Australians could face fines if they don't protect their properties against the predicted increased threat of bushfires, says an expert in light of the latest UN climate change report.
Professor Amanda Lynch, of Monash University's climate program, says fines for people who don't reduce their land's fuel load by clearing or burning could be one way of managing the increased risk of bushfires as the planet warms.
Her predictions follow the second in a series of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, which says rising temperatures will cause more intense and frequent fires in Australia.
The IPCC working group II report also suggests actions that can be taken to reduce the damage from climate-induced changes, such as this.
But Lynch, a contributor to the report, says Australia is already very good at dealing with bushfires and sadly, this makes it harder to find ways to adapt.
"It's hard to know what else we could do in the face of worse fire," says Lynch, who has worked on fire management in the US and Australia.
She says Australia might have to become a lot stricter on private property owners to ensure they do their best to protect themselves from bushfire.
"You can do it with a stick, which would be to introduce fines," she says. "Or you could introduce a carrot. You could subsidise people," she says, to protect their homes through burning or clearing the land around them.
Lynch says another option would be to dampen forests to reduce their flammability, a difficult option given the nation's severe drought.
And then there's the option of reducing undergrowth in forests by eradicating weeds, she says.
Heatwaves
The IPCC report also predicts increasing severity and frequency of heatwaves, says Lynch, who suggests people could be warned in advance of potentially fatal ones.
And, following the lead of France, where over 10,000 people died after heatwaves in 2003, there could be more community support for the vulnerable, such as the elderly.
Coastal impacts
The report also predicts an increase in storm surges affecting Australia's coast, says Lynch, and suggests adapting in ways that does not depend on engineering.
"The old method of managing coasts is to build a big wall, or a big levy or big engineering structures to protect what's there from storm surges and rising sea levels," she says.
"The more modern way of talking about it is to let nature decide," she says. "Nature will win that battle."
She says small sea walls and levies may be appropriate initially, but as surges become more extreme and sea level rises further, settlement would have to "back away" from the coast.
"The final stage is retreat," she says.
Reef vulnerable
Lynch says that in some areas there is almost no room to adapt. This applies to the Great Barrier Reef, which is very sensitive to changes in temperature.
She says a key strategy is to reduce nutrient run-off onto the reef.
"A healthy reef, one that is not overloaded with nutrients from run-off, can withstand a higher temperature range," she says.
Other impacts and suggested adaptations include:
* enforcing fishery quotas as waters warm
* lowering the number of livestock per hectare
* improving water efficiency
* making artificial snow to keep tourists at ski resorts, and
* improving quarantine and vaccination programs to ward off the spread of tropical diseases.
While responding to climate change will require the appropriate allocation of resources, there's much more to it, says Lynch.
"It's an intellectual challenge; it's not just the money. We need to choose wisely as well," she says.
"We have to be prepared to adapt but we have to be doing this at the same time as we're mitigating [emissions]," says Lynch.
The first 2007 IPCC report, which was released in February, included the science of climate change and global predictions of its impacts; the second report, due to be officially released next week, covers regional impacts and adaptions; and the third report, due out in May, will canvass the relative economics of adaptation to and mitigation against the effects climate change.
Anna Salleh
ABC Science Online
http://www.world-articles.net
