从气候变化的新视角理解灾害风险、暴露度、脆弱性和恢复力

不断变化的气候可导致前所未有的极端天气和气候事件。这些事件能否构成灾害,在很大程度上取决于脆弱性和暴露度水平。虽然无法完全消除各种灾害风险,但灾害风险管理和气候变化适应的重点是减少脆弱性和暴露度,并提高对各种潜在极端事件不利影响的恢复力,从而促进社会和经济的可持续发展。全面的灾害风险管理要求更加合理地分配对减灾、灾害管理等方面所付出的努力。过去的主流是强调灾害管理,但目前减灾成为关注焦点和挑战。这种主动积极的灾害风险管理与适应有助于避免未来的风险和灾害,而不仅仅是减少已有的风险和灾害,同时这也是灾害风险管理和气候变化适应更加紧密联系的一个背景。灾害风险管理促进气候变化适应从应对当前的影响中汲取经验,而气候变化适应帮助灾害风险管理更加有效地应对未来变化的条件。     

将灾害风险管理和适应气候变化纳入可持续发展

IPCC发布的《管理极端事件和灾害风险,推进气候变化适应》特别报告(SREX)指出,极端事件和灾害的影响很大程度上取决于社会经济系统的风险暴露程度及其脆弱性特征。这意味着,不合理的发展过程将加剧灾害风险及其损失,另一方面,采取积极的减灾和适应行动,能够减小灾害风险并促进社会、经济、环境的可持续发展。SREX报告有助于启发决策者与社会公众,为充满不确定风险的未来进行合理规划,包括关注未来因人口和社会财富增长导致的暴露度和脆弱性增加,在国家和部门层面整合适应、减灾与发展政策,利用多种政策工具加强决策的科学性和灵活性,发挥不同主体在适应治理与灾害风险管理中的作用等等。     

Funding public adaptation to climate-related disasters. Estimates for a global fund

Managing disaster risk is increasingly being considered a key line of response in climate adaptation. While funding support for adaptation has been pledged, rationales for support and cost implications are essentially unclear, which may explain why financing is currently only forthcoming at low levels. Various estimates for the costs of adaptation have been suggested, yet the rationale and robustness of the estimates have been difficult to verify. Focusing on weather-related extreme events, we conduct a global assessment of the public finance costs for financially managing extreme event risks. In doing so, we assess countries’ fiscal disaster vulnerability, which we operationalize as the public sector's ability to pay for relief to the affected population and support the reconstruction of lost assets and infrastructure. Methods employed include minimum-distance techniques to estimate the tail behaviour of country disaster risks as well as the inclusion of non-linear loss and financing resources relationships. We find that many countries appear fiscal vulnerable and would require assistance from the donor community in order to bolster their fiscal resilience. Our estimates may inform decisions pertaining to a global fund for absorbing different levels of country risks. We find the costs of funds covering different risk layers to be in the lower billions of dollars annually, compared to estimates of global climate adaptation which reach to more than USD 100 billion annually. Our estimates relate to today's climate, and while disaster losses have currently not been robustly linked to climate change, physical science has made a strong case in attributing changes in climate extremes to anthropogenic Climate Change. We suggest that estimates of current weather variability and related risks, although also associated with substantial uncertainty, can be interpreted as a baseline for discussion and any future projections of risks.     

A less disastrous disaster: Managing response to climate-driven hazards in the Cayman Islands and NE Brazil

This paper explores the relationship between disaster risk reduction and long-term adaptive capacity building in two climate vulnerable areas—the Cayman Islands in the Caribbean and Ceará, in NE Brazil. Drawing on past applications of the disaster risk reduction framework, we identify four critical factors that have led to reductions in risk: flexible, learning-based, responsive governance; committed, reform-minded and politically active actors; disaster risk reduction integrated into other social and economic policy processes; and a long-term commitment to managing risk. We find that while the presence of these factors has reduced overall risk in both regions, in Ceará, disaster response as it is currently practiced, has fallen short of addressing the fundamental causes of vulnerability that leave those prone to hazards able to cope in the short term, yet enmeshed in poverty and at risk from the longer-term changes associated with climate change. Although calls for integration of disaster risk management with poverty eradication are not new, there has been insufficient attention paid in the literature on how to foster such integration. Based on the two case studies, we argue that the adoption of good governance mechanisms (such as stakeholder participation, access to knowledge, accountability and transparency) in disaster risk reduction policy may create the policy environment that is conducive to the kind of structural reform needed to build long-term adaptive capacity to climate-driven impacts. We conclude that without a synergistic two-tiered approach that includes both disaster risk reduction and structural reform, disaster risk reduction, in the face of climate changes, will prove to be an expensive and ineffective palliative treatment of changing risks.     

将适应气候变化纳入国土空间规划：进展、困境与思路

空间规划是适应气候变化的重要政策工具之一,将适应气候变化目标纳入空间规划已经成为国际主流政策。中国适应气候变化的空间规划仍面临诸多问题和挑战,包括气候适应目标和理念薄弱、气候变化风险评估与空间规划尺度不匹配、适应和减缓策略的协同机制欠缺、技术标准和法律法规不完善等。文章结合国家适应气候变化战略和国土空间规划体系重构的目标要求,研究提出适应气候变化导向的国土空间规划框架体系和技术思路,以及将适应气候变化纳入空间规划编制审批、技术标准、实施监督以及法规政策等各个环节的思路与建议,以期通过空间规划的编制与监督实施促进适应气候变化目标的实现。     

The influence of urban development dynamics on community resilience practice in New York City after Superstorm Sandy: Experiences from the Lower East Side and the Rockaways

While (urban) resilience has become an increasingly popular concept, especially in the areas of disaster risk reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA), it is often still used as an abstract metaphor, with much debate centered on definitions, differences in approaches, and epistemological considerations. Empirical studies examining how community-based organizations (CBOs) “practice” resilience on the ground and what enables these CBOs to organize and mobilize around resilience are lacking. Moreover, in the growing context of competitive and entrepreneurial urbanism and conflicting priorities about urban (re)development, it is unclear how urban development dynamics influence community-based resilience actions. Through empirical research conducted on the Lower East Side, a gentrifying neighborhood in Manhattan, and in Rockaway, a socio-spatially isolated neighborhood in Queens, we investigate community organizing of low-income residents for (climate) resilience in a post-disaster context. Results show that both the operationalization of resilience – how resilience is “practiced” – and the community capacity to organize for the improved resilience of low-income residents are strongly influenced by pre-existing urban development dynamics and civic infrastructure – the socio-spatial networks of community-based organizations – in each neighborhood. The Lower East Side, with its long history of community activism and awareness of gentrification threats, was better able to mobilize broadly and collectively around resilience needs while the more socio-spatially isolated neighborhoods on the Rockaway peninsula were more constrained.     

对哥本哈根气候变化大会之后我国应对气候变化新形势和新任务的思考

综合分析了哥本哈根联合国气候变化大会的主要成果,对近期国际气候变化谈判的焦点问题进行了展望,还分析了我国应对气候变化面临的新形势和新任务。提出我国应进一步加强应对气候变化工作,把应对气候变化工作纳入法制化轨道,大力研发和推广气候友好技术,加强薄弱领域基础建设,提高适应气候变化的综合能力,积极探索符合我国国情的应对气候变化市场体制和机制,加强气候变化的科学研究,提高我国应对气候变化的科技软实力,增强全社会应对气候变化的意识。     

The effectiveness of communicative tools in addressing barriers to municipal climate change adaptation: lessons from the Netherlands

Little research has been done on the effectiveness of communicative tools for climate change adaptation. Filling this knowledge gap is relevant, as many national governments rely on communicative tools to raise the awareness and understanding of climate impacts, and to stimulate adaptation action by local governments. To address this knowledge gap, this study focuses on the effectiveness of communicative tools in addressing key municipal barriers to climate change adaptation, by conducting a large N-size empirical study in the Netherlands. This study explores the effectiveness of these tools in theory, by checking whether their goals match the perceived barriers to municipal climate change adaptation, and the effectiveness in practice by analysing whether they are used and perceived as useful. Document analyses have clarified the assumptions underlying the tools. By conducting semi-structured interviews with 84 municipalities the key barriers to climate change adaptation and the use and usefulness of the tools in practice were analysed. The research revealed that the key barriers experienced by municipalities are a lack of urgency, a lack of knowledge of risks and measures, and limited capacity, the first being the primary one. Communicative tools, while being effective in theory, are not sufficiently effective in practice in addressing the key barriers. Municipalities that are not experiencing a sense of urgency to take on adaptation planning are not likely to be activated by the tools. Advanced municipalities need more sophisticated tools. This article concludes with some suggestions to improve the effectiveness of communicative tools.

Key policy insights

• Although effective in theory in addressing key barriers to municipal adaptation planning, the effectiveness in practice of communicative tools is limited.

• To increase their effectiveness in practice, municipalities’ awareness of the existence of the communicative tools needs to be raised.

• Advanced municipalities need more sophisticated tools that are context-specific and address a wide range of climate risks.

• The effectiveness of communicative tools can be improved by embedding them in a wider mix of policy instruments.

     

Adaptation to climate change in Africa: Challenges and opportunities identified from Ethiopia

Africa is widely held to be highly vulnerable to future climate change and Ethiopia is often cited as one of the most extreme examples. With this in mind we seek to identify entry points to integrate short- to medium-term climate risk reduction within development activities in Africa, drawing from experiences in Ethiopia. To achieve this we employ a range of data and methods. We examine the changing nature of climate risks using analysis of recent climate variability, future climate scenarios and their secondary impacts. We assess the effects of climate variability on agricultural production and national GDP. Entry points and knowledge gaps in relation to mainstreaming climate risks in Ethiopia are identified using the Government's plan for poverty reduction. We end with a case study incorporating climate risks through drought insurance within the current social protection programme in Ethiopia, which provides support to 8.3 million people.Rainfall behaviour in Ethiopia shows no marked emergent changes and future climate projections show continued warming but very mixed patterns of rainfall change. Economic analysis highlights sensitivities within the economy to large-scale drought, however, while the effects are clear in major drought years in other years the relationship is weak. For social protection fairly small positive and negative effects on the number of recipients and frequency of cash payments during drought occur under the extreme range of climate model rainfall projections (2020s).Our analysis highlights several important challenges and opportunities for addressing climate risks. Challenges primarily relate to the large uncertainties in climate projections for parts of Africa, a weak evidence base of complex, often non-deterministic, climate-society interactions and institutional issues. Opportunities relate to the potential for low-regrets measures to reduce vulnerability to current climate variability which can be integrated with relatively modest effort within a shift in Africa from a disaster-focused view of climate to a long-term perspective that emphasises livelihood security and vulnerability reduction.     

全球气候变化对我国气候安全影响的思考

依据政府间气候变化专门委员会 (IPCC) 第5次评估报告以及国内相关科学研究成果,使用最新的观测资料凝练了对全球气候变化的有关认识;从极端天气气候事件和气候承载力角度,分析了气候变化给我国带来的气候风险。研究发现:1961—2015年我国平均高温日数增加了28.4%,暴雨日数增加了8.2%。21世纪以来,登陆我国热带气旋的强度明显增加。在全球气候变暖的背景下,我国气候承载力将发生明显变化,未来面临的气候风险将加大。因此,保障我国气候安全,需要科学认识气候,提高气候风险意识; 主动适应气候,提高应对极端事件能力;努力保护气候,减缓气候变化的影响。     

Enhancing the value of adaptation reporting as a driver for action: lessons from the UK

ABSTRACT

As increasing evidence shows that the risks of climate change are mounting, there is a call for further climate action (both reducing global emissions, and adaptation to better manage the risks of climate change). To promote and enable adaptation, governments have introduced, or are considering introducing, reporting on climate risks and efforts being taken to address those risks. This paper reports on an analysis of the first two rounds of such reports submitted under the UK Climate Change Act (2008) Adaptation Reporting Power. It highlights benefits and challenges for reporting authorities and policymakers receiving the reports that could also inform other countries considering such reporting. For reporting authorities, benefits arise from the reporting process and resulting reports. These benefits include elevating climate risks and adaptation to the corporate level and with stakeholders, alongside facilitating alignment and integration of actions within existing risk management and governance structures. For policymakers, reporting provides enhanced understanding of climate risks and actions from a bottom-up perspective that can be integrated into national-level assessments and adaptation planning processes. The identified challenges are those related to capacity and process. These include limited risk and adaptation assessment capacities; relevance of climate change risks and adaptation in the context of other urgent risks and actions; reporting process effectiveness and robustness; and the provision of effective and sufficiently comprehensive support, including feedback.

Key policy insights

• Effective adaptation reporting needs to be designed and delivered so as to enhance the value of the reporting process and resulting reports both for those reporting and those receiving the reports, as well as from the broader policy perspective.

• Providing a positive and supportive reporting environment is critical to encourage participation and facilitating contiuous learning and improvement, while also facilitating delivery of policy-relevant adaptation reports.

• Contributions of adaptation reporting can be enhanced by an inclusive reporting requirement involving a broader organizational mix that enables more effective risk management and reporting that reflects associated (inter)dependencies and consistency with the more comprehensive post-2015 resilience agenda (Paris Agreement, Sendai Framework for DRR and UN Agenda 2030 SDGs).

     

气候变化影响和适应认知的演进及对气候政策的影响

通过分析IPCC第二工作组的5次评估报告对气候变化影响、适应的主要结论和方法的演进、原因以及对国际适应谈判和国家适应政策的影响,指出由于文献的迅速增加,影响评估方法和适应技术手段的不断成熟,以及思维的转变和意识的逐渐增强,IPCC进一步确认了气候变化已经并将继续对自然生态系统和人类社会产生广泛而深刻的影响;未来社会经济发展路径、适应和减缓行动以及风险治理将影响气候变化带来的风险。IPCC报告极大地推动了国际和各国适应气候变化科学研究和政策实践的进程。尽管中国各级各部门已逐渐将适应融入到相关政策中,但仍然存在认识、能力、体制机制等问题,需要进一步推进国家和各地的适应工作。     

适应气候变化的国际行动和农业措施研究进展

针对气候变暖采取稳健的适应措施已成为国际社会共识。该文综合了当前适应气候变化的国际谈判进展及已有的农业适应气候变化措施,指出适应资金严重不足,技术研发、应用与转让难以实施,以及适应气候变化行动实施能力的不足严重制约着适应气候变化行动的有效实施;关于农业适应气候变化的技术措施仍缺乏系统的理论研究与应用示范。在此基础上,提出了未来中国农业适应气候变化需要重点开展的研究任务,即农业气象灾变过程的新特点及其风险管理, 农业适应气候变化的大数据决策管理系统研发及适应气候变化的农业气候区划与减灾保产技术研究,以切实推进农业适应气候变化,为确保国家粮食安全与农业可持续发展提供支撑。     

Addressing human vulnerability to climate change: Toward a ‘no-regrets’ approach

This paper presents and applies a conceptual framework to address human vulnerability to climate change. Drawing upon social risk management and asset-based approaches, the conceptual framework provides a unifying lens to examine links between risks, adaptation, and vulnerability. The result is an integrated approach to increase the capacity of society to manage climate risks with a view to reduce the vulnerability of households and maintain or increase the opportunities for sustainable development. We identify ‘no-regrets’ adaptation interventions, meaning actions that generate net social benefits under all future scenarios of climate change and impacts. We also make the case for greater support for community-based adaptation and social protection and propose a research agenda.     

An integrated socio-environmental framework for glacier hazard management and climate change adaptation: lessons from Lake 513, Cordillera Blanca, Peru

Glacier hazards threaten societies in mountain regions worldwide. Glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) pose risks to exposed and vulnerable populations and can be linked in part to long-term post-Little Ice Age climate change because precariously dammed glacial lakes sometimes formed as glaciers generally retreated after the mid-1800s. This paper provides an interdisciplinary and historical analysis of 40?years of glacier hazard management on Mount Hualcán, at glacial Lake 513, and in the city of Carhuaz in Peru’s Cordillera Blanca mountain range. The case study examines attempted hazard zoning, glacial lake evolution and monitoring, and emergency engineering projects to drain Lake 513. It also analyzes the 11 April 2010 Hualcán rock-ice avalanche that triggered a Lake 513 GLOF; we offer both a scientific assessment of the possible role of temperature on slope stability and a GIS spatial analysis of human impacts. Qualitative historical analysis of glacier hazard management since 1970 allows us to identify and explain why certain actions and policies to reduce risk were implemented or omitted. We extrapolate these case-specific variables to generate a broader socio-environmental framework identifying factors that can facilitate or impede disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. Facilitating factors are technical capacity, disaster events with visible hazards, institutional support, committed individuals, and international involvement. Impediments include divergent risk perceptions, imposed government policies, institutional instability, knowledge disparities, and invisible hazards. This framework emerges from an empirical analysis of a coupled social-ecological system and offers a holistic approach for integrating disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.     

ESSP框架下几种灾害的研究进展——2006年地球系统科学联盟(ESSP)全球环境变化科学大会综述

简要介绍了2006年11月9—11日在北京召开的地球系统科学联盟(ESSP)全球环境变化科学大会的基本内容,着重论述了全球环境变化背景下,海平面上升、城市疾病灾害、非洲的灾害以及灾害风险评估与管理等当前灾害研究热点领域的最新进展。从大会与灾害相关分会场的讨论内容可以看出,未来国际灾害研究关注的重点问题包括:理解和研究气候变化,以及气候与生态系统和人类社会之间的相互影响;加强对决定沿海系统脆弱性因素的评估,开展避免和减轻海平面上升影响的适应性研究;推进全球环境变化对人类健康影响途径和机制的深入研究;区域食物安全和饥荒依然是全球环境变化背景下非洲发展的重要议题;增强国际社会开展灾害风险评估、灾害预警、应急和恢复等风险管理方面的研究,探讨利用灾害制图、GIS和GPS等技术,对灾害多发地区,特别是沿海地区的灾害影响与损失进行评估。     

IPCC第五次评估报告对气候变化风险及风险管理的新认知

IPCC第五次评估报告第二工作组报告在气候变化风险及风险管理方面聚焦于气候变化对领域和区域的不利影响。在综合分析与气候变化相关危害、暴露度和脆弱性的基础上,提出了气候变化风险的评估框架。风险不仅来自气候变化本身,同时也来自人类社会发展和治理过程。报告首次提出了新生风险,归纳总结了气候变化带来的关键风险,评估了不同温升下气候变化5个“关注理由”的风险水平。在风险管理过程中,由于适应和减缓的局限性,剩余风险是不可避免的。未来,若全球平均温度升高4℃（较工业革命以前）将加剧人类和社会生态系统广泛的、严重的和不可逆影响的风险。     

Integration of ecosystem-based adaptation to climate change policies in Viet Nam

There is growing recognition of the importance of ecosystem-based approaches for adaptation to climate change—it is a cost-effective measure that has multiple benefits and can overcome many of the drawbacks of more common engineering adaptation options. Viet Nam has a rich biodiversity and is also one of the most vulnerable countries impacted by climate change. Climate change policies have been adopted at national and local levels as well as by sector, making Viet Nam one of the nations to most systematically fulfill their obligation under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Consequently, we have used Viet Nam as a case study, to assess the integration of ecosystem-based approach to adaptation to climate change. We found that ecosystem-based adaptation is being implemented in some projects but, overall, is inadequately considered by Viet Nam’s climate change policies. Instead, policies predominantly rename infrastructure projects as climate change adaptation and focus on hard solutions for disaster reduction, rather than responding to long-term climate change through ecosystem-based adaptation. Moreover, ecosystem-based adaptation projects have focused on only a few relevant types of ecosystems. Viet Nam should revise its existing climate change policies and sectoral strategies to integrate ecosystem-based adaptation across different scales of governance. As other nations develop adaptation policies at different scales, the lesson from Viet Nam is that engineering measures need to be balanced with ecosystem-based adaptation for more affordable and effective responses to climate change.     

Relating root causes to local risk conditions: A comparative study of the institutional pathways to small-scale disasters in three urban flood contexts

The continued rise of global disaster losses pushes our attention yet further to the causal factors that drive risks, beyond the frame of standardised risk assessment models. A key gap in our understanding of the causality of disasters remains establishing how spatially and temporally distant factors – ‘root causes’ – drive local risk conditions. This is particularly the case for small-scale but high-impact disasters. It includes understanding the role that institutions play in influencing such pathways of risk production. This paper addresses this question using a holistic approach to risk analysis that links past drivers to contemporary conditions. We apply this in three case studies of coastal flood management in urban areas of differential size and integration within the European Union - Rethymno (Crete), Genoa (Italy) and St Maarten (Dutch Caribbean). The paper reveals the importance of local institutions in mediating the impacts of higher-level economic and political changes on local risks. It provides new empirical evidence of the relationship between austerity, institutional reform and local disaster risk reduction. The analysis supports a stronger causal epistemology of resilience to disasters but also leads to re-consideration of the institutional entry points for risk reduction, and the importance of considering context and trade-offs.     

Climate warming and natural disaster management: An exploration of the issues

This paper explores two issues that have been receiving increasing attention in recent decades, climate change adaptation and natural disaster risk reduction. An examination of the similarities and differences between them reveals important linkages but also significant differences, including the spectrum of threats, time and spatial scales, the importance of local versus global processes, how risks are perceived, and degree of uncertainty. Using a risk perspective to analyze these issues, preferential strategies emerge related to choices of being proactive, reactive, or emphasizing risk management as opposed to the precautionary principle. The policy implications of this analysis are then explored, using Canada as a case study.