CLIMATE PROOF – my presentation at the Resilient City Conference in Bonn, May 29, 2010

Climate adaptation, as a specific course of action, is relatively new, although at a more fundamental level society has always adapted to changes in climate. The Resilient City Conference in Bonn on May 28-30, 2010 addressed the need for cities to find new ways to adapt to a changing climate. The conference was organized by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability. 470 scientists, professionals and policy makers from around the world attended it. I contributed a paper to the conference and presented its findings on Saturday. In it, I compared the way in which City Climate Plans in the US, Europe and Asia have incorporated climate adaptation strategies.

The paper is based on an analysis that I did with Anisha Mittal and Ashley Spatafore in our New York Urban Progress Design office. We found that most regions and cities have a reasonable understanding of the threat that the changing climate poses, but that their understanding of the vulnerability of their city or region is less than complete. Especially the economic and social components of vulnerability –how changes in the climate affect specific population groups or specific economic sectors- is not yet adequately analyzed.

Our study suggests that much progress is being made in addressing the consequences of climate change. Most cities now recognize the need to take action beyond reducing carbon emissions, and adapt to the changing climate. All ten cities have recent plans and studies to address the issue at hand, and the knowledge on risks and adaptation strategies is increasing fast. But the focus is still rather infrastructural, and we concluded that the cities would need to build-up their social and economic analysis. In terms of adaptation strategies, the cities are just starting to address their climate risks, also mainly from the infrastructural field.

The presentation concludes that the need for climate proofing will become one of the drivers of citywide planning and strategizing. Our impression is that city climate action plans are a suitable platform for improving city resilience, but that more broad scope approaches are needed to address the key climate risks. We conclude that knowledge development is crucial, including vulnerability analysis, mapping, strategic options for adaptation, and success stories on adaptation. We suggest several ways through which City Climate Action Plans can be enhanced to deliver climate proofing, including the need to enhance risk mapping and a plea for more metropolitan level approaches. High on the metropolitan agenda would be the need to ‘climate-proof’ suburbia. This is the next big challenge, especially for a suburban nation like the US.

RESILIENT CITIES – urging climate adaptation investments in cities

Cities are part of the climate problem, but the members of ICLEI, the organization of Local Governments for Sustainability, have no doubt that they are an important part of the solution as well. Cities have to reduce their carbon emissions, but the need to prevent excessive damage require them to also adapt to anticipated changes of the climate. That was the central issue of the Resilient City Conference that was held in Bonn on May 28-30, 2010. It was organized by ICLEI, and the organization claims it is the first World Congress on Climate Change Adaptation for Cities. 470 scientists, professionals and policy makers from around the world attended it.

Encouraging news for me was that the World Bank’s best guesses at the moment put the worldwide costs of adaptation to a changing climate at 75 to 100 billion dollars per year. That is a lot of money, but it is also just 0.2 to 0.7% of the world GDP. Not an excessive price to secure our living environment, I would say, but nevertheless a huge investment in retrofitting society. The worrying news was that current investments in climate improvement are hardly going to cities. Despite the fact that carbon emissions and their reduction, as well as the impacts of climate change, are at least 50% urban in character, just 1% of the carbon finance is going to cities. In terms of financing climate improvements, the shift to the cities still has to be made. The Bonn Conference was an urgent call to do just that.

The conference was an interesting mix - scientists urging policy makers to take full action to address climate risks, politicians calling on adaptation planners and technicians to come up with solutions that they can explain to their constituency, and adaptation experts promoting the integration of adaptation measures into overall development practices. It gives a good insight in the adaptation discussion. Plus lots of case studies, focusing mainly on the process through which adaptation can best be realized.

There were surprisingly few (I thought) presentations that focused on the actual measures that cities take to counter climate risks. I found two explanations. First, most of the workshops were designed to explore the processes at the interface of everyday policy and adaptation expertise. To me, that was an interesting focus, especially in the discussions. Although it made the conference a bit process oriented, it delivered good insights in the problems of setting up the right approach.

The second explanation was that presenters seemed to assume that the actual adaptation actions are well defined, and that the best practices are well known. Therefore they focused on the context rather than on the process. Here I have some doubts. Do we really know how to best retrofit local drainage to allow for heavier rain, or what economic policies can steer development away from vulnerable sectors, and how we can best relocate communities that are exposed to rising sea levels? Sure, a lot of techniques and experiences are available, but it seems to me that there is still a lot to learn from other locations. I am quite sure that good best practices guides and adaptation manuals would help to smoothen adaptation implementation.

Strategic insights were provided among others by Cyntia Rosenzweig, a New York based scientist and co-chair of the New York City Panel for Climate Change. She translated the recently completed scientific report of the Panel into recommendations for cities around the world. Her suggestions included a plea to seek local consensus on the band with of anticipated climate impacts and to use vulnerability assessment as a tool for capacity development. She also suggested that in urban areas, climate mitigation in the form of reducing carbon emissions will have to be combined with adaptation.

Under the surface of the adaptation discussion, many scientists and international policy makers are still hugely frustrated with the lack of international action of the reduction of carbon emissions. Especially among western experts this seems to be the case. I had a similar experience at the State of the Planet Forum at Columbia University's Earth Institute in New York last March. European and American experts voiced their frustration, while Asian and African experts were urging participants to ‘move on’ and ‘address the issues at hand’. I fully agreed with that, and it occurred to me that the Bonn Conference was starting to do just that. And Urban Progress is keen to contribute to these efforts.