Experts push climate-proof cities, coastal communities

Imelda V. Abano at InterAksyon.com: Experts meeting here say climate-proofing a city or coastline is urgently needed to protect millions of people and key infrastructure. From Manila to New York, cities and coastal areas across the globe are increasingly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change coupled with population growth and poverty.

The adaptations prompted by climate change are meant to minimize risks from extreme weather events, powerful storm surges, sea level rise, droughts, rising temperatures and other effects of a changing climate.

Urban populations, according to the United Nations, is projected to increase from 3.9 billion in 2014 to 6.3 billion in 2050. Asia, the most climate-vulnerable region despite its lower level of urbanization, is home to 53 percent of the world's urban population, followed by Europe with 14 percent and Latin America and the Caribbean with 13 percent.

Smart planning of cities and coastal areas, such as building or planning defenses, securing water supplies or moving people to higher ground, is essential to prepare for the climatic forces, said Steven Wade, head of the Scientific Consultancy at the Met Office, a United Kingdom-based national weather service.

Wade, who presented climate model outputs for climate adaptation in cities at the World Engineers Summit (WES) organized by the Institution of Engineers Singapore, said that adaptation of cities is a significant challenge for planners and engineers, particularly in cities with ageing infrastructure, rapid growth and vulnerable coastal locations....

An aerial night view of Marina Bay, Singapore, shot by Nicolas Lannuzel., Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license

Cash aid feeds business surge in northeast Kenya

Isaiah Esipisu in Thomson Reuters Foundation: When the government of Kenya began giving cash instead of food aid to poor people in Kenya's drought-stricken North Eastern region, the aim was to help them buy food more efficiently and conveniently.

But the cash-transfer programme has had an unexpected effect: Most of the recipients of the cash have used it to start small businesses, which they see as the best way of adapting to increasingly tough climatic conditions.

"We expected them to buy food, given the emergency situation. But investing the money into businesses shows how very little resources can be used to build resilience among very poor communities," said Evelyn Nadio, manager of the Hunger Safety Net Programme (HSNP), which provides the cash aid under Kenya's National Drought Management Authority.

The parched, acacia scrub regions receiving the help - including Kenya's Mandera, Turkana, Marsabit and Wajir counties - had seen huge losses of livestock as a result of drought. Many herders had lost nearly all their animals, which had been their main source of income. Today, however, eight years after the programme began, other businesses have sprung up.

At Katiko Market in Turkana Central, Akuom Idieya Katurong'ot, a widowed mother of seven, runs a retail shop and a goat slaughterhouse. She also rents a set of small kiosks built from iron sheeting. Money from the cash-transfer programme helped pay for all the new infrastructure.

Nearly 90 percent of the recipients of cash from the safety net programme have similarly opened retail businesses or used the money to restock their herds with drought-hardy goats, said Nadio....

A roadside market in Kenya, shot by Angela Sevin, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Disturbed ecosystems are more sensitive to climate change and its risks

Science World Report: When it comes to climate change, disturbed ecosystems may be at risk. Scientists have found that an ecosystem's resistance to changing climatic conditions is reduced when it's exposed to natural or human-caused disturbances.

The findings actually come from one of the world's longest running climate change experiments. Two of the studies were actually situated in Danish heathland ecosystems, which were studied over the period of several years. The scientists found that climate change impacts on the vegetation were minimal in undisturbed heathland. But that wasn't the case in heathland that was disturbed.

"After a heather beetle outbreak heather plants re-established in control plots, but not in plots subject to extended summer drought," said Inger Kappel Schmidt, one of the researchers, in a news release. "The combination of disturbance and drought caused a shift from heathland to grassland." Results from the experimental sites in other countries also showed similar results. It appeared that ecosystems that were more disturbed were less likely to recover.

"The long-term impact of climate change on plant communities is more dependent on short periods where plants are relatively vulnerable, like regeneration phases, than on the longer periods between disturbances where established vegetation is relatively robust," said Johannes Ransiin, one of the lead authors of the new article. "The higher sensitivity after disturbance should also be considered by land managers. Reducing disturbance intensity and frequency in ecosystems could help making them less vulnerable to climatic change."...

Gillis d'Hondecoeter (circa 1575/1580–1638) painted this image of "Paradise" after 1615

World Bank supports greater resilience to climate related hazards in Mozambique

AllAfrica.com via the World Bank: The World Bank Board of Executive Directors approved today an International Development Association (IDA) financing in the amount of US$50 million to support climate change related reforms agreed upon between the Government of Mozambique (GoM) and the World Bank under the Climate Change Development Policy Operation (DPO). This operation will improve the country's resilience to effects of climate change through the implementation of reforms across several sectors of the economy.

Extreme climate related events such as cyclones and floods have devastating effects on agriculture, electricity generation, mining, and transport and communications almost every year in Mozambique.

The country ranks third in Africa in terms of exposure to climate-related hazards and is the only country in Africa considered to be at high risk from each of the major climate hazards - droughts, floods and coastal cyclones. Economic losses average 1.1 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) annually, having cost US$1.75 billion between 1980 and 2003.

The country's GDP fell following the 2000 floods from a forecast of 7 percent to 1.5 percent and the 2013 floods in the Limpopo Valley alone inflicted damages to affected settlements and infrastructure in the order of US$135 million and losses in crops estimated at US$112 million.

The 2013 floods also resulted in at least 44 reported direct fatalities, 170,000 people evacuated in Gaza province alone, and a high prevalence of water-borne diseases and malaria amongst affected populations, most of whom were extremely poor. The floods severely damaged transport, irrigation, water supply, urban drainage, sanitation, and private assets, further disrupting private sector activities....

US Air Force photo of a flood in Mozambique in 2000

UK flooding: 'We must learn to live with water'

Brad Allen in the edie.net newsroom: The ever-increasing threat of flooding cannot be fully defended, so the UK must adopt a new approach where we learn to 'live with water', argues a new white paper from built environment science centre BRE.

BRE welcomed the Treasury's £2.3 billion investment in flood defences, but says that a new approach to dealing with flooding is required whereby buildings are made flood-resilient. Scroll down for full report.

BRE argues that flooding is inevitable as climate change and urbanisation have put more than 5.2 million homes in England at risk of flooding. Annual costs of flood damage are currently at least £1.1 billion and are expected to rise in coming years.

Across Europe, flooding has been traditionally managed by large-scale engineering solutions protecting conurbations from obvious risks such as rivers and the sea. However floods are now occurring within these defences requiring buildings to be adapted appropriately

BRE Centre for Resilience director Dr Stephen Garvin said: "Our urban environment continues to grow apace - surface water management needs to be embedded in the new developments we construct with things like sustainable urban drainage systems, green roofs to decrease water run off as well as localised flood resilient technologies."…

Photo of 2007 flood in Oxford by John Barker John Barker, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons 2.0 license

Indian anti-cyclone actions slash extreme-weather risks

Gareth Willmer at SciDev.net: Developing nations should build resilience to extreme-weather events by learning from previous disasters and introducing technology such as early warning systems, says a report by UK-based scientific academy the Royal Society.  

As an example, the researchers highlight Cyclone Phailin, which hit the east Indian state of Odisha in October 2013. It was the area’s strongest storm since Cyclone 05B struck in 1999, killing almost 9,000 people and leaving more than 1.5 million homeless. Yet just 44 people were killed in Odisha by the 2013 cyclone and related flash floods.  

While last year’s storm still caused significant destruction, the researchers say the vastly reduced human cost shows “the effectiveness of building resilience through preparedness, early warnings, political commitment and technology”. They highlight how Odisha has pumped major investment this millennium into early-warning systems, infrastructure improvements, evacuation planning and shelters.  

And such measures could be key in coming years as developing nations face a “significant and increasing” risk from extreme weather due to their growing populations and climate change, they say. Maps in the report illustrate that the impact of floods, heatwaves and droughts will grow in many areas worldwide, but the risk will be amplified in regions such as South Asia, South-East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa because of their patterns of population rise and urbanisation....

NASA image of Cyclone Phailin, October 11, 2013

Nepal disaster preparedness needs to go local

IRIN: Mid-summer monsoon rains in Nepal triggered over three dozen floods and landslides, killing over 200 people and displacing tens of thousands. Experts say this highlights preparedness and response challenges and the urgent need for these to be prioritized in development plans and at local government level.

"There was nothing unpredictable about this summer's events in Nepal," Moira Reddick, coordinator at Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium (NRRC), a coalition of humanitarian, development, financial and government bodies, told IRIN.

"Until we see investments effectively risk managed and centred into development planning across all sectors of government and international community, we won't start to see the kind of revolution we need in terms of disaster management, risk-proofing and effective preparedness," she said.

Nepal's Ministry of Home Affairs put the number of people dead between June and September due to floods and landslides at 265, with 256 missing and 157 injured. A landslide on 2 August was the deadliest in the country's history. According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), monsoon disasters in 2014 affected over 200,000 people across Nepal and displaced more than 34,000.

Humanitarians point to a 2008 flood in the River Koshi, which killed several hundred and displaced nearly 60,000 families, as a turning point for Nepal's disaster mitigation and response work....

A 2013 flood in the Darchula district of Nepal, shot by Krish Dulal, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licens

Resilience planning – some do’s and don’ts

IRIN: Among the topics being discussed at the 2014 World Climate Week in New York City (22-26 September), are financing resilient cities, corporate actions for resilience, the ways data can support resilience moves, and women’s leadership in resilience planning.

IRIN looks at some of the successes, failures and pitfalls in resilience planning. Hazard-resilient investments can range from enforced building codes, to early warning systems, to community-level waste management - all crucial for buffering societies against disasters.

“It can be as easy as painting lines on trees to gauge water levels [so] you can see when it is time to pack up and leave, before it is too late,” Richard Yates, the director of the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) regional mission for Asia, told IRIN, pointing to a USAID-supported project in the Philippines.

But resilience planning which does not include a range of actors - from vulnerable communities to big companies - can fail to accomplish anything new, warned a critique by the Humanitarian Policy Group at the London-based Overseas Development
Institute (ODI).

“There is a danger that we go on and think we are building resilience when really we are ignoring the most vulnerable,” said Paul Levine, a livelihoods and vulnerability specialist with ODI. “In coming up with a whole new language and framework, we forget the basics.”...

2012 flood damage in Manila, shot by Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Resilience goes mainstream

Rolf Rosenkranz in Devex: Resilience has been an international development buzzword for years. This week’s 2nd World Reconstruction Conference in Washington suggests that it’s more than a fad: Resiliency programs have gone mainstream around the globe.

Two documents released on the fringes of the conference, which is hosted by the Word Bank and ends Friday, underscore that notion: The disaster recovery framework and post-disaster needs assessment guide are both meant to increase the ability of communities to prevent and, if necessary, weather environmental and man-made shocks.

Nancy Lindborg, the assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, drove that point home during a panel discussion I moderated on Thursday: The concept of resilience, she said, allows the international community to “layer” humanitarian and development action into a “complete package.” It’s a way to synthesize multifaceted goals into one word that’s easy to rally around — a pathway to shared goals.

And many governments — as well as aid organizations — are doing just that. On the panel I moderated, for instance, Jorge Melendez, El Salvador’s secretary for vulnerability issues, spoke of efforts to incorporate risk reduction and prevention into the country’s development strategy.

“Vulnerabilities need to be identified in order to be able to reduce the associated risk and undertake mitigation measures,” he said in prepared remarks. “Investing in the resilience of infrastructure and communities is more effective. Action needs to take place before the disaster strikes; this means investing in sound development to reduce the consequences of a disaster.”

His conclusion: “We are resilient if there is development. Development, in turn, should generate resilience.” ...

A Sim City screen, shot by Xardox, Wikimedia Commons, public domain

USAID, Rockefeller launch $100 million climate resilience fund

Thin Lei Win in Reuters, via the Thomson Reuters Foundation: A $100 million fund launched on Tuesday aims to make people in disaster-prone regions of Asia and Africa better able to cope with natural disasters and crises, so that they can get their lives and economies back on track more quickly and effectively.

The Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) set up by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Rockefeller Foundation will focus on South and Southeast Asia, the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, where typhoons, floods, earthquakes and drought destroy lives and jobs and hamper development.

Scientists say climate change could bring more frequent and more intense weather-related disasters. If communities become more resilient, disaster recovery and relief efforts will cost less, and people will be able to reduce the disruption to lives and jobs and avoid falling into destitution.

“Both USAID and the Rockefeller Foundation see resilience as a vital framework to help alleviate poverty, promote more sustainable development and lessen the impacts of disasters,” said Michael Yates, director of the USAID regional mission in Asia.

The GRP’s first project is the Global Resilience Design Challenge, a multi-phase competition to be launched in September at the USAID Frontiers in Development Forum in Washington, D.C....

Disaster-resilient school design in the Philippines

Maricris Irene V. Tamolang in the Philippine Daily Inquirer: While some schools in the Philippines serve as evacuation centers in times of calamities, none are especially designed to adapt to and withstand natural disasters. Like other structures vulnerable to tropical storms, schools get damaged or worse, destroyed, depriving evacuees the safety they most need.

To address this problem, three incoming senior architecture students at the University of the Philippines Diliman came up with a climate-adaptive and disaster-resilient school design strong enough to survive supertyphoons like “Yolanda.”

With inputs from the group’s adviser, Nicolo del Castillo, “Taklob,” which means cover (derived from the word “Tacloban”), topped the school category of “Build Forward,” a competition sponsored by a property developer. The team members modeled Taklob after the structural design of a bridge introduced in their Architectural Structures IV class last semester, said Rafael Khemlani, who suggested the idea.

This model mainly accounted for the arches and cable wires that replaced the conventional columns in most construction projects, he said. Each classroom has an area of 76.5 sq m. It has a restroom and an evacuation supply storage—both located at the rear side—and doors at both ends of the front side. The floor is elevated 1 meter from the ground to prevent damage from storm surges.

...“We won’t call it a green design because the main element used is mostly steel,” Mervin Afan said. “But it is sustainable because of its tropical feature, allowing air to pass through easily. It is climate-adaptive because of its flexibility. During hot days, you can leave the storm shutters open and when the rainy season sets in, you can keep them closed.”...

A Philippine resident sits outside of his home in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Haiyan. US military photo

Bangladesh and climate change: time to change the narrative?

Saleemul Huq in Responding to Climate Change: By now Bangladesh has become known as being one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. This refrain is now repeated endlessly by our leaders and representatives when talking about Bangladesh and climate change. It is also the way the international media sees Bangladesh.

...While this story is undoubtedly true, it is no longer the only story about climate change and Bangladesh. I would argue that it is by now an out of date story and that a new narrative of Bangladesh being at the forefront of tackling the adverse impacts of climate change is indeed the more important narrative for us to propagate from now on.

In scientific and development discourse the vulnerability of countries, communities and systems to the adverse impacts of climate change are often used as the obverse of resilience to those adverse impacts. In other words, countries and communities that have high vulnerability are generally deemed to also have low resilience while building up resilience is seen as reducing vulnerability. So vulnerability and resilience are seen like a see-saw where high vulnerability equals low resilience and low vulnerability equals high resilience.

I would argue that while this may be true in many cases, Bangladesh is the exception to this rule. In other words, Bangladesh is both highly vulnerable to the physical impacts of climate change but at the same time the people are highly resilient to facing all kinds of adversity, including climatic ones. Indeed, one could argue that Bangladeshis are more resilient than even many developed countries....

US Navy photo of Bangladesh after Cyclone Sidr, 2007

EU pledges further work on climate ‘resilience’

EurActiv: The EU commissioners dealing with development cooperation and humanitarian aid have pledged more work on “resilience”, defined as the ability of individuals and communities to recover from shocks and stresses. The idea has become more prominent in development discussions in Brussels, as policymakers have searched for ways to mitigate the expected effects of climate change.

Many of the world’s most vulnerable people have been buffered or seen their livelihoods destroyed by extreme weather events, such a typhoon in the Philippines last year, Haiyan, and severe flooding in Bangladesh.

Kristalina Georgieva, the commissioner for humanitarian aid and crisis response, said at the EU’s first forum on resilience, on Monday (28 April), that the concept was “nothing new”, as it referred to “coping mechanisms people have to create themselves”.

The commissioner said that while the worst of the crisis received considerable media attention, the “success of resilience” was “a difficult story to tell”. She added that people in Bangladesh had switched from chickens to rearing ducks, as a way to cope with the floods....

European flag outside EC headquarters, shot by Xavier Häpe, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Recognising resilience innovation in the Pacific

A press release from the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction: To help mark the approaching 10th anniversary of the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), the global strategy for reducing disaster losses worldwide, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) Sub-Regional Office for the Pacific today launched the inaugural Pacific Innovation and Leadership Award for Resilience (PILAR), a pioneering initiative in the region.

The award recognises exemplary action taken by individuals, businesses, communities, governments and or non-governmental organisations across all the Pacific Island Countries and Territories, to build community and national resilience through disaster risk reduction measures.

Mr Timothy Wilcox, UNISDR’s Sub-Regional Coordinator for the Pacific, said: “This is the last Pacific Platform before a post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction is endorsed next year by the global community in Japan. It is appropriate that we mark the contributions of so many activities with the launch of an award that recognises and promotes innovation, good-practice and leadership in these areas”.

Pacific Island Countries and Territories face extreme risk from naturally occurring hazards that are likely to intensify with the onset of climate change. Despite the inherent vulnerabilities that confront the Pacific, there have been many opportunities for innovation and ingenuity from all sectors of society to reduce disaster impact and to ensure long term sustainability of nations and communities.

The award covers a range of areas including awareness-raising, knowledge sharing, community engagement, policy interventions, and other resilience-building activities....

Landing in Fiji, shot by Kat Clay, Wikimedia Commons via Flickr, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license

Linking storms to climate change a ‘distraction’, say UK experts

A press release from the University of Manchester: Writing in the journal Weather, Climate and Society, the University of Manchester researchers argue that cutting greenhouse gas emissions, while crucial to reducing humanity’s longer-term impact on the planet, will not eliminate violent storms, tornadoes or flooding and the damage they cause.

The authors suggest that developing greater resilience to extreme weather events must be given greater priority if the socioeconomic impact of storms, like those that have ravaged Britain this winter, is to be reduced. Professor David Schultz, one of the authors of the guest editorial, said: “One of the long-term effects of climate change is often predicted to be an increase in the intensity and frequency of many high-impact weather events, so reducing greenhouse gas emissions is often seen to be the response to the problem.

“Reducing humanity’s impact on our planet should be pursued as a matter of urgency, but more emphasis must also be placed on being resilient to individual weather events, as this year’s storms in Britain have so devastatingly shown.”

...Schultz, a professor of synoptic meteorology, and co-author Dr Vladimir Janković, a science historian specialising in weather and climate, say the short-term, large variability from year to year in high-impact weather makes it difficult, if not impossible, to draw conclusions about the correlation to longer-term climate change.

They argue that while large public investments in dams and flood defences, for example, must account for the possibilities of how weather might change in the future, this should not prevent short-term thinking to address more immediate vulnerability to inevitable high-impact weather events.

“Avoiding construction in floodplains, implementing strong building codes, and increasing preparedness can make society more resilient to extreme weather events,” said Dr Janković. “But compounding the problem is that finding money for recovery is easier than spending on prevention, even if the costs of recovery are much higher.”...

This aerial images was taken approximately two miles west of Rockfish (town) along Rt. 617. The Rockfish River flooded the surrounding low lands. In another Nelson County location, up to 27" of rain in four eight hours from Hurriacne Camille was recorded. No. 69-2133, Virginia Governor's Negative Collection, Library of Virginia. Flickr Commons

Water in the Arab world: From droughts to flood, building resilience against extremes

A press release from the World Bank: The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the most water scarce region in the world, and its water stress is likely to worsen. In 1950, per capita renewable water resources were four times greater than they are today. By 2050, there are indications indicate that natural water resources in MENA will drop even further, to 11 times less than the global average.

Droughts hit the region with punishing regularity, bringing significant water shortages, economic losses, and adverse social consequences. Between 2008 and 2011, drought in Djibouti caused a yearly economic contraction of approximately 3.9 percent of GDP. Droughts are the third most prevalent hazard in MENA after earthquakes, but despite the alarming levels of water scarcity,  the opposite, floods,  also pose significant danger  in MENA too.

The 2008 floods in Yemen caused damages totaling US$1.6 billion, or six percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). The 2009 floods in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, brought losses of US$1.4 billion. The 2004 floods in Djibouti led to 230 deaths, US$ 11.1 million in losses, and affected 100,000 people.   Nine years later in 2013, slightly less flooding in Djibouti resulted in fewer victims, though 13 people still died, and there was a far shorter disruption of citizens’ livelihoods.

The difference was the emphasis the country placed in learning how to manage the risks caused by water scarcity and floods, and investing in protective infrastructure. Intense, unusual rains do not have to mean disastrous flooding. Neither does a drought have to become a source of malnourishment....

A view in Sana'a, shot by Tyabji, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

Measuring resilience to climate change in Nepal from the community up

Susannah Fisher in Eco-Business: Nepal’s vulnerability to a warming climate became clear in May 2012 when the Seti river burst its banks during flash floods and landslides that killed more than 60 people. Scientists say such events are likely to become more common as the world warms, so communities need to adapt.

The Government of Nepal is well aware of the challenges. With support from development partners, it is investing heavily in climate change adaptation. For example, the Pilot Programme on Climate Change Resilience (part of the Climate Investment Funds) is providing US$110 million in grants and loans. The UK Department for International Development and the European Union are supporting district and village institutions to develop and implement Local Adaptation Plans of Action to address the impacts of climate change.

...A project may achieve its goal (for example improving water supplies, or increasing biodiversity) but it may not have contributed to overall resilience to current or future climate threats. It may not have even set out to.

To address this gap, we have been working with communities and policymakers in Nepal to develop local indicators of resilience to climate-related threats and to identify what could be monitored at a national level....

Macchermo River (and glacier) in Nepal, shot by DARIO SEVERI, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license 

‘Useful and used’ data key to building resilience

Andy McElroy at the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction: The future resilience of the planet rests upon shortening the distance between emerging scientific evidence and actionable policy.  A High-Level Panel, titled ‘Perspectives on the Value of Earth Observations’, agreed on the importance of the “usability of information” in the International Strategy of Disaster Reduction and other global efforts to strengthen resilience.

Mr Achim Steiner, Executive Director of the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP), said collaboration and coordination was crucial: “We need to join up the dots about what we know about how resources can be used and not be used in future.

“The world really is heading terribly in the wrong direction. We need to bring science to decision making. And in such a complex world, we can no longer afford the luxury of taking very narrow, specific responses.  “It is also important that we are not paralysed by waiting to have perfect information before we act. Such an approach has never been the basis for human decision making.”  Mr Steiner pointed to some “wonderful examples” of international cooperation – such as on weather patterns and pollution – that have contributed to a more resilient planet.

UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction Ms Margareta Wahlström said data had to be “useful and used”.  “Th
ere is a huge gap between the capability of science and technology and what practitioners and policymakers do with this data. Lots of the best data needs an expert to interpret it, which means that it is not sufficiently accessible,” Ms Wahlström said.

Prof. Philippe Gillet, Acting President of Ecole Polytechnique, Federale Lausanne, said data alone was useless: “It needs to be processed and fitted into models and the better the models, the better our understanding of the way our planet functions.”  He pointed to an exciting future centred on the potential of ‘Big Data’ coupled with the ubiquity of smartphones. “This is changing the way we do science. Every citizen has the potential to become a scientist.”

Mr Serge Troeber, Chief Underwriting Officer, Corporate Solutions in Swiss Re, said his company was already reaping the benefits of collaborating over data. He cited the use of satellite imagery from the European Space Agency to help assess damage from floods in Canada last year as one example.  “Climate change is affecting the insurance industry considerably; we need to consider whether today’s one-in-100 years flood is tomorrow’s one-in-30-years flood,” he said. ...

The International Space Station seen from the Discovery Space Shuttle

The year that resilience gets real

Roger-Mark De Souza and Meaghan Parker in New Security Beat: ... [W]e must understand the environmental and demographic trends that increase our vulnerability. The areas of the Philippines hit by Haiyan, for example, had high population densities in vulnerable coastal and urban areas and degraded coastal forests and mangroves, leaving more people than ever exposed to the brunt of the typhoon’s storm surge. Similarly, the coastal communities devastated by Sandy were long ago stripped of their protective wetlands and natural contours by development. Three key trends will continue to drive global insecurity in 2014:

Population dynamics: The world is projected to add another 82 million people this year, 24 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa, where total fertility rates continue to outpace the rest of the world. In parts of the Middle East and Asia, changing age structures and ethno-religious demographic shifts will affect the potential for conflict and thus the ability of communities to respond to shocks, both natural and manmade.

Climate change impacts: We will continue to experience climate change-related shocks, including quick hits – floods, disease outbreaks, and food price increases – and slower-burning ones like drought, food price volatility, and environmental degradation. The impacts of these shocks on the poorest and most vulnerable will increase both in intensity and frequency. This year more attention will be paid to how developed and emerging middle-income countries (Brazil, India, China) can mitigate those impacts by curbing their emissions or by providing meaningful assistance through climate-resilient development programs.

The food-water-energy nexus: Today, one in eight people in the world suffer from chronic hunger, many of them in sub-Saharan Africa, where one in five are undernourished. About 1.2 billion people live in areas of water scarcity. More than 1.3 billion people don’t have electricity, and about 2.6 billion use wood and other solid fuels for cooking, leading to deforestation and illness from indoor air pollution. In these already stressed communities, more shocks will lead to even poorer health and slower economic growth. But these impacts will not just affect the poorest. An estimated 20 percent of today’s global economic output is based in countries that will face high risks from the impacts of climate change by the year 2025. The interconnected global economy means the effects of complex crises will ripple around the world....

A hand water pump in China, shot by 劉久弘, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

In 2013, Climate 'resiliency' officially entered the lexicon

Maria Galluci in Inside Climate News: The debate about tackling climate change has long revolved around the twin challenges of mitigating global warming and adapting to its more predictable long-term impacts—rising seas, higher peak temperatures, relentless drought.

Now a new concept has risen: "climate resiliency," or preparing cities for climate change's unforeseen and destructive disasters and disruptions. Resiliency includes adaptation measures—such as rebuilding wetlands or moving homes onto higher foundations as a way to fight floods—but it's also about armoring entire populations so they can absorb and quickly recover from sudden calamity.

Resiliency is "a more holistic perspective on creating stronger and more prepared communities," said Brian Holland, the director of climate programs at ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, a nonprofit based in Germany with U.S. headquarters in Oakland, Calif. "We're not just reacting to climate change. We're looking at how to build communities that can bounce forward" after a shock.

Although scientists and academics have long fretted about the resiliency of the word's cities amid increasing bursts of deadly weather, 2013 saw the concept enter the American lexicon after Superstorm Sandy brought the issue of to the fore. The devastation left by the climate-fueled hurricane—the pummeled houses, stranded families, electricity outages and damage to critical shipping ports—showed just how ill-prepared many cities are for a rapidly changing climate. Leaders began raising the issue publicly for the first time in media interviews, during urban policy panels and at national conferences.

The "little burbling" of activity turned into "a tidal wave of interest" that is likely to snowball next year, according to Rosina Bierbaum, an expert on climate change adaptation at the University of Michigan....

From NOAA, a gif of Typhoon Haiyan making landfall in the Philippines, November 7, 2013