A simple environmental vulnerability assessment scheme is developed and illustrated using several streams in Azerbaijan as examples. Vulnerability of a river ecosystem is defined in terms of a combined impact of pressure factors such as water withdrawals, pollution, climate change impact on flow variability, and land use. These factors are used to measure the sensitivity of various elements/components of the system to impacts. The choice of these indicators may vary from area to area and depends on the nature of man-made and natural conditions.

The Nile Basin Research Programme (NBRP), as a strategic, multidisciplinary programme for research and higher education on topics related to the Nile Basin, has had the overall aim to enhance and promote quality research on Nile-related issues and to support research collaboration between institutions in the Nile Basin region.This book presents some of the results from the NBRP. The Nile Basin region faces huge challenges in the future. The ways the Nile issues are solved will have enduring consequences for the development of the region. The topics in this book include:

The increased pressures on the world’s natural resources and ecological systems in the past century, has been accompanied by rapid urban population growth. Urban centres themselves have ecological reputations since they drive unsustainable environmental change. They also lead to high levels of resource use and waste generation, causing serious ecological consequences locally, regionally and globally, especially in terms of climate change. But there is good evidence that urban areas can combine high living standards with relatively low GHG emissions and lower resource demands.

Poor people living in hazardous and unhealthy environments in urban areas may find their difficulties compounded by the consequences of climate change. These include those who construct their shelters on steep, unstable hillsides, or along the foreshore on former mangrove swamps or tidal flats.

The goal of the project is to build the capacity of the community to reduce salinity, tidal inundation and cyclone relate vulnerability, as well as to facilitate poverty reduction. The specific objectives of the project are: 

Any view on international finance for climate adaptation in developing countries must deal with the question of the cost of adaptation and how much funds will be available under current conditions. Although existing estimates of adaptation funding needs in developing countries are still very vague, they all indicate that they are and will be in the tens of billions €/$ per annum. At the same time, many developing countries presently do not have the relevant ‘absorptive capacity’, the capacity to carry out the adaptation measures needed, even if the funding were available.