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Small Island Developing States and Statehood
Breitling, Dustin ; Riegl, Martin (advisor) ; Landovský, Jakub (referee)
Dustin Breitling Thesis Advisor: Martin Riegl, PhD. Small Island Developing States and Statehood Abstract: The spate of warnings that have been issued concerning Climate Change and its damaging impact upon the livelihood of populations has garnered increasing acknowledgement and critical concern. In a century where the potential for states to be submerged, concerns are being raised about how states, especially Small Island Developing States, are susceptible to losing Statehood. Small Island Developing States are already being ravaged by higher sea levels and dramatic loss of livelihood through inundation and potential submergence of their territory by the end of the century. Already these concerns are catalyzing Small Island Developing States to seek out alternative arrangements for their populations and importantly to preserve their legal personality. These arrangements tie in decisive concerns that connect how States are understood within in the international community as possessing a permanent territory, effective governance, permanent population and the capacity to be recognized by others. The angle offered and explored here becomes what happens once a permanent territory is undermined by seawaters and populations are relocated to Host States. If these issues are bound to occur then can historical...
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Climate change impacts on population of Sri Lanka and adaptation strategies
Molnárová, Bára ; Stojanov, Robert (advisor) ; Siwek, Tadeusz (referee)
The main aim of the study is to analyse households' adaptation measures to the climate change and its impacts in Sri Lanka such as extreme weather events - especially floods, landslides, heavy rains, droughts or water deficiency. Another objective of this study is to identify how locals perceive climate change impacts, what they think the specific causes are, what the implications and consequences are and what are their impacts on their households in selected regions in Sri Lanka. I also tried to identify which changes of climate they personally observe (if any) and what they think about it. The case study is based on my research, which I realized in July - September 2016 in Sri Lanka. I focused on two neighbour districts: one of them is Anuradhapura district, which is on the northwest of the island and it is in the dry climatic zone of the island. The second district is Matale, which is located in highlands and there is more humidity. I examined the perception of local residents to changes in the climate, which is, whether they realize that changes are caused by the global climate change and that the situation will deteriorate further, or whether they have another explanation. In connection with this, I also examined whether they have any plans or predictions of the future and how they adapt for...
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Energy and Environment in the View of Law
Pokorný, Jiří
Mankind has come to the point where it is fully dependent on energy. Primarily, this means the universally convertable electricity and also the thermal energy. The most widespread technologies for production of the above energies are unfortunately based on fossil fuels which, when combusted, produce greenhouse gases. Even though this is not the sole source of these substances, it belongs among the largest ones. The heightened concentration of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere causes climate change which endangers the environment of the whole planet. To make this process stop or at least slow down, it is imperative to implement a wide range of measures to limit the greenhous gases production. Even though such measures will need to be carried out technically, their basis lies in law. The dissertation thesis "Energy and Environment from the Viewpoint of Law" deals with relationships between energy and environment (mostly energetics) and tools of law which can be releavant in this field. They can be found across different levels from international through European to national - Czech - level. From the perspective of applied tools, they incorporate conceptual, administrative and economical approaches. The roles of the respective means is such that the conceptual determine future progress,...
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Rainfall runoff process in time of climate change
Benáčková, Kateřina ; Janál,, Petr (referee) ; Marton, Daniel (advisor)
The aim of The Diploma Thesis was to compile a conceptual rainfall-runoff model, that would be eligible to model discharge in conditions of climate changes. After thorough verifications of possible variants, user program Runoff Prophet that is eligible to simulate discharge in closing profile of any river basin was compiled within this paper. Runoff Prophet is deterministic lumped model with monthly computation time step and from the hydrologic phenomena it takes soil moisture, evapotranspiration, groundwater flow and the watercourse flow into account. Its calibration is based on the differential evolution principle with Nash–Sutcliffe model efficiency coefficient as the calibration criterion. Developed software was tested on Vír I. catchment basin and the results of this probe were evaluated from viewpoints of air temperature, precipitation and discharge characteristics in the Dalečín measurement river cross section in distant future according to A1B SRES climate scenario, implemented in LARS-WG weather generator.
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Forest regeneration within the treeline ecotone in the Giant Mountains under climate change
Cudlín, Ondřej ; Chumanová-Vávrová, Eva ; Edwards-Jonášová, Magda ; Heřman, Michal ; Štěpánek, Petr ; Cudlín, Pavel
Natural regeneration of mountain spruce forests began in the Giant Mountains 25 years ago after a reduction\nof severe and long-enduring air pollution. This process has been influenced by climatic change.\nThe aim of our contribution was to present background data for the potential elevational shift of spruce\nregeneration under conditions of climate change. These upslope shifts may also depend on constraints\nsuch as climate extremes, unfavourable soil conditions, absence of ectomycorrhizal symbionts, and lack of\nmicrosites suitable for seedlings. Since 2014, we have studied the main driving factors affecting Norway\nspruce regeneration, and in particular soil conditions, ectomycorrhizal symbionts, ground vegetation cover,\nand forest health, in six transects across the treeline ecotone located on a NW-to-NE transect through\nthe Giant Mountains. Microclimatic measurements showed that the mean difference in growing season\ntemperature between the montane spruce forests and forests at the treeline was −0.54°C. The model\nHADGEM2 predicted that in 20 years the temperature at the treeline will be similar to the current one at\nmontane elevations. The difference in prevailing soil types between the montane spruce forests and forests\nat the current treeline (i.e. podzol vs. ranker type) could be an important factor limiting success of the\nupslope spreading of spruce. Furthermore, areas covered by microsites favourable for natural spruce regeneration,\nespecially spruce litter patches, decaying wood, mosses, and Avenella flexuosa stands, were\nshown to decrease with increasing elevation. It is likely that spruce will move upslope in response to climate\nchange, but the process is likely to be slow or even blocked for some periods, especially by unfavourable\nsoil conditions and climatic extremes.
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Tree-ring chronologies of Norway-spruce on west-east longitudinal gradient in the mountain ranges of central Europe
Ponocná, Tereza ; Treml, Václav (advisor) ; Kolář, Tomáš (referee) ; Vejpustková, Monika (referee)
The Earth's climate system has recently experienced substantial warming which likely impacts temperature-limited communities close to their distribution margins. The alpine treeline ecotone represents upper distributional limit of montane/subalpine forests. This biogeographic boundary relies mainly on decreasing temperature with increasing elevation. Surprisingly the response of treeline ecotone to ongoing warming has varied a lot and the reasons of this variability are poorly understood. The aim of this dissertation thesis is the assessment of growth trends and tree ring response of Norway spruce (Picea abies[L.] Karst.) to climatic oscillations at treelines and montane forests of East-Central Europe. This dissertation deals with both inter-regional and intra-regional (aspect, elevation) variability of tree growth. The presented results are based on an extensive data set of growth curves for almost 1400 trees. All study sites revealed close relationship between tree ring widths and growing season temperatures as well as the temperatures of October preceding to ring formation season. The main site-dependent differences in growth trends and temperature responses were attributed to elevation, the effect of aspect was relatively less significant. At treelines between the Krkonoše Mts. and Nízké Tatry...
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Legal protection of the climate system of Earth in the "post-Kyoto" period
Němeček, Michal ; Žákovská, Karolina (advisor) ; Sobotka, Michal (referee)
This diploma thesis focuses on the phenomenon of global climate change from the perspective of climate change law. The thesis defines the phenomenon in legal terms and deals with problems it brings to the environment and the world population. Its major part is dedicated to the international law of climate change, including all past Conferences of the Parties (COP) and their outcomes together with the most important treaties - United Nations Framework Convention in terms of Kyoto Protocol and the unsuccessful Doha Amendment. The Paris Agreement, which is the most recent international treaty, already ratified by 160 countries, could be a game changer in terms of effectivity in both climate change mitigation and adaptation legislation as well as much needed international solution. This thesis also focuses on the EU law of climate change, especially on the progress and future of Emissions Trading System and other legislation. Not only is the EU now more focused on the adaptation legislation, this is an important topic also for the Czech Republic. Especially when many Czech laws stem from EU regulations, there is still a great potential in the adaptation legislation and major progress is expected in the near future. Key words Climate change, Paris Agreement, emissions allowances, COP
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Cooperation on Climate Change as a Pillar of the Relationship Between the United States and China
Jandus, Lukáš ; Hornát, Jan (advisor) ; Bečka, Jan (referee)
Cooperation on climate change in the second term of president Obama showed to have potential for improvement of the relationship between the United States and China. This paper analyses how the climate change cooperation developed and concludes that under right circumstances it has positive influence on the bilateral relationship. In order to make the improvement more lasting, the climate change cooperation should take into account national security considerations, specifically the parties should collaborate and jointly exercise on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations.
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Energy and Environment in the View of Law
Pokorný, Jiří ; Damohorský, Milan (advisor) ; Smolek, Martin (referee) ; Stejskal, Vojtěch (referee)
The relationships among energetics, environment and associated climatic changes is beginning to be a subject of a complex interest of not just science but also politics and law. The reason for this is the fact that we are now at a breaking point of the development of mankind and our future steps will significantly influence its path. To obtain the energy man cannot live without, we frequently use fossil fuels, producing greenhouse gases that are warming our planet. This situation needs to change. We either find a sustainable solution or we will cause a catastrophe. The energetics must not be the cause, it has to be the solution as well. One of possible solutions for this problem is the law. It is not a stand-alone solution but it is a fundamental one nonetheless. To come up with an effective solution, a large-scale cooperation is necessary in politics, science, economics and in society as well - and there is not much time to come up with it. Keywords: energetics, environment, climate change
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