IPCC_Managing Risks of Extreme Events.pdf - Climate Access

Toward a Sustainable and Resilient FutureChapter 8rather than flexibility, that is, maintaining the status quo and thus servingparticular interests rather than supporting adaptive management, sociallearning, or inclusive decisionmaking. One challenge to enhancingresilience of desired system states is to identify how responses to anysingle stressor influence the larger, interconnected social-ecologicalsystem, including the system’s ability to absorb perturbations or shocks,its ability to adapt to current and future changes, and its ability to learnand create new types or directions of change. Responses to one stressoralone may inadvertently undermine the capacity to address otherstressors, both in the present and future. For example, coastal towns ineastern England, experiencing worsening coastal erosion exacerbatedby sea level rise, are taking their own action against immediate erosionin order to protect livelihoods and homes, affecting sediments and erosionrates down the coast (Milligan et al., 2009). While such actions to protectthe coast are effective in the short term, in the long term, investing to‘hold the line’ may diminish capital resources for other adaptations andhence reduce adaptive capacity to future sea level rise. Thus, dealingwith specific risks without a full accounting of the nature of systemresilience can lead to responses that can potentially undermine longtermresilience. Despite an increasing emphasis on managing forresilience (Walker et al., 2002; Lebel et al., 2006), the resilience lensalone may not sufficiently illuminate how to enhance agency and movefrom the understanding of complex dynamics to transformationalaction.8.4. Implications for Access to Resources,Equity, and Sustainable DevelopmentThe previous section assessed the links between short- and long-termresponses to climate extremes. This section takes the idea of links further.It explores the relationships between climate change adaptation, disasterrisk management, and mitigation, and larger issues related to equity,access to resources, environmental and ecosystem protection, and relateddevelopment processes. This draws out the importance of governance indetermining the relationship between disaster risk and underlyingprocesses of unequal socioeconomic development and environmentalinjustices (Maskrey, 1994; Sacoby et al., 2010). The section discussesissues related to capacity and equity, the existence of winners and losersfrom disaster and disaster management policy, and opportunities forcontributing to wider development goals including the enhancing ofhuman security.8.4.1. Capacities and Resources:Availability and LimitationsThe capacity to manage risks and adapt to change is unevenly distributedwithin and across nations, regions, communities, and households(Hewitt, 1983; Wisner et al., 2004; Beck, 2007). The literature on howthese capacities contribute to disaster risk management and climatechange adaptation emphasizes the role of economic, financial, social,cultural, human, and natural capital, and of institutional context (seeSections 1.4 and 2.4). When the poor are impacted by disasters, limitedresources are quickly expended in coping actions that can furtherundermine household sustainability in the long run, reducing capitaland increasing hazard exposure or vulnerability. In these vicious cyclesof decline, households tend first to expend savings and then, if pressurescontinue, to withdraw members from non-productive activities such asschool, and finally to sell productive assets. As households begin tocollapse, individuals may be forced to migrate or in some cases enterinto culturally inappropriate, dangerous, or illegal livelihoods such asthe sex industry (Mgbako and Smith, 2010; Ferris, 2011). This povertyand vulnerability trap means that recovery to pre-disaster levels of wellbeingbecomes increasingly difficult (Burton et al., 1993; Adger, 1996,Wisner et al., 2004; Chambers, 2006).Children, the elderly, and women stand out as more vulnerable toextreme climate and weather events. The vulnerability of children andtheir capacity to respond to climate change and disasters is discussed inBox 8-2 (see also Section 5.5.1 and Case Study 9.2.14). Among theelderly, increasing numbers will become exposed to climate changeimpacts in the coming decades, particularly in OECD countries wherepopulations are aging most rapidly. By 2050, it is estimated that one inthree people will be older than 60 years in OECD countries, as well as onein five at the global scale (UN, 2002). The elderly are made additionallyvulnerable to climate change-related hazards by characteristics that alsoincrease vulnerability to other social and environmental hazards (thuscompounding overall vulnerability): deterioration of health, personallifestyles, social isolation, poverty, and inadequate access to health andsocial infrastructures (OECD, 2006). Gender impacts vulnerability inmany ways. In the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh, the death toll amongwomen was reportedly five times higher than among men (UNDP,2007b). Cultural as well as physiological factors are widely cited for theover-representation of female deaths from flooding. Gender inequalityextends into female-headed households to compound the vulnerabilityof dependent children or elderly (Cannon, 2002; UNISDR, 2008; Oxfam,2010). Inequality has many other important faces: race, caste, religiousaffiliation, and physical disability, all of which help determine individualand household vulnerability, and they cross-cut gender and age effects.Importantly, the social construction of vulnerability through thesecharacteristics highlights the ways in which vulnerability changes overtime – in this case with changes in family structure and access toservices in response to economic cycles and political and cultural trendsevolving as the climate changes with potentially compounding effects(Leichenko and O’Brien, 2008).Studies also show that female-headed households more often borrowfood and cash than rich and male-headed households during difficulttimes. This coping strategy is considered to be a dangerous one as thehouseholds concerned will have to return the food or cash soon afterharvests, leaving them more vulnerable as they have less food or cashto last them the season and to be prepared if disaster strikes (Young andJaspars, 1995). This may leave households in a cycle of poverty from oneseason to the next. Literature shows that this outcome is linked tounequal access by women to resources, land, and public and privately454