IPCC_Managing Risks of Extreme Events.pdf - Climate Access

Chapter 8Toward a Sustainable and Resilient Futurein Delhi, Mumbai, and other cities in India as private capital redevelopslow-income city neighborhoods into commercial districts and middleandhigh-income housing areas with associated low-income housing.There is rare scope here to promote disaster risk reduction, climate changeadaptation, and mitigation alongside existing demands for marketprofitability and social justice in urban and building design. There arealso growing numbers of large-scale slum/informal settlement upgradingprograms that aim to improve housing and living conditions for lowincomehouseholds (Boonyabancha, 2005; Satterthwaite, 2010).Disaster reconstruction also creates opportunities for synergisticdevelopment planning. For example, reconstruction after the 2005Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans, Louisiana, included rebuildingto Green Building Council ‘Leadership in Energy and EnvironmentalDesign’ (LEED) standards (USGBC, 2010). Similarly, in May 2007,Greensburg, Kansas, was virtually destroyed by a tornado and LEEDstandards have been applied (Harrington, 2010). Echoing the tradeoffsbetween speed and sustainability presented in Section 8.2.5, the actionsin Greensburg have also slowed rebuilding of the town, leading in thisinstance to an erosion in community and associated aspects ofresilience in the short run, while attempting to create a model ‘green’community in the long run.In short, despite the many opportunities for building synergy into urbandevelopment planning and practice, examples of success are not plentiful.Lack of synergy is more the norm, to take just one example of urbanizationin central Dhaka, Bangladesh. These flood-prone areas had until recentlybeen occupied by natural water bodies and drains, vital to the regulationof floods. The Dhaka Metropolitan Development Plan restricts developmentin many of these areas, but despite the Plan, infilling continues withboth private- and public-sector projects. Destruction of retention pondsand drains increases risks of flooding and building in the drainedwetlands generates new risks of liquefaction following earthquakes(UNISDR, 2011).8.5.2.2. RuralRural areas are the primary site for climate change mitigation. Rural areashave considerable experience in disaster risk management and morerecently in climate change adaptation (UNDP, 2007b). Nonetheless, asfor urban areas, the evidence base is limited for consciously synergisticdevelopment projects and policies that consider climate changemitigation, adaptation, and disaster management together. There are,however, several important opportunities where climate change mitigationand adaptation or risk management have shown scope for integrationand opportunities are being explored, for example in agroforestry(Verchot et al., 2007).Any scope for synergy needs to be seen within the context of contemporarydevelopment pressures (Goklany, 2007). For small farms in particular,pressures are strong for diversification into non-farm activities, where suchopportunities exist, but strong support is needed to enable transitionsin economic activity (Roshetko et al., 2007). Climate change affects therange of choices available, for example, in low-lying coastal zoneswhere saltwater intrusion and coastal flooding are already makingtraditional agriculture marginal and leading to the adoption of saltwatertolerant crops or a shift from agriculture to aquaculture (Adger, 2000).While urban areas have expanded in size and influence, the majority ofthe poor continue to reside in rural areas in many countries, particularlyin Africa, and are among the most resource-scare and capacity-limitedpopulation groups (UNDP, 2009). For populations that may also beisolated from markets and communication networks, even small increasesin the frequency or severity of hazard can cause local livelihoods tocollapse, though recent developments in communication technology maybridge this gap (Aker and Mbiti, 2010). Where political and economicsystems disrupt food distribution and market functioning, vulnerabilityto food insecurity escalates (Misselhorn, 2005).Hard choices also have to be made between expanding rural populationsor economies and natural capital. Too often, local natural assets areexploited not by local actors to build local capacities but by externalagents, such that resources are extracted with little benefit accruinglocally. The balance and implementation of controls on natural resourceexploitation is both a potential damper on current capacity building anda critical mechanism for ensuring long-term sustainability of rurallivelihoods and ecosystem services (Chouvy and Laniel, 2007). Non-farmincome now represents a substantial proportion of total income formany rural households and can, in turn, increase resilience to weatherandclimate-related shocks (Brklacich et al., 1997; Smithers and Smit,1997; Wandel and Smit, 2000). The implications of these transitions forlocal rural risk, and how far they may provide scope for mitigation, hasnot been fully explored in the literature.While urban sites offer opportunities for mitigation through diversified(household) production and energy conservation, rural areas are a focusfor concentrated low- or no-carbon energy production ranging fromhydroelectric power (HEP) to solar and wind farms, biofuel crops, andcarbon sink functions associated with forestry in particular and REDD+projects. These investments can have significant local impacts on disasterrisk through changes in land use and land cover that may influencehydrology, or through economic effects and consequences for livelihoods.There is scope for synergy, for example, through small HEP/flood orwater conservation dams, and some have gone as far to say that thisjoined-up approach is part of a transformed development policy formeeting combined energy and water demands in vulnerable ruralcommunities, most particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (Foster and Briceño-Garmendia, 2011). Some impacts can even go beyond local places.Recent impacts of biofuel production on rural livelihoods and globalfood security indicate the interdependence of vulnerability in rural andurban systems, and the care required in transformations of this kindwhere impacts can quickly spread and be amplified through globalmarkets (Dufey, 2006; de Fraiture et al., 2008).Flows of investment, remittances, migration, and material transfersthrough trade and also in the movement of resources (water, food,461