IPCC Report.pdf - Adam Curry

Climate Change: New Dimensions in Disaster Risk, Exposure, Vulnerability, and ResilienceChapter 1and how near-term risk management decisions and adjustmentsconstrain future vulnerability and enable adaptation.Chapter 3 focuses on changes in extremes of atmospheric weather andclimate variables (e.g., temperature and precipitation), large-scalephenomena that are related to these extremes or are themselvesextremes (e.g., tropical and extratropical cyclones, El Niño, and monsoons),and collateral effects on the physical environment (e.g., droughts,floods, coastal impacts, landslides). The chapter builds on and updatesthe Fourth Assessment Report, which in some instances, due to newliterature, leads to revisions of that assessment.Chapter 4 explores how changes in climate, particularly weather andclimate extremes assessed in Chapter 3, translate into extreme impactson human and ecological systems. A key issue is the nature of bothobserved and expected trends in impacts, the latter resulting fromtrends in both physical and social conditions. The chapter assessesthese questions from both a regional and a sectoral perspective, andexamines the direct and indirect economic costs of such changes andtheir relation to development.Chapters 5, 6, and 7 assess approaches to disaster risk management andadaptation to climate change from the perspectives of local, national,and international governance institutions, taking into consideration theroles of government, individuals, nongovernmental organizations, theprivate sector, and other civil society institutions and arrangements.Each chapter reviews the efficacy of current disaster risk reduction,preparedness, and response and risk transfer strategies and previousapproaches to extremes and disasters in order to extract lessons for thefuture. Impacts, adaptation, and the cost of risk management areassessed through the prism of diverse social aggregations and meansfor cooperation, as well as a variety of institutional arrangements.Chapter 5 focuses on the highly variable local contexts resulting fromdifferences in place, social groupings, experience, management,institutions, conditions, and sets of knowledge, highlighting riskmanagement strategies involving housing, buildings, and land use.Chapter 6 explores similar issues at the national level, wheremechanisms including national budgets, development goals, planning,warning systems, and building codes may be employed to manage, forexample, food security and agriculture, water resources, forests,fisheries, building practice, and public health. Chapter 7 carries thisanalysis to the international level, where the emphasis is on institutions,organizations, knowledge generation and sharing, legal frameworks andpractices, and funding arrangements that characterize internationalagencies and collaborative arrangements. This chapter also discussesintegration of responsibilities across all governmental scales, emphasizingthe linkages among disaster risk management, climate change adaptation,and development.Chapter 8 assesses how disaster risk reduction strategies, ranging fromincremental to transformational, can advance adaptation to climatechange and promote a more sustainable and resilient future. Keyquestions include whether an improved alignment between climatechange responses and sustainable development strategies may beachieved, and whether short- and long-term perspectives may bereconciled.Chapter 9 closes this report by presenting case studies in order toidentify lessons and best practices from past responses to extremeclimate-related events and extreme impacts. Cases illustrate concreteand diverse examples of disaster types as well as risk managementmethodologies and responses discussed in the other chapters, providinga key reference point for the entire report.1.1.2. Key Concepts and DefinitionsThe concepts and definitions presented in this chapter and employedthroughout the Special Report take into account a number of existingsources (IPCC, 2007c; UNISDR, 2009d; ISO, 2009) but also reflect the factthat concepts and definitions evolve as knowledge, needs, and contextsvary. Disaster risk management and adaptation to climate change aredynamic fields, and have in the past exhibited and will necessarilycontinue in the future to exhibit such evolution.This chapter presents ‘skeleton’ definitions that are generic rather thanspecific. In subsequent chapters, the definitions provided here are oftenexpanded in more detail and variants among these definitions will beexamined and explained where necessary.A glossary of the fundamental definitions used in this assessment isprovided at the end of this study. Figure 1-1 provides a schematicof the relationships among many of the key concepts defined here.1.1.2.1. Definitions Related to General ConceptsIn order to delimit the central concerns of this Special Report, a distinctionis made between those concepts and definitions that relate to disasterrisk and adaptation to climate change generally; and, on the otherhand, those that relate in particular to the options and forms of socialintervention relevant to these fields. In Section 1.1.2.1, consideration isgiven to general concepts. In Section 1.1.2.2, key concepts relating tosocial intervention through ‘Disaster Risk Management’ and ‘ClimateChange Adaptation’ are considered.Extreme (weather and climate) events and disasters comprise the twocentral risk management concerns of this Special Report.Extreme events comprise a facet of climate variability under stable orchanging climate conditions. They are defined as the occurrence of avalue of a weather or climate variable above (or below) a thresholdvalue near the upper (or lower) ends (‘tails’) of the range of observedvalues of the variable. This definition is further discussed and amplifiedin Sections 1.2.2, 3.1.1, and 3.1.2.30