IPCC_Managing Risks of Extreme Events.pdf - Climate Access

Climate Change: New Dimensions in Disaster Risk, Exposure, Vulnerability, and ResilienceChapter 1El Niño. Moreover, like disaster risk management, adaptation to climatechange will often take place within a multi-hazard locational frameworkgiven that many areas affected by climate change will also be affectedby other persistent and recurrent hazards (Wisner et al., 2004, 2011;Lavell, 2010; Mercer, 2010). Additionally, learning from disaster riskmanagement can help adaptation, which to date has focused more onchanges in the climate mean, increasing its focus on future changes inclimate extremes and other potentially damaging events.Second, disaster risk management has tended to encourage an expanded,bottom-up, grass roots approach, emphasizing local and communitybasedrisk management in the framework of national managementsystems (see Chapters 5 and 6), while an important segment of theadaptation literature focuses on social and economic sectors and macroecosystems over large regional scales. However, a large body of theadaptation literature – in both developed and developing countries – isvery locally focused. Both fields could benefit from the body of work onthe determinants of adaptive capacity that focus on the interaction ofindividual and collective action and institutions that frame their actions(McGray et al., 2007; Schipper, 2009).Third, the current disaster risk management literature emphasizes thesocial conditioning of risk and the construction of vulnerability as a causalfactor in explaining loss and damage. Early adaptation literature andsome more recent output, particularly from the climate change field,prioritizes physical events and exposure, seeing vulnerability as whatremains after all other factors have been considered (O’Brien et al.,2007). However, community-based adaptation work in developingcountries (Beer and Hamilton, 2002; Brown et al., 2006; Lavell andLavell, 2009; UNISDR, 2009b,c) and a growing number of studies indeveloped nations (Burby and Nelson, 1991; de Bruin et al., 2009;Bedsworth and Hanak, 2010; Brody et al., 2010; Corfee-Morlot et al.,2011; Moser and Eckstrom, 2011) have considered social causation.Both fields could benefit from further integration of these concepts.Overall, the disaster risk management and adaptation to climate changeliteratures both now emphasize the value of a more holistic, integrated,trans-disciplinary approach to risk management (ICSU-LAC, 2009).Dividing the world up sectorally and thematically has often provenorganizationally convenient in government and academia, but canundermine a thorough understanding of the complexity and interactionof the human and physical factors involved in the constitution anddefinition of a problem at different social, temporal, and territorialscales. A more integrated approach facilitates recognition of the complexrelationships among diverse social, temporal, and spatial contexts;highlights the importance of decision processes that employ participatorymethods and decentralization within a supporting hierarchy of higherlevels; and emphasizes that many disaster risk management and otherorganizations currently face climate-related decisions whether theyrecognize them or not.The following areas, some of which have been pursued by governments,civil society actors, and communities, have been recommended orproposed to foster such integration between, and greater effectivenessof, both adaptation to climate change and disaster risk management(see also WRI, 2008; Birkmann and von Teichman, 2010; Lavell, 2010):• Development of a common lexicon and deeper understanding ofthe concepts and terms used in each field (Schipper and Burton,2009)• Implementation of government policymaking and strategyformulation that jointly considers the two topics• Evolution of national and international organizations and institutionsand their programs that merge and synchronize around thetwo themes, such as environmental ministries coordinating withdevelopment and planning ministries (e.g., National EnvironmentalPlanning Authority in Jamaica and Peruvian Ministries of Economyand Finance, Housing, and Environment)• Merging and/or coordinating disaster risk management andadaptation financing mechanisms through development agenciesand nongovernmental organizations• The use of participatory, local level risk and context analysismethodologies inspired by disaster risk management that are nowstrongly accepted by many civil society and government agenciesin work on adaptation at the local levels (IFRC, 2007; Lavell andLavell, 2009; UNISDR, 2009 b,c)• Implementing bottom-up approaches whereby local communitiesintegrate adaptation to climate change, disaster risk management,and other environmental and development concerns in a single,causally dimensioned intervention framework, commensuratemany times with their own integrated views of their own physicaland social environments (Moench and Dixit, 2004; Lavell andLavell, 2009).1.4. Coping and AdaptingThe discussion in this section has four goals: to clarify the relationshipbetween adaptation and coping, particularly the notion of coping range;to highlight the role of learning in an adaptation process; to discussbarriers to successful adaptation and the issue of maladaptation; andto highlight examples of learning in the disaster risk managementcommunity that have already advanced climate change adaptation.A key conclusion of this section is that learning is central to adaptation,and that there are abundant examples (see Section 1.4.5 and Chapter 9)of the disaster risk management community learning from prior experienceand adjusting its practices to respond to a wide range of existing andevolving hazards. These cases provide the adaptation to climate changecommunity with the opportunity not only to study the specifics of learningas outlined in these cases, but also to reflect on how another communitythat also addresses climate-related risk has incorporated learning intoits practice over time.As disaster risk management includes both coping and adapting, andthese two concepts are central for adaptation to climate change in bothscholarship and practice, it is important to start by clarifying the meanings50