IPCC_Managing Risks of Extreme Events.pdf - Climate Access

Chapter 8Toward a Sustainable and Resilient Futureenvironmental stresses from and responses to climate change is stilllimited (Fankhauser et al., 1999; Adger et al., 2007; Repetto, 2008). Interms of disaster risk reduction, a large number of lives have been savedover the last decade due to improved disaster early warning systems(IFRC, 2005), and to increased development and human welfare(UNISDR, 2011). There remains, however, much more that can be doneto reduce mortality and counteract growth in the number of peopleaffected by disasters and climate extremes. For example, recent selfassessmentsof progress by over 100 countries on the objectives of theHyogo Framework of Action (UNISDR, 2009, 2011) indicate that fewdeveloping countries have conducted comprehensive, accurate, andaccessible risk assessments, which are a prerequisite for bothanticipatory and corrective disaster risk reduction. Furthermore, theassessment shows that few countries are able to quantify their investmentin disaster risk reduction. There are numerous ways to evaluate success ofdisaster risk management or climate adaptation, including gauging theextent to which the goals of a given action (determined in anticipationof a given environmental stressor) are achieved, independent of whetherthe environmental stressor materializes. Both climate adaptation anddisaster risk management can contribute to responses to changes inextreme events due to climate change, yet neither approach alone issufficient.Econometric analyses at the national scale have reached differentconclusions about the impact of disasters on economic growth, but thebalance of evidence suggests a negative impact. Whereas Noy andNualsri (2007), Noy (2009), Hochrainer (2009), Jaramillo (2009), andRaddatz (2007) suggest that the overall impact on growth is negative,Albala-Bertrand (1993) and Skidmore and Toya (2002) argue that naturaldisasters have a positive influence on long-term economic growth, oftendue to both the stimulus effect of reconstruction and the productivityeffect. As suggested by Cavallo and Noy (2009) and Loayza et al. (2009),this difference may arise from the different impacts of small and largedisasters, the latter having a negative impact on growth and the formerenhancing growth. In any case, whether or not disaster losses translateinto other social and economic impacts depends on how each individualdisaster is managed (Moreno and Cardona, 2011) which in turn is relatedto capacities and political priorities. At the local scale, Strobl (2011)investigates the impact of hurricane landfall on county-level economicgrowth in the United States. This analysis shows that a county that isstruck by at least one hurricane in a year sees its economic growthreduced on average by 0.79%, and increased by only 0.22% the followingyear. Noy and Vu (2010) investigate the impact of disasters on economicgrowth at the province level in Vietnam, and find that lethal disastersdecrease economic production while costly disasters increase shorttermgrowth. Rodriguez-Oreggia et al. (2009) focus instead on povertyand the World Bank’s Human Development Index at the municipalitylevel in Mexico. They show that municipalities affected by disastersexperienced an increase in poverty by 1.5 to 3.6%. Considering theseimportant links between disasters and development, there is a needto consider disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, andsustainable development in a consistent and integrated framework (G.O’Brien et al., 2006; Schipper and Pelling, 2006).8.2.2. Sustainability of Ecosystem Servicesin the Context of Disaster Risk Managementand Climate Change AdaptationReducing human pressures on ecosystems and managing naturalresources more sustainably can facilitate efforts to mitigate climatechange and to reduce vulnerabilities to extreme climate and weatherevents. The degradation of ecosystems is undermining their capacity toprovide ecosystem goods and services upon which human livelihoods andsocieties depend (MEA, 2005; WWF, 2010), and to withstand disturbances,including climate change. There is evidence that the likelihood of collapseand subsequent regime shifts in ecological and coupled social-ecologicalsystems may be increasing in response to the magnitude, frequency,and duration of climate change and other disturbance events (Folke et al.,2004; MEA, 2005; Woodward, 2010). Large, persistent shifts in ecosystemservices not only affect the total level of welfare that people in acommunity can enjoy, they also impact the welfare distribution betweenpeople within and between generations and hence may give rise to newconflicts over resource use and questions on inter-generational equity asa component of sustainable development (Thomas and Twyman, 2005).They could result in domino effects of increased pressure on successiveresource systems, as has been suggested in the case of depletion ofsuccessive fish stocks (Berkes et al., 2006). However, the thresholds atwhich ecosystems undergo regime shifts and the points at which thesemay catalyze social stress remain largely unknown, partly due tovariability over space and time (Biggs et al., 2009; Scheffer, 2009).Ecosystems can act as natural barriers against climate-related hazardousextremes, reducing disaster risk (Conde, 2001; Scholze et al., 2005). Forexample, mangrove forests are a highly effective natural flood controlmechanism that will become increasingly important with sea level rise,and are already used as a coastal defense against extreme climatic andnon-climatic events (Adger et al., 2005). The benefits of such ecosystemservices are determined by ecosystem health, hazard characteristics,local geomorphology, and the geography and location of the systemwith respect to the hazard (Lacambra and Zahedi, 2011). In assessingthe ecological limits of adaptation to climate change, Peterson (2009)emphasizes that ecosystem regime shifts can occur as the result ofextreme climate shocks, but that such shifts depend upon the resilienceof the ecosystem, and are influenced by processes operating at multiplescales. In particular, there is evidence that the loss of regulating services(e.g., flood regulation, regulation of soil erosion) erodes ecologicalresilience (MEA, 2005).Ecosystems and ecosystem approaches can also facilitate adaptation tochanging climatic conditions (Conde, 2001; Scholze et al., 2005).Conservation of water resources and wetlands that provide hydrologicalsustainability can further aid adaptation by reducing the pressures andimpacts on human water supply, while forest conservation for carbonsinks and alternative sources of energy such as biofuels can reducecarbon emissions and have multiple benefits (Reid, 2006), as can coastaldefenses and avalanche protection (Silvestri and Kershaw, 2010). InNew York, for example, untreated storm water and sewage regularly445