chapter 4 - DRK

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Strictly under embargo until Wednesday 22 September at 00:01 GMT (02:01 Geneva time)Several initiatives – including the C40 Climate Leadership Group and Cities forClimate Protection, sponsored by ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability – helpshare knowledge and good practices between cities involved in reducing their greenhousegas emissions. Urban authorities in low- and middle-income nations have alsobegun to exploit opportunities to generate ‘carbon credits’ through reducing emissionsfrom solid waste management and other activities. At the same time, however, it mustbe ensured that these efforts do not divert attention from the strong adaptation needsthat face many residents of these cities.Box 6.3 Urban flooding in IrelandMuch of urban Ireland was thrown into chaosby widespread flooding in the same week inNovember 2009 that the Irish Academy of Engineering(IAE) published a landmark reportIreland At Risk – Critical Infrastructure and ClimateChange which warned that storm surgescombined with a sea-level rise of 50cm wouldmean that a one-in-100-year flood could happenas often as every five years.Rainfall totals were the highest on recordfor November in many places and river levelsreached record heights as the Irish Red Crossdeployed volunteers and ambulances to assistin evacuations and to ensure that vital healthpersonnel were able to report to work.Months later the island nation, whose majorcities all lie on the coast, was still counting thecost. In County Cork alone, it was estimated thatflood damage ran to 100 million euros as a damequipped with a new 50-metre-wide spillway designedto cope with an extreme flood, failed tocope. The River Lee burst its banks and floodedthe centre of Cork, Ireland’s second largest city.“Failure to act now will put our society atan unacceptable risk,” said the IAE’s president,Michael Hayden. “You’ve only to thinkof Hurricane Katrina for an example of howclimate change coupled with poor planningand zoning decisions can lead to social andeconomic disaster.”In a week when the country’s major riversburst their banks, the academy warned thathomes in coastal cities could become uninsurableunless urgent measures were taken andcited Benjamin Franklin’s adage: “An ounce ofprevention is worth a pound of cure.”The IAE further predicted that unless urgentaction was taken to strengthen critical infrastructurethe following would happen: changingrainfall patterns would affect water supplies;rising sea levels would inundate coastalcities and towns; severe weather incidentswould damage energy installations, hospitals,telecommunications, railways and other criticalinfrastructure, and contaminate water supplies.The Irish Sunday Tribune newspaper notedin an editorial other factors that played a rolein the November flooding which saw thousandsof people evacuated from their homes:“The legacy of the past decade has been oneof appalling and corrupt planning decisionswhich have allowed building on flood plains;building regulations that allowed uninsulated,energy-inefficient homes to be thrown up anyhow,anywhere; inadequate flood managementschemes which at times have been poorlymanaged; and now last week, the failure tohave a fully working flood emergency plan inoperation should the worst happen has addedto the misery of tens of thousands of people.”124
Strictly under embargo until Wednesday 22 September at 00:01 GMT (02:01 Geneva time)The Green Party Minister for the EnvironmentJohn Gormley said in January 2010 that thefloods showed up the “questionable nature”of development decisions made by some localauthorities, 19 of whom had to be compensatedby the government for emergency servicesprovided during the flooding. He also ordereda major review of the remit of the EnvironmentalProtection Agency and announced a three-yearwater conservation investment plan as waterlosses continue to be a major problem in manyparts of the country despite the rainfall. Reducing the effects of climate change:Local planning for adaptation and disasterrisk reductionMuch recent climate change policy has stressed the ‘co-benefits’ of mitigation strategies:the ways in which reducing greenhouse gas emissions can meet broader goals of increasedenergy independence, lower costs and higher quality of life. However, for a large proportionof the world’s urban population, this is of limited value as their emissions are alreadyextremely low but there are many strong co-benefits between climate change adaptation anddevelopment. This includes disaster risk reduction but also addresses slow-onset changessuch as the salinization of groundwater which affect the accumulation of risk over time.For practical purposes such as policy design, the distinction between natural variability(including extreme events) and incremental variability due to climate change is trivial –the key is to recognize and address underlying factors causing vulnerability. A startingpoint for reducing climate risk, therefore, is a better understanding of the particularhazards and vulnerability faced by urban centres. This is a context-specific process butthere are several underlying principles that can be followed. Firstly, projected climatescenarios and their potential impacts need to be understood but their limitations alsoneed to be known. Future projections contain a wide range of uncertainties in relationto both the absolute extent of climate change and the ways in which this will be experiencedat the geographical scale of the city. Secondly, a detailed analysis needs to beundertaken to identify the most vulnerable groups, areas, sectors and how they may beaffected – a process that has much in common with assessing vulnerability to disasters.Thirdly, the combined impacts of direct and indirect factors need to be taken intoaccount – recognizing both the effects of climate change and the implications for urbanresidents of policies formulated to address these. Finally, existing capacities to respondand adapt must be assessed. With the exception of the climate projection component,this is already good practice in identifying vulnerability to a range of extreme events.Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction thatmeet the needs of the urban poorUrban governance is increasingly accepted as a multifaceted process involving a rangeof stakeholders, including civil society organizations, the private sector, the academicand research community, and the formal mechanisms of local government. BuildingWorld Disasters Report 2010 – Focus on urban risk125
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214INDEXStrictly under embargo unti
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The International Federationof Red
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