IPCC_Managing Risks of Extreme Events.pdf - Climate Access

Managing the Risks from Climate Extremes at the Local LevelChapter 5FAQ 5.2 | What lessons have been learned about effective disaster management and climatechange adaptation at the local scales?In fostering sustainable and disaster-resilient areas, local response to climate extremes will require disaster risk management thatacknowledges the role of climate variability and change and the associated uncertainties and that will contribute to long-term adaptation.In order to anticipate the risks and uncertainties associated with climate change there are a number of emerging approaches andresponses at the local level. One set of responses focus on integrating information about changing climate risks into disaster planningand scenario assessments of the future. Setting up plans in advance, for example, enabled communication systems to be strengthenedbefore the extreme event struck. Another is community-based adaptation (CBA), which helps to define solutions for managing riskswhile considering climate change. CBA responses provide increased participation by locals and recognition of the local context and theaccess to adaptation resources and promote adaptive capacity within communities. A critical factor in community-based actions is thatcommunity members are empowered to take control of the processes involved. Scaling up community-based approaches poses achallenge as well as integrating climate information and other interventions such as ecosystem management and restoration, watershedrehabilitation, agroecology, and forest landscape restoration. These types of interventions protect and enhance natural resources at thelocal scale, improve local capacities to adapt to future climate, and may also address immediate development needs.Major shares of the costs of disaster relief and recovery still fall on thegovernments of disaster-affected countries. Bilateral relief is limited tomaterials from donor countries and most relief is subject to relativelystrict criteria to reduce perceived levels of corruption. In both cases,flexibility is heavily restricted. Relief can also produce local economicdistortions such as causing shops to lose business as the marketbecomes flooded with relief supplies. These problems can be overcomeby directly transferring cash to local people to buy building materials,seed, and the like. Such programs have performed well where localsupplies are available (Farrington and Slater, 2009). At the same time,there is the view that disaster relief can create a culture of dependencyand expectation at the local level (Burby, 2006), where disaster reliefbecomes viewed as an entitlement program as local communities arenot forced to bear the responsibility for their own locational choices,land use, and lack of mitigation practices.5.2.2. Population MovementsA second coping strategy is population movements. Natural disastersare linked with population movements in a number of ways (Hunter,2005; Perch-Nielson et al., 2008; Warner et al., 2010). Evacuations occurbefore, during, and after some disaster events. Longer-term relocation ofaffected communities sometimes occurs. Relocations can be temporary orpermanent. These different forms of population movements have variablesocial, psychological, health, and financial implications for the communitiesconcerned. Population movements may also be differentiated on thebasis of whether the mobility is voluntary or forced (displacement) andwhether or not international borders are crossed. Most contemporaryresearch views population mobility as a continuum from completelyvoluntary movements to completely forced migrations (Laczko andAghazarm, 2009). The United Nations Office for the Coordination ofHumanitarian Affairs and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centreestimated that at least 36 million people were displaced by naturaldisasters in 2008. While these displaced people would come from andarrive at local origins and destinations there is little information on thelocal implications and time frames of the displacement (UNOCHA andIDMC, 2009).Where climate change increases the marginality of livelihoods andsettlements beyond a sustainable level, communities may be forced tomigrate or be displaced (McLeman and Smit, 2006). While migrationtypically has many causes, of which the environment (including climate)is just one factor, extremes often serve as precipitating events (Hugo,1996). Furthermore, a number of researchers consider that climaterelatedmigration, other than forced displacement, may not necessarilybe a problem and indeed may be a positive adaptive response, withpeople who remain at the place of origin benefitting from remittances(Barnett and Webber, 2009; Tacoli, 2009). Nomadic pastoralists migrateas part of their livelihoods but often respond to disruptive events bymodifying their patterns of mobility (Anderson et al., 2010). Migrationis highly gendered in terms of both drivers and impacts, which differbetween men and women, although it is not clear how these differencesmight be played out in the context of climate change (Hugo, 2010).Global estimations provide little insight into the local implications of suchlarge-scale migratory patterns. Migration will have local effects, not onlyfor the communities generating the migrants, but those communitieswhere they may settle. Barnett and Webber (2009) also note that the lessvoluntary the migration choice is, the more disruptive it will become. Inthe context of dam construction, for example Hwang et al. (2007) foundthat communities anticipating forced migration experienced stress.Hwang et al. (2010) also found that forced migration directly led toincreased levels of depression and the weakening of social safeguardsin the relocation process. Much post-disaster relocation is temporary,which is also associated with psychological and social effects such asdisruption of social networks and trauma (Neria et al., 2009).One outcome of climate change is that entire communities could berequired to relocate and in some cases, such as those living in atoll300