IPCC Report.pdf - Adam Curry

Chapter 7Managing the Risks: International Level and Integration across ScalesAt the practical level there are many steps already underway to bringabout such forms of integration (see Chapters 5 and 6). There arenumerous hazards and disasters that are not directly linked to climatechange but their impacts may serve to increase vulnerability to climatechange. Nevertheless, as noted in Section 7.5 there are many obstaclesto integration and it is by no means agreed that full integrationbetween disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation ispossible, or desirable.The potential benefits as well as the obstacles to integration can beexamined in terms of three scales: the spatial, the temporal, and thefunctional (Birkmann and von Teichman, 2010).7.6.2. Integration at a Spatial ScaleThe literature reflects a view that DRR and CCA operate at differentspatial scales (Birkmann and von Teichman, 2010) and that therefore theirintegration in practice has been problematic or impracticable. Disastersare often thought of as events occurring at a specific location whereasclimate change is thought of as a global or regional phenomenon. Thisview is now being modified as the need for locally based climatechange adaptation becomes evident (Adger et al., 2005), as the impactsof local disasters are recognized as having more widespread impacts ata larger spatial scale (see Chapters 4 and 6 and Section 7.2.1).One commonly cited impediment to integration is that climate changeprojections do not provide precise information at a local scale (seeChapter 3) and that adaptation strategies tend to be designed for entirecountries or regions (German Federal Government, 2008; Red Cross andRed Crescent Climate Centre, 2007).7.6.3. Integration at a Temporal ScaleThere is also a perceived difference in the temporal scales of CCAand DRR. The disaster community has traditionally been focused onhumanitarian response including relief and reconstruction in the relativelyshort term. (UNISDR, 2009b), whereas climate change has beenrecognized as including long-term processes with projections extendingfrom decades to centuries (Chapter 3), which poses problems fordevelopment communities usually focusing on a shorter time span.More effective cooperation and integration between the DRR and theCCA practitioners could help to detect, address, and overcome thesetemporal-scale challenges. This essentially requires the strongerrecognition of the risks of climate-related disasters in CCA and theincorporation of longer-term climate change risk factors into DRR.7.6.4. Integration at a Functional ScaleThe functional separation of CCA and DRR institutions, organizations,and mechanisms extends across all three levels of management fromlocal to national to international. At the international level there areweak links between the climate adaptation ‘regime’ as expressed in theUNFCCC and the leading DRR ‘regime’ in the form of the UNISDR. Thecharacter of the two ‘regimes’ is radically different, the former havingthe task of implementing an international agreement and the latterbeing a UN-wide interagency and advocacy program. The history of theevolution of the two institutional arrangements is markedly different.The disaster field has long been dominated by humanitarian andemergency response measures and has only relatively recently beenmoving toward a stronger DRR approach (Burton, 2003). Similarly,climate change was initially conceived as an atmospheric pollutionissue with greater emphasis on the need to reduce greenhouse gasemissions and has slowly been repositioned, as in the UNFCCCnegotiations, as also being a development issue. One consequence ofthe different evolution has been that the emerging international climate‘regime’ (UNFCCC) is linked at the national level to environmentministries, whereas the disaster ‘regime’ (UNISDR) is linked to emergencyplanning and preparedness agencies or, in other cases, to the office ofPresident. Neither DRR nor CAA are well linked to economic planningand development agencies (UNISDR, 2009b).There is also a ‘top-down’ versus ‘bottom-up’ distinction (Rayner, 2010).Natural hazards and associated disasters have a long history, and DRRhas moved slowly from local to national to international levels inresponse to the rationale described in Section 7.2. Climate change, onthe other hand, came to attention as a result of the work of atmosphericscientists and was first recognized primarily as a global problem, andhas subsequently moved down scale as the need for CCA becamemore apparent and pressing. This shows that the opportunity existsfor the two to complement each other, at the international level whereDRR has progressed, and at the national and local level to which CCAis moving.7.6.5. Toward More IntegrationThe mandate of this Special Report is in part to consider how CCA couldbe enhanced by learning from the experience of the DRR community,and vice versa. The literature shows a widespread view that the twocould both benefit from closer integration with each other and thatboth would benefit society better if there was more integration intosustainable development (UNISDR, 2009a). Integration in this sense ismeant as symbiosis or synthesis rather than formal integration at theinstitutional level. Integration across scales can be facilitated ifintegration between DRR and CCA were also to take place at local,national, and international levels. Integration at the international levelmight help to facilitate integration at national and local levels althoughthe opposite is also possible. This Special Report is itself a prime exampleof emerging cooperation. It is in line with a wider evolution in the globalenvironmental change science research community whose productsserve both disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation at theinternational level of management.427