Hidden Vulnerabilities of Asian Cities and Climate Change: Shattering the Myths

SVRK Prabhakar, IGES, Japan

Having come from a rural background, I always had fascinating impression about cities: they are cool, trendy, fashionable, provide better quality of life, have better infrastructure and one can be what they want to be because of multitude of opportunities they provide. No doubt, cities are engines of economic growth for as much as I have seen with no exception. No wonder, they continue to attract the best of the skills available around and far from them. Well, they do have a down side as well. Because they were attracting all the talent, the rural areas are deprived of the skillful human resources and hence have not grown economically as much as their urban counterparts could grow. Part of the problem is to blame the growth center approach, where governments encouraged some areas, cities, to grow at the cost of other areas, villages. The idea is to concentrate the investments at few places and cross-subsidize other areas from the revenue generated. While we were successful in achieving rapid expansion of growth centers, we failed in distributive policies. As a result, rural areas have suffered the most. However, the topic of this blog post is not about how cities failed other areas but how they failed themselves! Time and again the vulnerability assessments have shown that most cities have high vulnerabilities in infrastructure, social and political aspects while few others have economic vulnerabilities. And this has very high relevance when climate change is to impact cities as much as the rural areas, including the ones on coasts. Mind you, most major cities are situated on the coasts, nearly 20% of global population lives on coasts in some of the most populated cities. With nearly 70% of the coastline worldwide are projected to be impacted by the sea level rise, these cities are put to enormous risks of flooding and related losses. Add this to the extreme rainfall events that cities may receive. From this context, there are at least three myths I think need to be busted that have relevance to our collective efforts for comprehensive risk reduction.

Picture: Right or left?

Myth buster I: Rural areas are best fit for food security and livelihood studies!

Not true (well, true if you look at the number of food security and livelihood studies coming from rural areas)! Despite my fascinating views about cities, cities have not vindicated much of my impression about them and that is because the urban governance structures have failed to identify and address vulnerabilities that are seeping below their carpet. Need any evidence? Just take the example of 2008 global food crisis. The research by WFP and others has proven that the urban poor were the most effected during the food crisis. As much as 50-70% of the urban poor representing casual and unskilled laborers experienced a net decline of food intake by 10-15% in most cities they have studied. In addition, the global food crisis has also impacted the livelihoods of petty traders, laborers and peri-urban agriculturists etc. Does this sound any logical? People talk about rural poor when issues like food security and livelihoods come up in the discussion, it never, well almost, occurred to most that it is the bottom strata of urban populace that is probably even more vulnerable than their rural brothers and sisters. It is no brainer that urban poor spend large part of their income on food compared to the rural poor due to relatively high cost of living in urban areas.

Myth buster II: Floods happen only in rural areas!

Well, at least this is what we visualize from most part of watching television: we imagine floods as vast stretch of farm lands inundated by water with folks on their rooftops (blame the media for creating this mental picture?). Not anymore! The 2005 Mumbai floods and 2011 Bangkok floods should completely change this mental picture. These events have clearly shown the problem with our current model of urban development: badly planned infrastructure, blocked natural drainage, and encroachments in the flood plains. We pretended to solve these problems by creating temporary engineering solutions rather than thinking larger and into the future. Whom to be blamed? the poorly staffed urban planning departments or the uncontrolled rural to urban migration or haphazard planning and communication systems of city governments? Studies have time and again indicated how poor the governments were in communicating risks to their city dwellers and how reluctant the insurance companies are to provide affordable flood and fire insurance. Probably the blood is on everybody’s hands. You will be wrong if you think the actual culprits are governments. As is evident from Bangkok floods, even corporations, whom we know as the most risk aware entities on the planet, have ignored the possible flood risks and have installed high-tech manufacturing facilities in flood prone areas and bore the brunt of floods and billion dollar losses.

Myth buster III: Levees are the best means of dealing with coastal floods!

Not true! This point has become very clear from repeated coastal disasters that levees often fail to live to the expectations. The research has clearly indicated how deceptive levees could be in making people believe that they are fully protected, creating a false sense of security. We know that the households living along dykes are the least to heed to any kind of early warning. Despite this, governments continue to argue for dykes and levees than putting strict land use regulations in place.

The big elephant(s) in the room!

We say it is often the big elephant this is ignored in the room and in urban room I see several elephants (after all cities are big!). We are still to come to terms with the dilemma of growing vertical vs horizontal, our current models of eco cities have failed to deliver the promise of reducing external resource dependence for food and water and cities continue to swell by uncontrolled migrants living under sub-par living conditions and dignity than rural areas offer.

If you ask me ‘is everything about urban areas so bad?’, then I would say no! Not at least from the point of view of our fight against global warming. Research has shown that urban areas can provide some of the best means of maximizing GHG mitigation with relatively large adaptation co-benefits. Among other things, this especially comes from managing water consumption and demand such that urban areas can make meaningful contribution to the food-water-energy nexus more than any other single solution (I am not exaggerating). Cities can offer more if we can answer these questions:

Q1. How to make cities closed loop systems (in terms of resource dependence). Cities today have grown so big that their presence is felt hundreds and thousands of miles away from them. Are we practical in seeking cities to be closed loop systems? Probably this question needs to be rephrased and re-emphasized differently.

Q2. How to uncover hidden vulnerabilities to make cities resilient? I will bet that we have more things to learn about cities than we think we need to learn and it is the hidden vulnerabilities that make cities an unknown in the equation of risk reduction. The sad part is we are learning about these hidden variables only after a devastating event. We certainly need more brainstorming than the storms we are going to face!

Q3. How and when cities will be forward looking? I expect most cities may have already started looking into the future since this question is more relevant to cities than any other places we live in and probably part of this question is linked to the dilemma of whether to go for vertical or horizontal. We know that city governments are lost in day-to-day matters and not even the strategic planning departments have time to think strategically. The city planning exercises outsourced  to consultants seldom touch the probable reality of the nearest possible future!

Let me end this ramble with a hope that cities will soon move away from incremental and short term engineering solutions to transformative social approaches which is where most solutions to our problems are hidden!

Don’t agree with me? Drop a line below! 

[Based on a talk delivered at Coastal Cities: Risks from Climate Change and Natural Hazards October 5, 2013; Room 510, Kyoto International Conference Center, Japan. The presentation is available at http://pub.iges.or.jp/modules/envirolib/view.php?docid=4747].

Climate Change and IPCC: Interviewing Dr Rajendra K. Pachauri, Chair, IPCC at ISAP2012

Here is the transcript of an interview we did with Dr Rajendra K. Pachauri, DG of TERI & Chair of IPCC, during ISAP2012. Enjoy reading and let me know what you think about the choice of questions and what you would ask if you were to interview. This interview will soon appear on IGES website. 


[Note: This transcript is made by me based on the audio recording (available at the end of this blog post). The transcript is not thoroughly checked for errors and hence the reader is cautioned against attributing anything from this text. The original audio file is posted at the end of this blog and listening that would be much better].

Audio is placed at the bottom of this blog post

Photo credits: IGES

Transcript:

Madoka: We know Dr. Pachauri as a professional, as eloquently introduced by the Chair. Can you please tell us about Dr Pachauri as a person, his likes and what he stands for?

Pachauri: Well I don’t know if I am qualified to answer that question, probably my colleague Mr. Hiraishi can tell better about me. But since you asked the question, I am an individual who basically likes human beings. I have lot of friends all over the world and frankly that is a huge asset. I have excellent friends with several of them in Japan. Once we make friends in Japan they are there for life, they are all-weather friends. As Mr Hiraishi mentioned, I keep myself busy and that is what makes me going. These are exciting times and we should make use of every minute we have otherwise we miss out so many things that are exciting. I always tell my colleagues that whatever they do they should do it with sense of joy. Though I may not be able to interact with most staff at TERI, I tell them this whenever I have opportunity to interact with them.

Prabhakar: You have been successfully leading the IPCC and the team has got rewarded for the efforts. What leadership elements were you able to bring to IPCC with the vast experience you have in the field of environmental sciences?

Pachauri: Well I don’t know what I brought to IPCC but I can tell you something that I am sure that Taka san will stand by. I try to treat everyone equally. This is something that is part of my nature. When there is a plenary session and somebody wants to talk about something and they wanted to give a point of view, I try my best to give everybody an equal chance and I also try to be fair. I may not always succeed; after all I am a human. But I believe the strength of IPCC is of course its scientific community, but it is also an organization which is run by all governments of the world and therefore every government has a right to be heard and for its views to be taken into account. And I try to maintain a level of fairness that doesn’t discriminate between different countries and I hope I do that even in my personal relationships. I try to be friendly with everyone and listen to everyone and you gain a lot from that because you know if you shut yourself off from a section of society you are denying yourself, something which I think is a rich treasure. Every person has something to offer and I think if your eyes are open and mind is receptive then you certainly gain by interacting with everybody. So, I think this is all I have been able to bring to IPCC. One thing I will say, I don’t hesitate to take decisions. If a decision has to be taken I will go ahead and take the rough with the spoon but I think when you are chairing a body like IPCC you have to be decisive after listening to everybody after you hear everyone’s point of view. At the end of the day you have to take a stance, you take a decision and I try to do that.

Photo credits: IGES

Madoka: Thanks, I would also like to keep my eyes open. Since you have been leading IPCC, where do you see IPCC will be in 2020, 2030, and 2050? What role can science play in the fight against climate change?

Pachauri: Very difficult to look that far ahead but if you look 2020 that is the time when we bring our 6^th assessment report and I am sure it will advance our knowledge on every aspect of climate change substantially. If we look at 2030, my feeling is that lot of gaps in our knowledge will have got filled up and IPCC may then have far more important role in communicating the science. This is something that to be quite honestly not done very well. We are not very good communicators and it is not because people don’t want to do it but it is also because we don’t have infrastructure. Some of you may not know for first 17 years of IPCC existence the size of IPCC secretariat was guess how many people? 5 people, we had secretary, deputy secretary, we had one administrative assistant, one secretarial asst, and who else and one more person. So for 17 years that is the size of the IPCC. Now with great difficulty we have reached a level of about 12 people and we have two people who are responsible for communication and to my mind that is totally inadequate and I think each one of us who is in IPCC has to be a good communicator because we are living in a period when science is going to be under intense scrutiny and we have to therefore be proactive. Whatever science we bring out, that has to be highly credible and robust science, must be communicated to public because we are dealing with the subject that is directly at the core at the center of the public policy. So I expect this is what 2030 would be like. And 2050, well, I think at that stage we would be focusing on an assessment of different forms of energy supply, different types of mitigation strategies, because in 2050 let’s assume the world will be very very different. I don’t know what human beings would be doing, perhaps we won’t be punching into computers and whatever we want to do would be read directly through neural activity that takes place in the brain. If we ask somebody to write a letter, in his or her handwriting, I think that will be impossible in 2050; nobody will be writing by hand so I don’t know what kind of report IPCC will bring out in 2050 in what form but I expect it would be something that would deal with the kind of transition we have to bring about, and what transition we have succeeded in bringing about and looking that far into the future your mind goes completely blank because the world is moving at such a rapid pace I don’t know what human society would be like in 2050.

Prabhakar: The climate change science has progressed at a rapid rate since the advent of IPCC. Can you please tell us where the climate science still needs to break grounds? Do you think the lack of progress in any area is feeding the climate sceptics?

Pachauri: I don’t know if you saw the cartoon that I projected this morning, which showed a person saying that 2500 scientists tell us that human beings are responsible for climate change and the other guy says I need a second opinion. So, you see the point is, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the science. But if you look at human history, at every stage when new knowledge has come out, there are people who question it, which is healthy. I think science only thrives by questioning, and there are some people who opposed it violently. I am using the word ‘violent’ deliberately because you know it was just about 500 years ago that people were burnt at the stake. People had to give up their lives simply because they articulated new form of knowledge and there were lots of people who didn’t want to accept that knowledge. In the 4^th assessment of the IPCC, there is an expression clearly mention about changes in the mitigation actions in the energy supply industry and it says that listing all the barriers that might come in the way of mitigation, it says that vested interests could stand in the way of bringing about changes in the energy supply industry. I don’t want to point a finger at anyone but all I want to say is whenever a new knowledge comes out this science of climate change has some fundamental implications for number of human activities and therefore I would say that it would be naive to believe that everyone would accept it. We don’t expect everyone to accept it. But there are some who will question it for valid scientific reasons and we welcome that and some who will question it for other reasons. Therefore, we have to bring out best science we can and you know it is for the society to decide. If society trusts scientists, and thank god they still do, and I think in the end the science and knowledge will prevail. I realized that it is not going to be an easy journey. I have personally realized it because I have been subject of personal attacks, I have been the subject of all kinds of slander and insult but I suppose that is part of the responsibility that I carry and I don’t have a choice and I don’t intend running away from it. I am talking candidly to all of you, who said that I should step down as a chairman of IPCC, I said NO, I mean I am standing on firm grounds. Why should I step down? I have not done anything wrong. I could easily have said that the error that took place about the Himalayan glaciers was not an error by me, there is a process, there are co-chairs of working groups who are responsible for that product, I am not responsible for that product. NO, as a Chairman of IPCC, the buck stops here and I take the responsibility for everything that happens and therefore not once did I raised a finger to say somebody else is responsible and I am innocent. So, you know, there was that error. There were 3000 pages of printed material in the IPCC 4^th assessment report. There are thousands of findings that are solid, that are backed by best scientists in the world, backed by all the published literature that has been reviewed. We made one stupid error and I am certainly not going to step down for that reason. Why should I? So, this is where I think science has to take some of these nocks that will come from all kinds of quarters. I think it was the President Truman who said “if you can’t take the heat get out of the kitchen.” If you are holding this position then you take brickbats you take bokeh whatever comes your way.

Prabhakar: Even with increased scientific understanding of climate change, reflecting science to policy and then to action is not happening at a rate it should happen. What is your opinion?  Lack of urgency is often voiced and one of the reasons put forward was that the climate change has not been portrayed as an imminent threat. Do you think the tone of climate change message need to be a bit more aggressive? Do we need to sound like an alarmist?

Pachauri: Well, we should be truthful in our message. Now, if that is an alarming message, so be it. If it is not an alarming message, fine. But the fact is we brought out in Nov last year a special report on extreme events and disasters and we have not said that this is the problem that will takes place only in the future, we have given clear evidence that some extreme events and disasters are taking place today and have been taking place since 1970-s and 1980s. We have also said that if the world doesn’t mitigate the emissions of greenhouse gases, then for instance heat weaves that are currently taking place once in 20 years will take place once in 2 years by end of the century and the extreme precipitation are on increase in frequency and intensity almost all over the world. We are providing messages based on science which can be backed up which has enough substance behind it. I don’t think we need to give an alarming message. But one point I would like to emphasize which unfortunately doesn’t get enough attention. Climate change will not have uniform impacts on everyone. There are some people who are obviously going to be far more vulnerable than others. I think we need to highlight the problems on the basis of equity and we must as you know all members of human society on this plane must clearly identify who is going to be the most vulnerable and why. And I think if that raises alarm, fine. As long as you are saying that is scientifically truthful, I don’t think we should hesitate to provide people with bad news. But at the same time, we also have to provide what can be done. This is where we have also brought out a special report on renewable energy sources and climate change mitigation which gives you a much more optimistic picture of what RE can do and is doing than has been known in the past. So I think people have to realize that we are not helpless, human society has enormous strength, has enormous capability and it has a great opportunity and therefore while of course if we don’t do anything then there would be possibly some cause for alarm but there is lot that we can do which is actually attractive and we have brought that out very clearly. So I think what we need to provide is balanced scientifically robust message. We shouldn’t label it as alarmist or frightening, we just have to bring out science for what it is. Knowledge has to be truthful, if it is not truthful then it is not science, then it is friction; right?

Madoka: Economic recession is predicted to continue for another couple of years. Developed countries are facing financial crisis.  Do you think developing countries should do more to fight against climate change?

Pachauri: Even in the UNFCCC, it clearly talks about CBDR. There are two words are here which are important, ‘common’ and the other one is ‘differentiated’. If it is common, every country of the world has to be part of shouldering that responsibility. Therefore, I would not exclude any country in the world. Since this is a global problem we have to come up with global solutions. But the point I would like to make is that you know we really have to create a level of ambition which to my mind is missing at this point of time and this is where knowledge has to be the driver of that ambition. I am afraid and I have said publicly, each of COP that takes place spends two weeks, what are they talking about? They are talking about narrow short term political issues. I would wish that they would spend 3 days just talking about scientific facts. If they were to do that, I am reasonably sure that people would come up with far better solutions than what we have today. So, I think that is the real challenge before us. We have to somehow make sure that people understand what is at stake. To my mind financial crisis and economic recession actually gives you opportunities. Because you want to create jobs and you want to take some initiatives. Go back to the time of the recession in 1930s. The US was able to pull out of that recession because it could take certain bold measures and implemented number of activities which were clearly not even on the ground at that point of time. Even today, there are some countries that are doing better than others despite the recession and I don’t think they have slowed down their efforts to move in a direction they think will be more sustainable over a period of time. So I am prepared to have a detailed economic debate on this, nothing to do with climate change, what is required to revive the economy of the world. It seems to me that the financial crisis shouldn’t come in the way of bringing about desired change. I think we are clever enough, and we have resources enough to bring about shift in the direction we have set ourselves if we set ourselves in that direction.

Audio of interview with Dr RK Pachauri, Chair, IPCC. 24 July 2012, ISAP, Yokohama, Japan

My performance in lecturing students

This is a long pending task I just managed to finish & put on the blog! Sorry, this entry is not about climate change but my performance in communicating the message of climate change to the graduate and post-graduate students at Nagoya University!

I have been a visiting lecturer at Nagoya University at the Nagoya University Global Environmental Leaders Program for the last two years. I was asked to teach graduate and post-graduate students on the topic of climate change and developing countries. The class consisted of mixed nationalities with most of them are from Asian and European countries. The total strength of the class was 35.

As I do with most other things I do, I requested the students to evaluate my lecture using 20 indicators (See Table below) consisting of 4 on students, 8 on the content and 8 on content delivery on 1-5 scale where 1  means bad and 5 means excellent. This evaluation was not the standard part of my TOR to the course but was done on my initiative.

Some quick observations from the evaluation:

I couldn't analyze the responses for long time. Just got some time to do it and I am surprised to see that most  students have rated my lecture on level 4 or 5 on most indicators. Below is the figure showing the results. The ones rated 3 are mostly for indicators related to the students self evaluation of their English understanding skills and prior knowledge on the subject.

• Most indicators stayed the same in both years. However, there was an improvement in indicators of audibility and organization of the lecture delivery from the first year to the second year.
• Most students have rated 4 or 5 on various indicators related to the lecture content and delivery.
• Most students rated 3 or 4 for their English skills and their prior knowledge on the subject.
• Most commented that I talk too fast and don't give time to imbibe concepts (one expression that particularly caught my attention was 'WOW he is too fast').
• Few complained that I used too many slides with figures and I explain figures too fast.
• The students who said the topic was new to them rated my lecture as difficult to understand.
• The students who rated their prior knowledge on the subject as good have rated my lecture as good to excellent.
• Very few students with excellent English skills have rated my lecture as average. Most of these students thought I should have spent more time in explaining concepts.
• On overall, most students thought they learning was either good or excellent from the lecture. 

Figure: Rating distribution of students on various indicators of the lecture.

Table: Indicator list used for evaluation of the lecture.

GMS Countries and Early Warning Systems in the Context of Food-Water-energy Nexus

Suggested citation: Prabhakar, S.V.R.K. 2011. Climate Risks to Agriculture/Food Security in the GMS Countries and Early Warning Systems in the Context of Food-Water-energy Nexus. International Conference on GMS 2020: Balancing Economic Growth and  Environmental Sustainability, 2011, 15 - 16 November 2011, Hotel Plaza Athénée, Bangkok. Working Group on Environment (WGE) and Asian  Development Bank (ADB).

Abstract:

The Greater Mekong Subregion has undergone a rapid economic growth over the past decade with positive impacts on the human development and negative impacts on the environment and natural resources. The growing demand for energy in the region and high fuel prices during 2008 has seen several countries declaring ambitious biofuel strategies from which they retreated covertly later on. This has set a debate on nexus between food, water, and energy in the region. Though the biofuels fever has died down sooner than expected, there are chances for reemergence of debate over food-water-energy due to several traditional and non-traditional pressures discussed in this paper that include increasing energy demand, population growth, urbanization, changing life styles, and climate change. Early warning systems can play a crucial role in averting situations like 2008 fuel and food prices. However, there are several bottlenecks to be overcome that include lack of infrastructure and capacity for implementing such EWS. In addition to EWS, this paper discusses some traditional off-the-shelf policies such as general improvement in resource use efficiency in agriculture, water and energy sector, increasing energy supply through renewable sources, and creating a East-Asian Energy Community or a grid that could ease the food-water-fuel nexus in the region to a greater extent. 

Some Excerpts from the Above Paper:

An Early Warning System (EWS) in the context of food-water-energy nexus can be defined as a collection of dependent and independent variables that lead to detection and assessment of impending problem based on feedback connections operating between demand and supply of food, water and energy. A EWS can be as simple as that of a collection of indicators that can provide an early warning to the policy makers and other development planners operating at various levels. It can also be as complex as that of employing dynamic simulation models that can quantitatively represent the real world based on the conditions defined/assumed within the model (the system). A recent example of EWSs for policy decisions can be the EU proposal for building an EWS for energy that simulates the supply and demand situation in the region (European Union, 2009), which includes early warning for long-term energy conditions as well as to handle short supply in oil in short-time scales.

An effective EWS can be built using dynamic simulation models since they can consider the element of time and related dynamics in determining the status of outcomes that could be useful to the policy makers. The use of simulation models in the public policy research is not new. Some examples include:

·         The General Algebraic Modeling System (GAMS) has provided good tool in understanding environment and economics into a single framework.

·         The Asia-Pacific Integrated Model (AIM) has provided a tool to simulate the impact of climate change on natural environment and socio-economics the Asia-Pacific region.

·         Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models have been used for understanding the economy-wide impacts of policies.

·         Multi-regional input-output (MRIO) models have been employed to understand and forecast material flows across different regions.

All the above simulation models are largely used for research purposes that have partially contributed to development of policies rather than for providing real-time early warning for policy purposes. Partially, this could be attributed to the limited understanding of natural, socio-economic and institutional systems.

2.1. Prerequisites for development of an EWS

Development of EWS is dependent on various factors related to the system in question and it has to do with how best the EWS can represent the real world.

Determinants of an effective EWS:

•  How the system is defined (what components a system constitutes),
• Understanding of relationships and feedback connections operating between different actors/components of the system,
• The precision with which these dynamic and static forces are quantified and represented in the model, and
•  Interpretation of the outcomes of the model as against what it actually mean with implications for the institutions that use the EWS for policy purposes.

2.2. What an EWS should be able to do?

The end result of developing the decision support system for early warning related to food-water-energy should be able to:

1.       visualize demand and supply situation of food, water and energy in the region on short- medium- and long-term basis,

2.       give projections on prices of food, water and energy on immediate and long-term basis so that countries can take preventive and proactive strategies,

3.       help policy makers at various levels to plan appropriate crops, water usage and water conservation practices and how energy is produced and consumed at the regional and national scales,

4.       help in appropriate allocation of resources for food and energy production while keeping in view several constraints such as environmental health, climate change, food prices, and sustainability of resources employed, and

5.       help develop a set of standard operational procedures to be invoked in the wake of a situation like 2008 energy and food crisis.

Contact: For an extended article, please contact the author....

Climate Change Implications for Disaster Risk Management in Japan

Climate Change Implications for Disaster Risk Management in Japan: A Case Study on Perceptions of Risk Management Personnel and Communities in Saijo City

Abstract

This paper reviews climate change impacts and existing disaster risk management system in Japan and offers results of a structured questionnaire survey of the community leaders and disaster risk management personnel of Saijo city of Japan that assesses their perceptions about dealing with the extreme disasters by the existing disaster risk reduction systems. This study was inspired by the record number of typhoon landfall that has surprised the local government and communities in 2004. While unearthing the hidden vulnerabilities in cities like Saijo, this event has loosened the confidence of local communities on the disaster risk reduction systems. From the study, we conclude that the existing disaster risk management systems needs further fillip and that the proactive community involvement in disaster risk reduction is still in nascent stages. Associating with the scientific community, involving the local communities (including the elderly), enhancing the redundancy in disaster risk management systems, inculcating strategic thinking and micro-level planning, conducting vulnerability assessments by considering the special circumstances including resource constraints of small cities, and better policy coordination across the administrative hierarchy are some important considerations for dealing with the uncertainty brought by the extreme events.

Key words: Japan, climate change, uncertainty, perception, heavy rainfall, community participation, disaster risk management

Suggested citation: 

Prabhakar, S.V.R.K., Y. Iwata, R. Shaw, J. Soulakova, and Y. Takeyuchi. 2012. Climate Change Implications for Disaster Risk Management in Japan: A Case Study on Perceptions of Risk Management Personnel and Communities in Saijo City. Environmental Hazards [under print].

Extended summary and conclusions

From the review presented in this paper, it is clear that there is a growing evidence of the increasing impacts of climate change. The impacts in Japan in general and in the study location of Saijo city in particular are clear in terms of increasing incidences of heavy rainfall events. With the climate projections suggesting an even further increase in the number of such events, this signifies the need for more detailed strategic planning on the part of the governments and other stakeholders including communities. There is a need to uncover hidden vulnerabilities as extreme events and uncertainty increases over time. This call for holistic and inclusive developmental and risk reduction planning. Due to the low income of small cities (‘Chio toshi’), governments are more constrained to put in place effective risk reduction measures. The aged population and concentration of handicapped persons could even exacerbate the impacts of climate change. For example, the higher vulnerability could make climatic events turn worse while the hazard intensities also increase over the years. There is a need for special consideration of such cities while designing risk reduction measures at the prefecture and national levels.

As the subject of disaster management is rest with the local city governments, appropriate capacity building programs facilitated by the national governments by taking the local special circumstances of these cities becomes important. Enhanced preparedness by considering the perceptions of the communities is called for so that the implemented disaster risk reduction measures gains widespread public acceptance, as we see this point coming out very strongly in this paper. For example, involvement of elderly and those who have lived in the city for longer time have shown better memory about the past experiences those could be useful in designing the local disaster risk reduction plans. More micro-level hazard, risk and vulnerability assessments are needed for the city governments to enable people to be aware of their vulnerabilities and help them prepare. Where capacities of city governments are low, the linkages with the adjacent well-to-do cities and prefecture gain importance by reducing the time taken in initiating response and relief actions at the national level. This is more important in countries like Japan where much of the power is delegated to the local governments. Past disasters in Japan have highlighted the failure of national governments in initiating response and relief operations as these functions were fully delegated to the city level governments. While decentralization is important, it should be done in a phased manner accompanied with steady improvement in capacities of local governments such that they can take full advantage of being independent in taking decisions.

Community involvement in disaster risk reduction and coordination among the stakeholders needs to be improved in order to deal with the uncertain risks emanating out of climate change. Such capacity building measures needs to keep in mind the demography of the population of interest. This is important on two counts. Enhancing the disaster preparedness and response capacity of the communities, in addition to working on disaster mitigation, would help communities to be prepared for sudden surprises. Similarly, better coordination by establishing appropriate standard operational procedures would help various DRM agencies to deal with uncertain events. Redundancy in DRM system could help in reducing uncertain risks, for example. Redundancy in telecommunications would help the response machinery to fall back on other means of communication in the event that regular communication channels become defunct. It is evident from this paper that many of the DRM systems were developed in response to disaster events rather than due to the perception of imminent risk. This brings out the need for strategic thinking among the DRM community.

Local wisdom plays an important role in climate change risk reduction. This wisdom can come from relatively older members of the community who have lived in a particular locality for a long duration. Due to the wide gap between age groups in cities like Saijo, challenges typical of the ‘generation gap’ could create difference of opinion as observed in this study. Hence it is important to involve the old members of the community while preparing and implementing any DRM strategy as they are more likely to observe the climate change, as our study has brought out. As a result, their opinion could enhance the effectiveness of an initiative taken by the city government. Due to their familiarity with the local social and cultural characteristics, older members of the community could also be able to convince the other community members on important decisions related to climate change risk reduction. Similarly, the study also has brought out the influence of occupation on what one perceives. The community leaders who are more associated with agriculture, an occupation that is directly influenced by the climate and its change, are more prone to observe changes in the climate than others. Hence, it is relatively easy for the local governments and risk reduction personnel to obtain the consensus of those communities working in climate-risk prone occupations than those working in other occupations. Necessity for capacity building of the city government, in terms of financial and human resources was also raised as an important issue by the government officers who are responsible for disaster management. This corroborates with the fact that the small cities in Japan are resource starved due to outward migration of young generation and subsequent poor development of industries which are important source of income for the city governments. As the disaster management is the function of city governments, any decentralization of powers to city governments should commensurate with appropriate support from the prefecture and national governments. 

The study also brought out that those community leaders who could observe climate change saw existing disaster management systems in effective. As the climate change risks are uncertain, a certain amount of strategic thinking and vision at the local level would be helpful in developing long-term risk reduction strategies. This can be brought about by a better collaboration between the scientific community and the local level DRM functionaries. The majority of the interviewed DRM personnel indicated the lack of clear evidence of climate change impacts in their location, which emphasizes the need to develop tools and techniques that will help identify the local impacts of climate change so that appropriate steps could be taken to address the climate change related risks. Such a tool should also be able to bring long-term perspective thinking and planning to the risk reduction community at the city level. We also have seen that simple tools such as vulnerability maps could win the confidence of community leaders, as these maps could visually inform them about vulnerabilities and help them translate the same into action. Better policy coordination and regular hazard risk assessments can serve as important tools in dealing with the uncertainty. The regular revision of hazard maps could give a timely perspective of change in the hazard risk profile of the region and could give appropriate direction to the local and regional governments in risk reduction planning.