IPCC Report.pdf - Adam Curry

Managing the Risks from Climate Extremes at the Local LevelChapter 55.1. Introduction: Why the Local is ImportantDisasters occur first at the local level and affect local people. Theselocalized impacts can then cascade to have national and internationalramifications. As a result, the responsibility for managing such risksrequires the linkage of local, national, and global scales (Figure 5-1).Some disaster risk management options are bottom-up strategies,designed by and for local places, while other management options areproducts of global negotiations (Chapter 7) that are then implementedthrough national institutions (Chapter 6) to local levels. Institutions,actors, governance, and geographic units of analysis are not uniformacross these scales. Even within each scale there are differences. Whilesome communities are able to cope with disaster risks, others havelimited disaster resilience and capacity to cope with present disaster risklet alone adapt to climate variability and extremes. This is the topic ofthis chapter: to present evidence on where disasters are experienced,how disaster risks are managed at present, and the variability in copingmechanisms and capacity in the face of climate variability and change,all from the perspective of local places and local actors. The chapterexplores three themes: how disaster risks are managed at present; how theimpact of climate extremes threatens human security at the local level; andthe role of scale and context in shaping variability in vulnerability,coping, adaptive capacity, and the management of disaster risks andclimate extremes at the local level.The idea of local has many connotations. For the purposes of this report,local refers to a range of places, management structures, institutions,social groupings, conditions, and sets of experiences and knowledgethat exist at a scale below the national level. As administrative units,local can range from villages, districts, suburbs, cities, and metropolitanareas, through to regions, states, and provinces. The conception of localincludes the set of institutions (public and private) that maintain andprotect local people as well as those that have some administrativecontrol over space and resources. In these places, choices and actionsfor disaster risk management and adaptation to climate extremes canbe initially independent of national interventions. At the local level thereis traditional knowledge about disaster risk and grassroots actions tomanage it. Functional or physical units such as watersheds, ecologicalzones, or economic regions operate at the local level, including theprivate and public institutions that govern their use and management.Each of the differing connotations of local means that there are differingapproaches to and contents of disaster risk management practice,differing stakeholders and interest groups, and more significantly,differing relations with the national and international levels (Adgeret al., 2005). We recognize that states and provinces in many countriesare large complex entities with similar powers as smaller nations.Where we discuss states and provinces and similar administrativestructures in this chapter, we refer to them as sub-national for clarificationpurposes.GLOBALActorsBusinessesNGOsGovernmentsFinancialFlowDisaster Risk ManagementActorsElected officialsBusinessesNGOsFaith-basedMilitaryNATIONALGovernanceLaws & regulationsFederal agenciesInternational treatiesClimate Change AdaptationInformation andKnowledge FlowsLOCALActorsHouseholdsBusinessesNGOs, Faith-basedMilitaryLocal leadersAdministrative UnitsVillagesCommunityCity, Town, County,ParishState, ProvinceGeographic UnitsWatershedCoastal zoneEcosystemMegacityFigure 5-1 | Linking local to global actors and responsibilities.296