Conceptualization and implementation of ecosystems-based adaptation

While ecosystems-based adaptation (EbA) has been received with great interest, the requirements for EbA implementation and its precise benefits under future climate change are unclear. Furthermore, EbA’s overlap with environmental, and development policy agendas leads to ambiguity regarding what actions fall under the rubric of EbA. We analyze the projects identified by the UNFCCC as examples of EbA to understand how EbA is conceptualized and promoted by the international community. Addressing climate change is the primary objective of 58% of the EbA projects; the other 42% of projects provide adaptation benefits yet are not primarily driven by climate change. A project’s adaptation targeting is tied to its information needs. Projects whose primary objective is to address climate change are more likely to use detailed climate projections than projects whose primary objective is to address natural hazards, development or ecosystems degradation. A majority of projects do not address uncertainty in future climate change or in adaptation benefits, nor do they track adaptation outcomes. This prevalent lack of monitoring highlights the possibility of a gap between expected and realized adaptation outcomes. It also represents a lost opportunity for improving knowledge of the thresholds of effectiveness of EbA and of factors influencing EbA efficacy.     

Climate change and the re-evaluation of cost-benefit analysis

The lack of resilience of urban systems to weather and climate variability—termed type I adaptation—and also to climate change—type II adaptation—are both major challenges to the livability and sustainability of cities in the Global South. However, there is often competition and conflict in these cities between actions that address existing adaptation deficits (type I) and projected adaptation gaps (type II). Extending the concept of the environmental Kuznets curve, this paper argues that synergistic action on type I and type II adaptation is essential in order for these cities to maintain their livability and build resilience to climate variability and climate change in the face of growing urban populations. A proposed unifying framework has been demonstrated in Can Tho, Vietnam, where there are significant adaptation deficits due to rapid urbanization and adaptation gaps due to climate change and socioeconomic changes. The analysis in Can Tho reveals the lack of integration between type I and type II measures that could be overcome by closer integration between various stakeholders in terms of planning, prioritizing, and implementing adaptation measures.     

Urban greenspace as a climate change adaptation strategy for subtropical Asian cities: A comparative study across cities in three countries

Interest in nature-based approaches for climate change adaptation in cities is growing. Whilst there is a growing field of scholarship in a European and North America setting, research on the policy and governance of urban greenspace for climate adaptation in subtropical Asia is limited. Given the different development patterns, environmental characteristics and governance arrangements in subtropical cities, plus their comparatively large population and high climate risk, this is a significant knowledge gap. In response, this paper evaluates competences – skill sets, capabilities, and supporting policy and legislation – to enact adaptation through greenspace across different governance contexts; and assesses how international rhetoric on nature-based adaptation becomes localised to subtropical Asian city settings. We conduct interviews with stakeholders, plus review of relevant policy and city-specific research, for three cities with different governance and development contexts: Hanoi (Vietnam); Taipei (Taiwan); and Fukuoka (Japan). Across all three cases, we find that institutional structures and processes for connecting different remits and knowledge systems are a bigger challenge than a lack of appropriate policy or individuals with the required technical knowledge. However, opportunities for civil society participation and consideration of justice issues vary between the cities according to the socio-political context. These findings illustrate the value of individuals and organisations able to work across institutional boundaries in linking greenspace and adaptation agendas for subtropical Asian cities; and the importance of competence in collaboration with developers and civil society so that the rapid development or regeneration seen in subtropical Asian contexts does not tend towards green climate gentrification. More broadly, our findings show that the diverse nature of subtropical Asian cities means the role of greenspace in climate adaptation is likely to be context-specific, and thus that caution must be exercised against uncritically importing best practices from exemplar cases elsewhere.     

Towards urban water sustainability: Analyzing management transitions in Miami,Las Vegas,and Los Angeles

As climate change challenges the sustainability of existing water supplies, many cities must transition toward more sustainable water management practices to meet demand. However, scholarly knowledge of the factors that drive such transitions is lacking, in part due to the dearth of comparative analyses in the existing transitions literature. This study seeks to identify common factors associated with transitions toward sustainability in urban water systems by comparing transitions in three cases: Miami, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles. For each case, we develop a data-driven narrative that integrates case-specific contextual data with standardized, longitudinal metrics of exposures theorized to drive transition. We then compare transitions across cases, focusing on periods of accelerated change (PoACs), to decouple generic factors associated with transition from those unique to individual case contexts. From this, we develop four propositions about transitions toward sustainable urban water management. We find that concurrent exposure to water stress and heightened public attention increases the probability of a PoAC (1), while other factors commonly expected to drive transition (e.g. financial stress) are unrelated (2). Moreover, the timing of exposure alignment (3) and the relationship between exposures and transition (4) may vary according to elements of the system’s unique context, including the institutional and infrastructure design and hydro-climatic setting. These propositions, as well as the methodology used to derive them, provide a new model for future research on how cities respond to climate-driven water challenges.     

Environmentalities of urban climate governance in Maputo,Mozambique

Interest in the role that cities can play in climate change as sites of transformation has increased but research has been limited in its practical applications and there has been limited consideration of how policies and technologies play out. These challenges necessitate a re-thinking of existing notions of urban governance in order to account for the practices that emerge from governments and a plethora of other actors in the context of uncertainty. We understand these practices to constitute adaptive governance, underpinned by social learning guiding the actions of the multiplicity of actors. The aim here is to unpack how social learning for adaptive governance requires attention to competing understandings of risk and identity, and the multiplicity of mechanisms in which change occurs or is blocked in urban climate governance. We adopt a novel lens of ‘environmentalities’ which allows us to assess the historical and institutional context and power relations in the informal settlements of Maputo, Mozambique. Our findings highlight how environmental identities around urban adaptation to climate change are constituted in the social and physical divisions between the formal and informal settlements, whilst existing knowledge models prioritise dominant economic and political interests and lead to the construction of new environmental subjects. While the findings of this study are contextually distinct, the generalizable lessons are that governance of urban adaptation occurs and is solidified within a complex multiplicity of socio-ecological relations.     

Managing urban water systems with significant adaptation deficits—unified framework for secondary cities: part II—the practice

Adaptation gaps are shortcomings of a system responding to climate change, whereas adaptation deficits are shortcomings in providing services. These two drivers for adaptation are often in conflict in many secondary cities in the global south (SCGS). It is possible to align these seemingly conflicting drivers into a productive unity, a conceptual alignment, which is the first step in achieving harmony while implementing adaptation actions. This paper focuses on the practical aspects of implementing aligned adaptation action that leads to improvements in liveability, sustainability, and resilience of SCGS. At an abstract level, the nature of the adaptation problem is similar to the complex problems identified in various domains, such as software development, manufacturing, and supply chain management. The widely accepted “agile principles”—used in the above domains—is the basis for developing a set of twelve principles for urban adaptation, which are synthesized from numerous recent studies that have implicitly proposed or applied most of these principles to climate change adaptation in urban settings. These principles lead to four essential objectives appertaining to the process of sustainable urban adaptation. The urban agile principles are used to analyze the current state of adaptation of Can Tho City in Vietnam and to ascertain the agile ways of addressing its adaptation challenges. Analysis of the outcomes shows that harmonized approaches can simultaneously address both adaptation deficits and gaps.     

Accelerating the sustainability transition: Exploring synergies between adaptation and mitigation in British Columbian communities

While the focus of government climate change policy in many regions is on mitigation, research shows that integrated approaches, focusing equally on mitigation and adaptation, seen in the context of more general sustainability goals, may ultimately yield more productive outcomes. Since 2008, the province of British Columbia has mandated that local governments be carbon neutral in their own operations and has used a suite of policies, outreach and incentive tools to enable them to do so. The Meeting the Climate Change Challenge project explored eleven leading communities in B.C. to empirically examine how climate change policies and innovations are being framed and considered at the local scale.In this paper, we examine the synergies and trade-offs between adaptation, mitigation, and sustainability. Our findings suggest that, among leading communities, pursuing an integrated sustainability strategy (rather than a narrow focus on climate change) has the potential to yield benefits for both adaptation and mitigation in the majority of cases. The findings suggest that communities leading on climate innovation in the province have moved beyond a siloed approach in considering mitigation and adaptation. These findings have implications on integrated decision making at the municipal scale and multi-level governance, identifying both the challenges and the benefits inherent in pursuing multiple priorities simultaneously.     

Global social and environmental change drives the management and delivery of ecosystem services from urban gardens: A case study from Central Coast,California

Urban community gardens are vital green spaces threatened by global social and environmental change factors. Population growth has reduced the amount of space available in cities, and climate change challenges plant growth thresholds. Urban community gardens provide dynamic socio-ecological systems to study how such social and environmental change factors affect the management and delivery of ecosystem services. They provide spaces where urban citizens purposefully interact with nature and receive multiple benefits. In this paper, we synthesize the results of three years of research in a case study of urban community gardens across the Central Coast of California and present a framework showing how both social and environmental change factors at the regional scale affect the ecological make-up of urban community gardens, which in turn affect the ecosystem services coming from such systems. Our study reveals that global environmental change felt at the regional level (e.g., increased built environment, climate change) interact with social change and policy (e.g., population growth, urbanization, water use policy), thus affecting regulations over garden resources (e.g., water availability) and management decisions by gardeners (e.g., soil management, crop planting decisions). These management decisions at the plot-scale, determine the ecological complexity and quality of the gardens and affect the resulting ecosystem services that come from these systems, such as food provision for both humans and urban animals. A greater understanding of how environmental and social change factors drive the management processes of urban community gardens is necessary to design policy support systems that encourage the continued use and benefits arising from such green spaces. Policies that can support urban community gardens to maintain ecological complexity and increase biodiversity through active management of soil quality and plant diversity have the potential to increase social and environmental outcomes that feedback to the larger environmental and social system.     

Planning adaptation based on local actors’ knowledge and participation: a climate governance experiment

Involving a wide-range of stakeholders at different moments in the planning of urban adaptation to climate change can help to overcome different barriers to adaptation, such as a lack of common perception, or control over options. This Article argues for an approach that involves a wide range of actors throughout the planning process in order to confront the challenges of urban adaptation to climate change. It builds on the results of a three-year participatory action research project to identify the catalysts with which local administrations can overcome the lack of data, the low level of engagement around the climate issue, and the cause-and-effect linkages of climate change impacts on the urban environment. Significant factors include territorial rootedness, leveraging actors’ experience, interaction between actors, as well as the valuing of local actors as experts of territorial management rather than as novices with regard to climate change adaptation. In addition to contributing towards the engagement of a large number of stakeholders around adaptation issues, a planning process that involves representatives from various sectors and during several stages contributes to a greater understanding of these issues and their linkages. It follows that such a process will bring changes to urban practices by better articulating local concerns about climatic issues.

Policy relevance

Although participation is commonly advocated in policy responses to climate change, only few empirical studies have investigated the ways in which local actors' knowledge can be integrated into climate change adaptation planning processes. The article builds on the results of an action research project carried out in Québec City, Canada, to address the relevance of involving a progressively broader range of actors as the adaptation process moves through its various phases. Given that a multitude of barriers to adaptation are at play at different times in a municipality, collaborations between local stakeholders emerge as a key factor. These collaborations provide greater insight into the linkages between climate change impacts and the urban environment and, in doing so, bring into question ordinary urban management and design practices.     

More than planning: Diversity and drivers of institutional adaptation under climate change in 96 major cities

A key challenge for effective, ongoing urban climate adaptation is to adapt institutions within urban governance. While an extensive foundation of empirical knowledge on urban climate adaptation has accumulated over the last decade, our image of institutional adaptation continues to be dominated by a focus on planning. Whilst understandable, this can obscure a fuller range of areas in which institutional adaptation to climate change is being pursued. Furthermore, methodological path dependency in large-N analysis via a common focus on analyzing formal planning documents risks a skewed perspective as such documents may only offer a partial view. Building on the rich range of work to date assessing climate adaptation in cities, and notwithstanding continued major gaps such as in small-medium cities, we now need to find ways to examine the diversity of institutional adaptation occurring in practice, and to comparatively draw on the situated interpretive knowledge of case experts within individual cities to do so. With this aim in mind, this paper explores institutional adaptation in a specific domain (urban water) in a sample of 96 major cities across six continents through a survey of 319 case experts, examining the diversity of institutional adaptation across contexts and exploratively probing its drivers. Findings show that multiple forms of institutional adaptation are being jointly pursued in cities across all continents, leaning towards ‘softer’ rather than ‘harder’ forms, but nonetheless revealing a wide range of activity. Patterns in drivers suggest a political explanation for institutional adaptation (e.g. involving change agents and political pressure) rather than a rational one (e.g. involving response to climate-related risks and/or extreme events). Overall, there is a need to combine parsimony with expanded interpretive sensibility in advancing large-N research on institutional adaptation diversity in comparative perspective.     

城市气象研究国际前沿动态综述

通过梳理2018年8月在美国纽约举行的第十届城市气候国际会议主要研究成果,分类汇总了城市气象研究的最新国际进展与发展趋势,包括城市气候过程、城市环境下气候变化适应与应对、气候条件下城市规划和管理、最新城市气象探测技术、城市环境数值模拟、大城市气候、城市遥感、城市地区极端天气等方面。在此基础上,根据我国城市化发展特性,探讨了我国城市气象研究的未来发展方向。     

Social–ecological memory in urban gardens—Retaining the capacity for management of ecosystem services

Many ecosystem services are in decline. Local ecological knowledge and associated practice are essential to sustain and enhance ecosystem services on the ground. Here, we focus on social or collective memory in relation to management practice that sustains ecosystem services, and investigate where and how ecological practices, knowledge and experience are retained and transmitted. We analyze such social–ecological memory of allotment gardens in the Stockholm urban area, Sweden. Allotment gardens support ecosystem services such as pollination, seed dispersal and pest regulation in the broader urban landscape. Surveys and interviews were preformed over a four-year period with several hundreds of gardeners. We found that the allotment gardens function as communities-of-practice, where participation and reification interact and social–ecological memory is a shared source of resilience of the community by being both emergent and persistent. Ecological practices and knowledge in allotment gardens are retained and transmitted by imitation of practices, oral communication and collective rituals and habits, as well as by the physical gardens, artifacts, metaphors and rules-in-use (institutions). Finally, a wider social context provides external support through various forms of media, markets, social networks, collaborative organizations, and legal structures. We exemplify the role of urban gardens in generating ecosystem services in times of crisis and change and conclude that stewards of urban green areas and the social memory that they carry may help counteract further decline of critical ecosystem services.     

Climate change vulnerability and social development for remote indigenous communities of South Australia

There is a strong contemporary research and policy focus on climate change risk to communities, places and systems. While the need to understand how climate change will impact on society is valid, the challenge for many vulnerable communities, especially some of the most marginalised, such as remote indigenous communities of north-west South Australia, need to be couched in the context of both immediate risks to livelihoods and long-term challenges of sustainable development. An integrated review of climate change vulnerability for the Alinytjara Wilurara Natural Resources Management region, with a focus on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara lands, suggests that targeted analysis of climate change impacts and adaptation options can overlook broader needs both for people and the environment. Climate change will add to a range of complex challenges for indigenous communities, especially in relation to hazards, such as fire and floods, and local environmental management issues, especially in association with invasive species. To respond to future socio-ecological risk, some targeted responses will need to focus on climate change impacts, but there also needs to be a better understanding of what risk is already apparent within socio-ecosystems and how climate interacts with such systems. Other environmental, social and economic risks may need to be prioritised, or at least strongly integrated into climate change vulnerability assessments. As the capacity to learn how to adapt to risk is developed, the value attributed to traditional ecological knowledge and local indigenous natural resource management must increase, both to provide opportunities for strong local engagement with the adaptation response and to provide broader social development opportunities.     

IPCC AR6报告解读：气候变化对城市、住区和关键基础设施的影响与适应

IPCC AR6 WGII评估了气候变化对城市、住区和关键基础设施的影响、风险及应对。气候变化对城市影响的程度和范围逐渐增加,全球城市化的过程与气候变化相互作用加剧了城市和住区的风险。通过社会基础设施、基于自然的解决方案和灰色/工程基础设施所采取的适应措施对气候恢复力发展均有贡献,而城市适应差距在世界各地普遍存在。气候恢复力发展需要多方协作、弥合政策行动差距、提升适应能力。评估报告的经验和案例为我国城乡地区适应和应对气候变化风险提供借鉴。     

Climate change impacts and adaptation in cities: a review of the literature

Many of the decisions relating to future urban development require information on climate change risks to cities This review of the academic and “grey” literature provides an overview assessment of the state of the art in the quantification and valuation of climate risks at the city-scale. We find that whilst a small number of cities, mostly in OECD countries, have derived quantitative estimates of the costs of climate change risks under alternative scenarios, this form of analysis is in its infancy. The climate risks most frequently addressed in existing studies are associated with sea-level rise, health and water resources. Other sectors such as energy, transport, and built infrastructure remain less studied. The review has also undertaken a case study to examine the progress in two cities—London and New York—which are relatively advanced in the assessment of climate risks and adaptation. The case studies show that these cities have benefited from stakeholder engagement at an early stage in their risk assessments. They have also benefited from the development of specific institutional responsibilities for co-ordinating such research from the outset. This involvement has been critical in creating momentum and obtaining resources for subsequent in-depth analysis of sectoral impacts and adaptation needs..While low cost climate down-scaling applications would be useful in future research, the greatest priority is to develop responses that can work within the high future uncertainty of future climate change, to build resilience and maintain flexibility. This can best be used within the context of established risk management practices.     

Overcoming cross-scale challenges to climate change adaptation for local government: a focus on Australia

This paper aims to identify key cross-scale challenges to planned adaptation within the context of local government in Australia, and suggest enabling actions to overcome such challenges. Many of the impacts of climate change and variability have or will be experienced at the local level. Local governments are embedded in a larger governance context that has the potential to limit the effectiveness of planned adaptation initiatives on the ground. This study argues that research on constraints and barriers to adaptation must place greater attention to understanding the broader multi-governance system and cross-scale constraints that shape adaptation at the local government scale. The study identified seven key enabling actions for overcoming cross-scale challenges faced by local governments in Australia when undertaking climate change adaptation planning and implementation. A central conclusion of this study is that a cooperative and collaborative approach is needed where joint recognition of the scale of the issue and its inherent cross-scale complexities are realised. Many of the barriers or constraints to adaptation planning are interlinked, requiring a whole government approach to adaptation planning. The research suggests a stronger role at the state and national level is required for adaptation to be facilitated and supported at the local level.     

Mapping the diversity of regulating ecosystem services in European cities

This paper presents the first analysis of the diversity of regulating ecosystem services (ESS)—key variables for global environmental sustainability and change in an urban era—across a globally important part of the urban world, urban Europe. We map the first pan-European pattern of regulating ecosystem services in urban core areas and their associated hinterlands and discuss data against the background of each city's land-use development history and planning culture. Upon selecting more than 300 cities, we used the Urban Atlas database and a straightforward calculation method to map three regulating ecosystem services. The main results of this study show (a) a heterogeneous distribution of regulating ecosystem services across European cities, (b) considerable provisioning differences between core cities and the hinterland, (c) a grouping of European regions according to their potential for urban ecosystem service provisioning and (d) an ecosystem services supply ranking for European cities. Considerable differences in urban ecosystem services were found among northern countries, such as Sweden and Finland, which are rich in supplying ecosystem services compared to the UK and Belgium, which, similar to Spanish and Greek cities, are characteristically low in ecosystem services provision. Our results provide the first overall picture of regulating services in urban EU-Europe and serve to inform decisions on the key aspects of future European policy and strategies involving urban nature, green spaces and health.     

Progress toward sustainable settlements: a role for urban climatology

Summary Sustainable development can be defined as that which meets the needs of the current generation while leaving sufficient resources for the needs of future generations. A central objective is to decouple conventional resource use (and its corollary, waste generation) from economic development through technological innovation, improved efficiency and changes in individual practices. As the global population becomes urbanized and human activity is concentrated in urban areas, settlement planning is a key aspect of sustainability. The widespread inclusion of environmental objectives in urban plans at all scales provides an opportunity for the incorporation of urban climate knowledge into the planning process on a routine basis. Many of the stated objectives have both direct and indirect connections to climate. However, for this to happen, climate research and results must be linked more explicitly to the objectives of the sustainable settlement. In this paper, the relevance of sustainability to urban design and climate is discussed and the potential contribution of current urban climatology is assessed, identifying areas of special consideration for transfer to achieve sustainable urban planning and design.     

What happens after climate change adaptation projects end: A community-based approach to ex-post assessment of adaptation projects

Over the last decade, hundreds of climate change adaptation projects have been funded and implemented. Despite the importance of these first-generation adaptation projects for establishing funders and implementors’ “best practices,” very little is known about how early adaptation projects have endured, to what ends, and for whom. In this article, I propose a community-based methodology for ex-post assessment of climate change adaptation projects. This methodology contributes to recognitional justice by asking the individuals and collectives tasked with sustaining adaptation initiatives to define adaptation success and what criteria for success should be assessed. I apply this subjective assessment approach in 10 communities across Ecuador that participated in an internationally funded adaptation project that concluded in 2015. My analysis draws together participatory mapping, walking interviews with local leaders, participant observation, and surveys with former project participants. The results highlight that even adaptation projects that were deemed highly successful at their closure have uncertain futures. I find that the sustainability mechanisms that were envisioned by project implementors have not functioned, and communities are shouldering the burden of reviving failing adaptation interventions. These findings highlight that the current model of episodic funding for climate change adaptation projects and evaluation processes needs to be revisited to acknowledge the long-term challenges faced by communities. This analysis also calls attention to the importance of ex-post assessment for adaptation projects and the potential of subjective assessment approaches for building more ontological and epistemological pluralism in understandings of successful climate change adaptation.     

The long history of environmental migration: Assessing vulnerability construction and obstacles to successful relocation in Shishmaref,Alaska

Migration decisions are complex and are linked to multiple vulnerabilities, including changing ecological conditions precipitated by climate change. As ecological thresholds are met, community-wide migrations will become more common. These community-wide migrations are more likely to occur to already vulnerable populations, and may levy high social costs. In order to prevent the negative outcomes associated with forced migration and diaspora, policy intervention is likely. Our research examines the case study of Shishmaref, Alaska, where relocation as an adaptation strategy to changing ecological conditions is the only sustainable option. We find that the colonial history in Shishmaref is explicitly linked to contemporary exposure to hazards and increased vulnerability. We further assess obstacles to a State sponsored relocation. These obstacles include disaster response protocol that does not adequately accommodate climate change scenarios. Relocation planning is further complicated by feelings of mis- and under-representation of local voices in political arenas. This case demonstrates the interrelatedness between historically constructed vulnerability and obstacles to adaptation planning. We also offer unique insight into the details of relocation planning as an adaptation strategy among one of the first community-wide migrations associated with climate change.