Adaptive management techniques for drought in South America, extreme precipitation in West Africa with disaster relief agencies: soap, blankets, visas to cross boundaries: launched plans 6 wks before floods rather than after calamity. Red Cross/ Red Crescent co-ordination to dialog with forecasters.
Recommendations:
Create climate sensitive societies
Accelerated urgency requires working together
ACMAD (www.acmad.org) since 1987 responding to Africa droughts (African Center for Meteorological Development) despite minimal planning (presenter delayed in security line, being represented by another panelist).
Obviously, more & more in COP15, I'm seeing that agencies, scientists & volunteers are doing lots about adaptation. But what is emerging more & more is the self- centered apathy of many individuals in the Northern developed countries about demanding legal, regulatory changes. Policy makers can't be blamed any more if the electorates doesn't care and make their concerns known to legislators.
Gaps need to be bridged between people on ground & policy makers. Some case studies encouraging but big divide remains. What is the actionable strategy to get the best results? How prioritize research? How to make allocations? Co-ordinated action can reach scale (as usual, art not included).
Asked why, when discussion is about outreach, there isn't more outreach to contemporary artists, who are very concerned about these issues and can do this bridging of gaps? Response from Italian- engaging a filmmaker from NYU, Parsons School of Design. Pablo Suarez, from red Cross, said, "we have no $ but would be interested in what you'd propose."
Monday, 14 December 2009
Day 8 Copenhagen Day 8 COP15 Notes on energy and coastal impacts
Day 1 of my 3- (half) day workshop on "Trigger Point Theory as Aesthetic Activism," in the world Culture Center in Copenhagen. Making progress with participants on exercizes to identify and locate primary conceptual and physical concerns in relation to global warming and hope to build on these ideas over the next couple days.
Went on to Bella Center. Protestors have swelled to about 5 different groups and about 500 people on the way in. Lines long for those still registering. Inside, it's like a NY subway of packed people. More protestors inside. Most moving was the silent line of young people holding flags from every nation and the signs: "We Stand With Africa." Got lunch, in a packed cafe area and spilled my roll on the way out trying to navigate the crowds. Space has become hard to negotiate at the Bella Center: an analogy to the coming world populations overload an migration pressures away from coastal regions? I'm waiting for a session on US coastal community impacts of global warming. Most of the reports from island nations so far, have been from southern nations that will be entirely subsumed. North, aside from the issue of impact on LDC, effects are less dramatic.
Now sitting in at the US Center on roadmapping future energy sources & developing smart grids to capture various natural energy resources, as solar from Africa but even carbon emissions. Representative from Sweden saying 60% of energy is lost in transport and can be used more efficiently by addressing the systems, Connecting the education of women in Least Developed Countries to more efficient fuels. China lobbying for coal. India confronted as only 29% efficiency. Asserting their goal is 60%. Italian lobbyists for biofuels: sugar cane (most destructive crop to habitat).
Moderator asking panelists to name biggest obstacle to greenhouse gas emissions. No one responding. Finally Italian saying we need a framework of common rules to work together. Chinese asking for more innovation. UK: act on 400 options. Sweden: we're stuck in old thinking; see possibilities. Norway: must address deforestation & step up energy efficiency do alongside carbon storage. Germany: efficiency of developed countries and economies of scal to bring LDC.
John Strickland from Dept of the Interior with EPA & NOAA, Tom Armstrong senior advisor Dept of Interior. Overview: climate change coastal impact internationally: biodiversity, human population. Need better tools to fully know impact. Using adaptive management, helping American Indians & Alaskan Natives- playing catch up after many years in absentia (Bush). Dept Interior: manages 1/5 USA, manages 500 Mil acres surface land, half protected. USGS carbon storage analysis: 90 bil tons stored in plants & soil (deforestation issues). Goal: do no harm.
Protection = preserving buffering vs development. co-ordinating information and science, responding to a Secretarial order for regional centers, landscape co-ops at ecosystem management. Off-shore waters critical. Fast-tracking solar & wind projects. Managing intercontinental shelf first regs permitting wind power off shore in East. Carbon footprint reduction part of strategy. Coast from upper Maine to Baltimore relatively low. Cape Hatteras, however, very vulnerable. North Carolina washing out. Developing landscape scale restoration of Everglades task force: significant progress (65 threatened species). Important daylighting in "river of grass" to restore natural tidal flushing, fresh water.
What is striking me is how much they accomplished below the radar even while Bush was in power & how quickly Obama has moved forward with environmental mandates without much attention.
United State Geographical Survey (USGS) on Gulf of Mexico: loss of dune barriers for barrier islands, making restoration efforts: Gulf Coast Restoration Strategy. Major loss of wetlands: 34 sq miles for past fifty years due to channelization & flood protection vs tidal flushing. Now trying to reverse, starting with mapping to focus efforts at implementation. 56 mil acres held in trust for Native Peoples; acknowledging special knowledge & working with. With melting ice, larger waves, exaggerating erosion.
Goals are trying to share knowledge- wildlife without borders, tech assistance, collaborating on mitigation with ocean pollution, wetlands loss. USGS shared internationally to monitor losses working w/ West Africa, ie., Senegal reforestation w/ "Whispering Pines (what about monocultures?)."Monitoring mangroves in India.
Skypeing in from Washington DC John Wilson & Jeremy Martinich US EPA on estuaries. CRE case studies (we keep losing the phone connections but they were persistent). Looking at Baltimore- challenge of diversity: rocky highlands, beaches to swamps. Invasion of changes of life cycles, intenser storms net loss TK & economies regardless of emissions: retreat. Still can't predict timing & certainty; lack of adequate co-ordination. Relying on past inadequate to planning for future because of rapid & unpredictable change due to climate change. Inadequate $ support. Lessons learned previously from- 28 estuaries (NERR) programs. Climate change must be integrated into all other decisions. Must be locally directed based on priorities from each community- scale of individual properties. Start with existing priorities. communicate & support for adaptation essential- part of planning & implementation- start as early as possible. Rapidly evolving.
I have too many questions to ask all of them- for example, how direct local planning if local residents deny importance?
Jeremy on adaptation in estuary programs: Casco Bay, Maine vulnerability in Oyster Bay, New Hampshire. Comprehensive adaptation & stakeholder communications- lobsters- listening sessions & establishing priorities. Most support around icons, as lobsters. Ice disappearance (ice out change of 2-3 weeks on Lake Sebago). Involving public in listening sessions (answer to my question about engagement?)
Stormwater infrastructure problems, ie in New Hampshire. Mapping reveals inadequacy and trying to retrofit infrastructure. Economic issues in Delaware- costs of protections, ecosystem services lost. Prioritizing what to protect, value as salinity moves up estuaries= modeling & habitat equivalency- changes in spatial distribution, cost of restoration vs cost of replacement. Cost benefit relationships to conservation & adaptation. Charlotte Harbor, Florida. Punta Gorda protecting sea grass, xeriscaping, comprehensive plan, restricting fertilizer use, green building & drought protection. redesigning shoreline to account for habitat migration, ie seawall levels: Read: "Synthesis of Adaptation Options," "Climate Ready Estuaries: 2009 Progress Report."
Dr. Batton: Climate Change adaptation & mitigation for humans & wildlife co-ordinates all agencies. Interagency & deep marine resources organized by Obama ( despite Republicans apparently). In Calif. dealing with fresh water loss: levees- soil lost 25'- reintroducing native wetlands to raise soil surface 4' & sequester carbon (what about impact of water irrigation from Colorado River & Mexico?).
Dr. Armstrong on scientific assessment projects (SAP study 3.4, 4.1) re: sea level rise on east coast. Exacerbated by glacial subsidence. Significant changes similar to So Pacific. Not just thermal dynamics but tectonic subsidence, geomorphology, tidal surges, plant types & buffering capacity. Challenge of scale on local level.
My question (only one they had time to answer: what about species migration (lobster)? Strickland gave example of monitoring/ controlling Pika species migration paths in West- didn't really answer my question. Took his card after session, to ask about policy & be directed to technical people.
Just spoke with someone from Shell: formerly working for their sustainability program, quit so they can look at themselves in the mirror (minimal progress, 30-33 people killed annually, stupid, selfish choices re: developing countries.) Asked not to be identified,
Went on to Bella Center. Protestors have swelled to about 5 different groups and about 500 people on the way in. Lines long for those still registering. Inside, it's like a NY subway of packed people. More protestors inside. Most moving was the silent line of young people holding flags from every nation and the signs: "We Stand With Africa." Got lunch, in a packed cafe area and spilled my roll on the way out trying to navigate the crowds. Space has become hard to negotiate at the Bella Center: an analogy to the coming world populations overload an migration pressures away from coastal regions? I'm waiting for a session on US coastal community impacts of global warming. Most of the reports from island nations so far, have been from southern nations that will be entirely subsumed. North, aside from the issue of impact on LDC, effects are less dramatic.
Now sitting in at the US Center on roadmapping future energy sources & developing smart grids to capture various natural energy resources, as solar from Africa but even carbon emissions. Representative from Sweden saying 60% of energy is lost in transport and can be used more efficiently by addressing the systems, Connecting the education of women in Least Developed Countries to more efficient fuels. China lobbying for coal. India confronted as only 29% efficiency. Asserting their goal is 60%. Italian lobbyists for biofuels: sugar cane (most destructive crop to habitat).
Moderator asking panelists to name biggest obstacle to greenhouse gas emissions. No one responding. Finally Italian saying we need a framework of common rules to work together. Chinese asking for more innovation. UK: act on 400 options. Sweden: we're stuck in old thinking; see possibilities. Norway: must address deforestation & step up energy efficiency do alongside carbon storage. Germany: efficiency of developed countries and economies of scal to bring LDC.
John Strickland from Dept of the Interior with EPA & NOAA, Tom Armstrong senior advisor Dept of Interior. Overview: climate change coastal impact internationally: biodiversity, human population. Need better tools to fully know impact. Using adaptive management, helping American Indians & Alaskan Natives- playing catch up after many years in absentia (Bush). Dept Interior: manages 1/5 USA, manages 500 Mil acres surface land, half protected. USGS carbon storage analysis: 90 bil tons stored in plants & soil (deforestation issues). Goal: do no harm.
Protection = preserving buffering vs development. co-ordinating information and science, responding to a Secretarial order for regional centers, landscape co-ops at ecosystem management. Off-shore waters critical. Fast-tracking solar & wind projects. Managing intercontinental shelf first regs permitting wind power off shore in East. Carbon footprint reduction part of strategy. Coast from upper Maine to Baltimore relatively low. Cape Hatteras, however, very vulnerable. North Carolina washing out. Developing landscape scale restoration of Everglades task force: significant progress (65 threatened species). Important daylighting in "river of grass" to restore natural tidal flushing, fresh water.
What is striking me is how much they accomplished below the radar even while Bush was in power & how quickly Obama has moved forward with environmental mandates without much attention.
United State Geographical Survey (USGS) on Gulf of Mexico: loss of dune barriers for barrier islands, making restoration efforts: Gulf Coast Restoration Strategy. Major loss of wetlands: 34 sq miles for past fifty years due to channelization & flood protection vs tidal flushing. Now trying to reverse, starting with mapping to focus efforts at implementation. 56 mil acres held in trust for Native Peoples; acknowledging special knowledge & working with. With melting ice, larger waves, exaggerating erosion.
Goals are trying to share knowledge- wildlife without borders, tech assistance, collaborating on mitigation with ocean pollution, wetlands loss. USGS shared internationally to monitor losses working w/ West Africa, ie., Senegal reforestation w/ "Whispering Pines (what about monocultures?)."Monitoring mangroves in India.
Skypeing in from Washington DC John Wilson & Jeremy Martinich US EPA on estuaries. CRE case studies (we keep losing the phone connections but they were persistent). Looking at Baltimore- challenge of diversity: rocky highlands, beaches to swamps. Invasion of changes of life cycles, intenser storms net loss TK & economies regardless of emissions: retreat. Still can't predict timing & certainty; lack of adequate co-ordination. Relying on past inadequate to planning for future because of rapid & unpredictable change due to climate change. Inadequate $ support. Lessons learned previously from- 28 estuaries (NERR) programs. Climate change must be integrated into all other decisions. Must be locally directed based on priorities from each community- scale of individual properties. Start with existing priorities. communicate & support for adaptation essential- part of planning & implementation- start as early as possible. Rapidly evolving.
I have too many questions to ask all of them- for example, how direct local planning if local residents deny importance?
Jeremy on adaptation in estuary programs: Casco Bay, Maine vulnerability in Oyster Bay, New Hampshire. Comprehensive adaptation & stakeholder communications- lobsters- listening sessions & establishing priorities. Most support around icons, as lobsters. Ice disappearance (ice out change of 2-3 weeks on Lake Sebago). Involving public in listening sessions (answer to my question about engagement?)
Stormwater infrastructure problems, ie in New Hampshire. Mapping reveals inadequacy and trying to retrofit infrastructure. Economic issues in Delaware- costs of protections, ecosystem services lost. Prioritizing what to protect, value as salinity moves up estuaries= modeling & habitat equivalency- changes in spatial distribution, cost of restoration vs cost of replacement. Cost benefit relationships to conservation & adaptation. Charlotte Harbor, Florida. Punta Gorda protecting sea grass, xeriscaping, comprehensive plan, restricting fertilizer use, green building & drought protection. redesigning shoreline to account for habitat migration, ie seawall levels: Read: "Synthesis of Adaptation Options," "Climate Ready Estuaries: 2009 Progress Report."
Dr. Batton: Climate Change adaptation & mitigation for humans & wildlife co-ordinates all agencies. Interagency & deep marine resources organized by Obama ( despite Republicans apparently). In Calif. dealing with fresh water loss: levees- soil lost 25'- reintroducing native wetlands to raise soil surface 4' & sequester carbon (what about impact of water irrigation from Colorado River & Mexico?).
Dr. Armstrong on scientific assessment projects (SAP study 3.4, 4.1) re: sea level rise on east coast. Exacerbated by glacial subsidence. Significant changes similar to So Pacific. Not just thermal dynamics but tectonic subsidence, geomorphology, tidal surges, plant types & buffering capacity. Challenge of scale on local level.
My question (only one they had time to answer: what about species migration (lobster)? Strickland gave example of monitoring/ controlling Pika species migration paths in West- didn't really answer my question. Took his card after session, to ask about policy & be directed to technical people.
Just spoke with someone from Shell: formerly working for their sustainability program, quit so they can look at themselves in the mirror (minimal progress, 30-33 people killed annually, stupid, selfish choices re: developing countries.) Asked not to be identified,
Sunday, 13 December 2009
From Amy Lipton of Ecoartspace
Andrew Revkin on facebook about the need and
role of ethics in the debate:
Ethics: Crucial Missing Element in Negotiations: Duties and
Responsibilities, Not Just Narrow National Economic Interest
http://climateethics.org/?p=320
role of ethics in the debate:
Ethics: Crucial Missing Element in Negotiations: Duties and
Responsibilities, Not Just Narrow National Economic Interest
http://climateethics.org/?p=320
Day 7 Copenhagen 12:30 PM Susanne and her friend wait out her contractions while the world waits for progress
Three hours later, Susanne gave birth to a healthy baby boy. Why do I include that information in this blog? Because the youngest will be the greatest victims of climate change in this new world and we must never forget that. With the joy of birth comes the responsibility to see things change.
Sacha Kagan's border work
Along with yellow police tape (printed in the USA with the text "THIS IS NOT A NATURAL BORDER"), and flyers asking people to question their relationship to borders, strung along the street, these 'wet" signs indicate danger. This work, installed in the midst of an immigrant neighborhood makes a relationship between immigration, global warming and psychological impact. Far from the crowds of middle class protestors, the efforts towards engagement between passersby and Sacha's modest team, as flyers are offered explaining the work, highlights one more border between peoples of the world and one more opportunity to disregard borders and connect.
Day 7 Copenhagen Framing Art Now Here
On Dec 12, 2009, at 9:28 PM, Suzaan Boettger, Ph.D. wrote:
Aviva – I hope you’ll be able to view and send your descriptions of the pertinent art exhibitions in Copenhagen. Have you seen the below, or has anyone read a review of it?
‘(Re-) Cycles of Paradise,’ at the UN Climate Change Conference, Copenhagen, December 7–18, 2009. The exhibition is organized by ARTPORT making wavesand commissioned by the Global Gender and Climate Alliance.
I gave this request from Suzaan a lot of thought last night. I have commented on the beautiful ARTPORT show in an earlier blog. I always like Subankhar's work, basically the same thing he showed at the Weather Report show but installed more simply & smaller. I will write about the work of Sacha & Oleg, the people I'm closest to here. Thursday, I will try to get to some films. Friday afternoon, after my press conference, if there are no important sessions scheduled, I might get out to museums, etc.
But the "pertinent" environmental work is NOT in art exhibitions here. if I were to review good "environmentist art" in Copenhagen now, none of it would be in a museum or gallery. That is NOT where the cutting edge of thinking or production about the relationship between life & art is in my opinion.
My task here is NOT to recapitulate the same old tired frame of perception that has been recycled for the past forty years or to comment on art as a comment on art. I have a clear task as an artist: to reframe the critical discourse about art in terms I find most meaningful, based on what I perceive as a human being in my times, in order to reframe what it means to be human today. It is our frame of perception that need to recreated in order to change our behavior.
"Environmentalist" art that excites me and the reason I do the kind of work I do now, is the same reason, as a very young artist, I was drawn to & worked with Robert Rauschenberg & Allan Kaprow, the Bread & Puppet Theatre, was inspired by Alexandro Jodowrowsky and eventually worked with Judy Chicago. Long before I met them, from a much younger age, I had traditional training and went thru Cooper, Cal Arts etc. My movement to less static versions of art in the mid-sixties was deliberate, intuitive and educated. The movement back to static perception can be a comment in itself but that is not what I'm seeing in conventional exhibitions.
My own work and what excites me as an artist today is not individual star-based art in an even more static room, addressing audiences remotely perceiving a mediated experience. This is not to say I don't think installations, paintings, whatever don't have a place but they aren't RELEVANT here and now in the way they are being presented. Many people, like Alfredo Jaar this year, stand out at times. But my time here is a precious opportunity. It is focused on change. I make no distinction between formal art and international politics in that word in this context. Maybe it is ultimately myself doing the most transforming.
The best art I see here and now is in the engagement with a larger, sometimes invisible group that is responding to the most pressing present situation: how to get a binding agreement, how to express the pain of delay. And maybe it's the latter that makes static art in static space so difficult to concentrate on here.
This situation is extremely painful to those losing land, home, life while others, as the USA conservative party enforces delay. I have seen nothing in formal exhibition that powerfully conveys that reality.
The closest was watching and listening to Sarah James at ARTPORT, while Subankhar filmed her. And that unframed moment would not be considered "pertinent environmentalist exhibition" by many. Subankhar is the art star. But in that situation, his status and technical skills were at the service of a much more dramatic event: the testimony of a beautiful woman (not by any conventional standards: she is short, large and gray) in beautiful dress, saying and singing beautiful things about a beautiful world we are relentlessly, often casually, utterly destroying. The frame for that event was their personal relationship and the entire world's eyes on this city and awareness of delays in COP caused by the developed countries. Judged by the limits of the literal exhibition space, or conventional modernist formal perceptions, it was a native woman in costume being filmed by the important photographer Subankhar Bannerjee in the beautiful ARTPORT gallery, surrounded by excellent work, elegantly displayed.
But that was NOT the frame of perception I brought to the event nor the one I would want to see blessed. The fact that the curators had the prescience to foresee the power of that situation is a positive comment on them, comparable to Ronald Feldman picking up Mierle Ukeles in the early seventies for the Feldman Gallery. The difference is that Sarah James' moment with Subankhar can't be hung on a wall or packaged for export.
What makes the "exhibition space" dead, in this context compared, say to Sacha Kagan handing out elegant yellow and black leaflets, in an immigrant neighborhood, far from the hundreds of thousands marching, about our relationships to borders, is it's disconnect from actual life events. It isn't the fault of the artists or any of the curators or the buildings where the exhibitions are mounted but it does render their appeal minimal, NOW.
To sum up, in response to Suzaan, art that has power and allure for me, is framed, deliberately or incidentally, by life events, not by an exhibition space. I am trying to draw attention to another kind of framing.
Aviva – I hope you’ll be able to view and send your descriptions of the pertinent art exhibitions in Copenhagen. Have you seen the below, or has anyone read a review of it?
‘(Re-) Cycles of Paradise,’ at the UN Climate Change Conference, Copenhagen, December 7–18, 2009. The exhibition is organized by ARTPORT making wavesand commissioned by the Global Gender and Climate Alliance.
I gave this request from Suzaan a lot of thought last night. I have commented on the beautiful ARTPORT show in an earlier blog. I always like Subankhar's work, basically the same thing he showed at the Weather Report show but installed more simply & smaller. I will write about the work of Sacha & Oleg, the people I'm closest to here. Thursday, I will try to get to some films. Friday afternoon, after my press conference, if there are no important sessions scheduled, I might get out to museums, etc.
But the "pertinent" environmental work is NOT in art exhibitions here. if I were to review good "environmentist art" in Copenhagen now, none of it would be in a museum or gallery. That is NOT where the cutting edge of thinking or production about the relationship between life & art is in my opinion.
My task here is NOT to recapitulate the same old tired frame of perception that has been recycled for the past forty years or to comment on art as a comment on art. I have a clear task as an artist: to reframe the critical discourse about art in terms I find most meaningful, based on what I perceive as a human being in my times, in order to reframe what it means to be human today. It is our frame of perception that need to recreated in order to change our behavior.
"Environmentalist" art that excites me and the reason I do the kind of work I do now, is the same reason, as a very young artist, I was drawn to & worked with Robert Rauschenberg & Allan Kaprow, the Bread & Puppet Theatre, was inspired by Alexandro Jodowrowsky and eventually worked with Judy Chicago. Long before I met them, from a much younger age, I had traditional training and went thru Cooper, Cal Arts etc. My movement to less static versions of art in the mid-sixties was deliberate, intuitive and educated. The movement back to static perception can be a comment in itself but that is not what I'm seeing in conventional exhibitions.
My own work and what excites me as an artist today is not individual star-based art in an even more static room, addressing audiences remotely perceiving a mediated experience. This is not to say I don't think installations, paintings, whatever don't have a place but they aren't RELEVANT here and now in the way they are being presented. Many people, like Alfredo Jaar this year, stand out at times. But my time here is a precious opportunity. It is focused on change. I make no distinction between formal art and international politics in that word in this context. Maybe it is ultimately myself doing the most transforming.
The best art I see here and now is in the engagement with a larger, sometimes invisible group that is responding to the most pressing present situation: how to get a binding agreement, how to express the pain of delay. And maybe it's the latter that makes static art in static space so difficult to concentrate on here.
This situation is extremely painful to those losing land, home, life while others, as the USA conservative party enforces delay. I have seen nothing in formal exhibition that powerfully conveys that reality.
The closest was watching and listening to Sarah James at ARTPORT, while Subankhar filmed her. And that unframed moment would not be considered "pertinent environmentalist exhibition" by many. Subankhar is the art star. But in that situation, his status and technical skills were at the service of a much more dramatic event: the testimony of a beautiful woman (not by any conventional standards: she is short, large and gray) in beautiful dress, saying and singing beautiful things about a beautiful world we are relentlessly, often casually, utterly destroying. The frame for that event was their personal relationship and the entire world's eyes on this city and awareness of delays in COP caused by the developed countries. Judged by the limits of the literal exhibition space, or conventional modernist formal perceptions, it was a native woman in costume being filmed by the important photographer Subankhar Bannerjee in the beautiful ARTPORT gallery, surrounded by excellent work, elegantly displayed.
But that was NOT the frame of perception I brought to the event nor the one I would want to see blessed. The fact that the curators had the prescience to foresee the power of that situation is a positive comment on them, comparable to Ronald Feldman picking up Mierle Ukeles in the early seventies for the Feldman Gallery. The difference is that Sarah James' moment with Subankhar can't be hung on a wall or packaged for export.
What makes the "exhibition space" dead, in this context compared, say to Sacha Kagan handing out elegant yellow and black leaflets, in an immigrant neighborhood, far from the hundreds of thousands marching, about our relationships to borders, is it's disconnect from actual life events. It isn't the fault of the artists or any of the curators or the buildings where the exhibitions are mounted but it does render their appeal minimal, NOW.
To sum up, in response to Suzaan, art that has power and allure for me, is framed, deliberately or incidentally, by life events, not by an exhibition space. I am trying to draw attention to another kind of framing.
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