Some people will be forced to cope because
they don’t have the economic or social means to adapt
It was
reported recently that the leaders of the tiny, remote archipelago nation of
Kiribati, fearing climate change, are considering spending US$9.6 million to
buy almost 3,000 hectares put up for sale by a church group to move Kiribati’s
entire population of 103,000 to Fiji if it becomes necessary.
That
may be a prudent plan. Last week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, a network of thousands of volunteer scientists established by the World
Meteorological Society and the United Nations Environment Program, released a
massive 594-page report titled Managing the Risk of Extreme Events and
Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation that seeks to find ways to cope
with what, to the IPCC, appears to be an inevitability.
(The
scientists and other experts contribute without receiving payment from the
IPCC, in case the naysayers of the Republican Party in the United States think
the scientists are promoting climate change as a way of making extra money.)
The
document is a summary for policymakers dealing with the interaction of
climactic, environmental and human factors that can lead to disasters and gives
them options for managing risk. It is important because buried in its dry,
rather bureaucratic language are an exhaustive series of scenarios for
governments to examine, ranging anywhere from moving islanders like the
Kiribatians and Maldivians, to trying to mitigate the damage to people in other
ways.
The
report, the authors note, “explores the challenge of understanding and managing
the risks of climate extremes to advance climate change adaptation. Weather-
and climate-related disasters have social as well as physical dimensions. As a
result, changes in the frequency and severity of the physical events affect
disaster risk, but so do the spatially diverse and temporally dynamic patterns
of exposure and vulnerability.”
The
report doesn’t deal in terms of whether climate change is real. It states
baldly that it is, and questions how to deal with it: “The character and
severity of impacts from climate extremes depend not only on the extremes
themselves but also on exposure and vulnerability.” the authors say. It is very
likely that mean sea level rises will contribute to upward trends in extreme
coastal high water levels, the report notes.
“There
is high confidence that locations currently experiencing adverse impacts such
as coastal erosion and inundation will continue to do so in the future due to
increasing sea levels, all other contributing factors being equal. The very
likely contribution of mean sea level rise to increased extreme coastal high
water levels, coupled with the likely increase in tropical cyclone maximum wind
speed, is a specific issue for tropical small island states.”
There
is also high confidence that changes in heat waves, glacial retreat, and/or
permafrost degradation will affect high mountain phenomena such as slope
instabilities, movements of mass, and glacial lake outburst floods. There is
also high confidence that changes in heavy precipitation will affect landslides
in some regions.
Extreme
events, the report notes, “will have greater impacts on sectors with closer
links to climate, such as water, agriculture and food security, forestry,
health, and tourism. For example, while it is not currently possible to
reliably project specific changes at the catchment scale, there is high
confidence that changes in climate have the potential to seriously affect water
management systems.
“However,
climate change is in many instances only one of the drivers of future changes,
and is not necessarily the most important driver at the local scale.
Climate-related extremes are also expected to produce large impacts on
infrastructure, although detailed analysis of potential and projected damages
are limited to a few countries, infrastructure types, and sectors.
Climate
extremes are only one of the factors that affect risk. While some regions can
expect economic loss, the main drivers of loss will be socioeconomic in nature.
“Climate extremes are only one of the factors that affect risk, but few studies
have specifically quantified the effects of changes in population, exposure of
people and assets, and vulnerability as determinants of loss. However, the few
studies available generally underline the important role of projected changes
(increases) in population and capital at risk.”
Direct
economic losses can be expected from the increasing frequency and intensity of
tropical cyclones, something the Philippines has already experienced over the
past two to three years, with parts of Manila completely inundated. There is
also the weeks of rain that put much of central Thailand underwater for months
and wrought billions of dollars in damage and shaving GDP growth by several
percentage points.
The
authors state with “medium confidence” that overall losses due to
extra-tropical cyclones thus will also increase, although there will be
possible decreases or no change in other areas. “Although future flood losses
in many locations will increase in the absence of additional protection
measures, the size of the estimated change is highly variable, depending on
location, climate scenarios used, and methods used to assess impacts on river
flow and flood occurrence.
Some
local areas are certain to become increasingly marginal as places in which to
live or in which to maintain livelihoods, the report notes, an ominous forecast
for many cities such as Jakarta, Bangkok, Manila and others which were built on
flood plains because of their proximity to ease of water navigation. Many of
these cities are also subsiding as governments draw down groundwater. Bangkok
and Jakarta are two of the best examples.
“In
such cases, migration and displacement could become permanent and could
introduce new pressures in areas of relocation. For locations such as atolls,
in some cases it is possible that many residents will have to relocate,” the
authors note. Kiribati, the Maldives and other such low-lying island chains are
the canaries in the mine.
Managing Climate Risk
The
report details measures that provide benefits under current climate and a range
of future climate change scenarios, called “low-regrets measures,” including
early warning systems; risk communication between decision-makers and local
citizens; sustainable land management, including land use planning; and
ecosystem management and restoration.
Other
such low-regrets measures include improvements to health surveillance, water
supply, sanitation, and irrigation and drainage systems; climate-proofing of
infrastructure; development and enforcement of building codes; and better
education and awareness.
Mitigating
risk doesn’t just depend on dealing on a local level. It is going to take
multi-hazard risk management approaches provide opportunities to reduce complex
and compound hazards. The international financial community must be involved
although so far funding remains scant. “International funding for disaster risk
reduction remains relatively low as compared to the scale of spending on
international humanitarian response. Technology transfer and cooperation to
advance disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation are important.
Coordination on technology transfer and cooperation between these two fields
has been lacking, which has led to fragmented implementation.”
Local
populations must document their experiences with the changing climate,
particularly extreme weather events, in many different ways, and this
self-generated knowledge can uncover existing capacity within the community and
important current shortcomings. Local participation supports community-based adaptation
to benefit management of disaster risk and climate extremes.
“However,
improvements in the availability of human and financial capital and of disaster
risk and climate information customized for local stakeholders can enhance
community-based adaptation.”
The
key, the authors say, is to understand people's circumstances on a human level
in order to bring about changes in attitudes at the community level. Social and
cultural traditions expose people to greater risk, like living in certain more perilous
locations because the choice of livelihood dictates it. Thus it is important to
understand the people of the city of Cagayan de Oro at the northern tip of
Mindanao, where hundreds drowned recently in flash floods, and the survivors,
who shortly later moved back to the flood plains, because that is the only
place for them to live and to find work.
Asia
Sentinel
Business & Investment Opportunities
YourVietnamExpert is a division of Saigon Business Corporation Pte Ltd, Incorporated in Singapore since 1994. As Your Business Companion, we propose a range of services in Strategy, Investment and Management, focusing Healthcare and Life Science with expertise in ASEAN. We also propose Higher Education, as a bridge between educational structures and industries, by supporting international programmes. Many thanks for visiting www.yourvietnamexpert.com and/or contacting us at contact@yourvietnamexpert.com
No comments:
Post a Comment