the book, to guide the reader in reading (Sect. 1.5).

Global warming and extreme weather events reported in the past years have attracted a lot of attention in academia, industry, and media. The ongoing debate around the observed climate change has focused on three important questions: will occurrence of extreme weather events increase in the future, which geographical locations will be most affected, and to what degree will climate change have impact on future ship traffic and design of ships and offshore structures? The present study shortly reviews the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report, AR4, (IPCC 2007), the IPCC SREX ‘‘Summary for Policymakers’’ report (IPCC 2012) and other relevant publications regarding projections of meteorological and oceanographic conditions in the twenty-first century and beyond with design needs in focus. Emphasis is on wave climate and its potential implications on safe design and operations of ship structures.