World Disasters Report 2010 - International Federation of Red Cross ...

CHAPTER 6
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still considered to be uneven, and low-latitude, less-developed areas are generally at
greatest risk due to both higher sensitivity and lower adaptive capacity”.
It is also worth noting that most developing world cities – and the countries in which
they are located – have contributed very little to the global greenhouse gas emissions
that are causing climate change in the first place. At a national level, average annual per
capita greenhouse gas emissions are more than 20 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent
in many highly industrialized countries including Australia, Canada and the United
States. At the opposite end of the scale, emissions from many sub-Saharan African
countries including Burkina Faso, Malawi and Tanzania are less than 0.2 tonnes per
capita per year – a more than 100-fold difference. The fact that urban residents in
these countries are likely to be the worst affected means that supporting climate change
adaptation is a vital environmental justice issue for the 21st century. In his address to
the United Nations Summit on Climate Change in September 2009, IPCC Chairman
Rajendra K. Pachauri spelt out what this could mean: “In Africa, by 2020, between
75 and 250 million people are projected to be exposed to water stress due to climate
change, and in some countries yields from rainfed agriculture could be reduced by up
to 50%. The impacts of climate change would be disproportionately severe on some
of the poorest regions and communities of the world. My own analysis suggests that at
least 12 countries are likely to tend towards becoming failed states and communities
in several other states would show potential for serious conflict due to scarcity of food,
water stress and soil degradation.”
Complex inter-linkages exist between the effects of climate change and the process of
urbanization. It is likely that extreme events and gradual changes alike will, in many
cases, contribute to increasing levels of mobility. In most of these cases, mobility (along
with income diversification) will be an important strategy for households and communities
to reduce vulnerability to environmental and non-environmental risks and
thereby to cope with climate change. At the same time, however, high urban densities
can increase vulnerability to climate change-related disasters – particularly because
inadequate institutions and lack of infrastructure are often concentrated in areas where
there are also high population densities of low-income urban residents. In particular,
rural–urban migrants often have no choice but to settle on land that is already densely
populated or in relatively vacant sections that are particularly prone to disasters. Cities
can also concentrate adaptive capacities: economic resources, diversified food sources,
a wide range of income-generating opportunities, transmission mechanisms for early
warning systems and efficiencies of scale for emergency responses are capacities that
have the potential to be much stronger in urban areas.
The geographical distribution of climate change risk
The types of information used to assess the potential threats from climatic hazards
are past records of exposure to extreme weather events such as tropical storms, likely