Adapting to Climate Change: Assessing the World Bank Group ...

APPENDIX EROADSroads to higher standards as climates change—to a strategy of immediate andgeneral upgrading, and find that the adaptive option is more cost-effective. Thestudy also finds that targeted upgrading for particular flood-prone areas is moreefficient than an across-the-board increase in standards.EXAMPLES IN PRACTICETwo recent Bank projects highlight some examples of how climate resilience hasbeen explicitly considered in road project design. 70 A climate resilient road project inTimor-Leste emphasized the need for sufficient drainage, noting that 92 percent ofroads were in poor or very poor condition, largely due to landslides, floods, andinsufficient maintenance and drainage capacity (World Bank 2011b). A climatechange impact assessment study found that there would likely be fewer but moreextreme rainfall events, which would increase demands on already insufficient roadinfrastructure (Cardno Acil 2009). The primary component of the project thussupported urgent road repairs followed by a program of road improvementinvolving construction of slope stabilization structures and drainage structures.Recognizing that it is not optimal to try to prevent all road damage, the projectdesign included performance-based contracts for long-term road maintenance, andsupported design and pilot implementation of emergency response systems toundertake rapid repairs after a storm. A road rehabilitation project in Kiribatifocuses on rehabilitating the main road on Tarawa, but also used a coastalassessment from the Bank’s Kiribati Adaptation Project II to identify areasvulnerable to erosion where coastal protection structures would be required. In bothcases, the primary concern is dealing with shocks due to current climate variabilityrather than future climate change.118