Global Report on Human Settlements 2007 - PoA-ISS

290
Towards safer and more secure cities
The greatest
challenge is to …
ensure that early
warnings are
communicated and
acted on in a timely
manner
Urban settlements
offer opportunities
as well as challenges
for early warning
Indeed, 21 of the 33 cities that are projected to have a
population of 8 million or more by 2015 are located in
coastal zones. 40
Perhaps most challenging of all is sea-level rise. The
scale of risk is enormous: 41
• In Japan, a 1 metre sea-level rise would expand areas at
risk 2.7 times to 2339 square kilometres, and increase
population and assets at risk to 4.1 million and 109
trillion Japanese yen, 42 respectively.
• In Egypt, a 50 centimetre sea-level rise would affect 2
million people and 214,000 jobs, and would result in
the loss of US$35 billion in land value, property and
tourism income.
• In Poland, a 1 metre sea-level rise would cause US$30
billion of land to be lost to the sea, and put US$18
billion of assets and land at risk of flooding. It is
estimated that coastal protection would cost US$6
billion.
Adapting now to future climate change is difficult because of
the uncertainty in forecasting and a tendency for conservative
estimates of future change. This makes it difficult to
identify design targets for adaptation. Some basic principles
for successful adaptation have been proposed. For example,
to be successful, adaptations must be consistent with
economic development, be environmentally and socially
sustainable over time, and be equitable. 43 In cities where the
institutional architecture for natural disaster risk reduction
is in place, this is a strong base for adapting to climate
change. 44
Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions in cities requires
immediate and aggressive action alongside adaptation work.
There is great scope for future work in enabling mitigation
through improved urban design. One direction to begin
research and development might be in those areas where
mitigation also offers a financial opportunity. Examples
include improved building materials and energy efficiency to
reduce costs; transport demand management to reduce
congestion and the health impacts of transport; and the
promotion of renewable or alternative energy generation,
such as methane recuperation from landfills for use in local
energy generation schemes. 45 Many local authorities already
play leadership roles by reviewing purchasing and energy
conservation policy. The Cities for Climate Protection
Campaign, coordinated by ICLEI-Local Governments for
Sustainability, has enlisted over 650 cities worldwide, each
of which has demonstrated willingness to integrate climate
mitigation within its decision-making processes. 46
STRENGTHENING EARLY
WARNING SYSTEMS
There is always scope for greater investment and innovation
in the technical aspects of early warning systems, and there
remain many cities exposed to hazard without an early
warning system. The greatest challenge is to link existing
technical capacity with people-centred approaches which
ensure that early warnings are communicated and acted on
in a timely manner. As indicated in Box IV.1, failure to
communicate and provide effective ways for people to
prepare for disaster was evidenced during Hurricane Katrina
in New Orleans (US) in 2005, when a mixture of alienation
from authority and a lack of resources contributed to the
high numbers of people who were neither evacuated nor
adequately prepared for the event. 47
Integrating ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’
approaches
Connecting technical expertise to people at risk requires
that early warning systems are built from the bottom up
(sensitive to the contexts in which they will be useful), as
well as from the top down (being accurate and effective with
their use of information). The fusion of top-down scientific
and bottom-up people-centred approaches can maximize the
trust that those at risk place in the system. Not only the
message but also the messenger needs to be trusted for
people to take action.
An important challenge in improving the outputs of
early warning systems is to bring the right team of stakeholders
together – politicians, hazard experts, disaster managers,
the media and community members all have a role to play. To
help build trust in Jamaica, mayors chair local Disaster
Committees, thereby adding legitimacy to any warnings that
might be issued from hazard technicians. There is also a
policy of avoiding the ‘blame game’. It is accepted that early
warning is not an exact science and that wrong decisions
may be made. A professional approach to analysing why
wrong decisions have been made, rather than a recriminatory
approach, helps to reduce pressure on
decision-makers. 48
The challenge of cities
Environmental change associated with urban expansion into
new hazard zones, or with the local consequences of global
environmental change, coupled with social and demographic
change in cities, generates uncertainty for early warning.
New hazards and vulnerabilities may emerge, generating risk
that is unrecognized until disaster strikes. This was partly
the case in the European heat wave of 2003.
Urban settlements offer opportunities as well as
challenges for early warning. The density of settlement and
strength of social relations in cities indicate that messages of
early warning and preparedness will diffuse quickly. This
observation is a little more difficult to maintain in cities that
are home to diverse migrant communities, or where social
class and demographic factors can cause some to be isolated
from mainstream society. As noted in Chapter 7, it was the
isolated elderly who were most vulnerable to heat shock in
Europe and the US. In each of these cases, isolation from
mainstream society is a feature of vulnerability that can also
lead to exclusion from systems of early warning and advice
on preparedness and evacuation. Linguistic barriers, poverty
and lifestyle habits mean that access to messages communicated
through the mainstream media is limited. While