Alternatives for Secure Adaptation and Mitigation Strategies

The effort to keep atmospheric temperature not more than
1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial levels is not heading very progressively. The largest contributor towards global warming-emission of carbon gases, and the global response for sustainable development is rather tardy.

Oh that house? It’s in the sea now- there!”, a story on the Pari website describes the engulfing of a house and many other houses in Uppada village, East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. T Maramma’s joint family lived in that house until the early year of this century. The sea levels are rising, the impact of climate change is real!

IPCC VI, Working Group II report

The latest IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was released on February 27, 2022. This is working group 2(WG2) of the 6th Assessment Report (AR6). A large number of scientists across the world were engaged in the process of writing this report.
The report is voluminous runs into 3,676 pages. The report points out the interdependence of climate, ecosystems and biodiversity, and human societies. It also integrates knowledge across the natural, ecological, social and economic sciences, which is a departure from earlier IPCC assessments. This is good. The impacts and risks, as well as adaptation, is seen in concurrence to non-climatic global trends-biodiversity loss, overall unsustainable consumption of natural resources, land and ecosystem degradation, rapid urbanisation, human geographic shifts, social and economic inequalities and a pandemic. This is quite an ambitious work done.
The WG 2 points out the increase in the frequency of intense extreme events and damages to nature and people, beyond climate variability. The most vulnerable people and systems are observed to be disproportionately affected; the rise in weather and climate extremes has led to some irreversible impacts as natural and human systems are pushed beyond their ability to adapt.
The WG2 also lays immense emphasis on the cities. Why? The simple answer is that nearly 4.2 billion people, i.e., more people now live in cities across the world. Cities are major contributors to climate change. According to UN-Habitat, cities consume 78 per cent of the world’s energy and produce more than 60 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. Globally urban populations have grown by more than 397 million people between 2015-20, more than 90 per cent of this growth occurring in Less Developed Regions. And the most rapid growth, according to the report, in urban vulnerability has been in unplanned and informal settlements, and in small to urban medium urban centres in low-and middle-income nations where adaptive capacity is limited.
Therefore, any paradigm shift in meeting the challenges of climate change must consider cities as the core areas. Not just that, only 25 mega cities of the world produce 52 per cent of the carbon emissions, exhibited in a study of 169 cities.
The most welcome formulations of the report are that it goes beyond the prism of technocentric solutions and speaks about systemic changes. There are 183 pages of the report that deal with the urban conundrum. The chapter on cities also mentions concrete case studies -urbanisation and climate change in Himalayas-increased water insecurity; Semarang, Indonesia; Xi’xian New Area in China; etc.

Key Impacts

The WG2 identifies three key impacts on the urban area. First, exposure to climate-driven impacts, such as heatwaves, urban heat islands, extreme precipitations and storms, in combination with rapid urbanisation and lack of climate-sensitive planning affecting marginalised urban populations and key infrastructure to climate change.
Second, Covid-19 has had a substantial urban impact and generated new climate-vulnerable populations. Impacts on health, livelihoods and well-being felt disproportionately by economically and socially marginalised people. Third, urban areas and their infrastructure are susceptible to both compounding and cascading risks arising from interactions between extreme events and increasing urbanisation. Losses become systemic.
Coastal cities across the globe find a special mention owing to disproportionate impact on them. The report states, because of exposure of multiple assets, economic activities and large populations concentrated in narrow coastal zones, their vulnerability is high. Early impacts of accelerating sea-level rise have been detected.

What is to be done?

There are many things. For long term mitigation challenges, the entire process of urban development must be revisited. I recall this interaction with John Closs in Quito in 2016 during the UN-Habitat III conference; he vociferously pointed out that the current model of laissez-faire driven urban development is completely unsustainable and that we must go back to the basics of planning.
Historically it is proven that this is incorrect. Samuel Stien a US-based planner in one of his seminal works-“The Capital City”, points out the combination of this nexus between urban planners and the big real estate capital giants like ‘Blackstone’. Also, how such models are completely unsustainable both ecologically and socially, creating humongous amounts of inequity in the social system also ruining the urban ecology and resilient capacities of the cities.
Let me share two anecdotal experiences explaining the above. The first one is an interaction with the mayor of Montreal in a world mayors congress where she pointed out how the federal government-driven mobility system of more highways and cars (because of push from oil and automobile capital), had even jeopardised their city mobility and did not focus on public transport. They were, she said, revisiting the entire strategy and bringing in a shift from a private automobile driven mobility to public transport thus also reducing their carbon footprint.
The second one is from the building typologies. The push from glass capital to ensure “dead walls” in the building typologies made of glass. This did not just increase the energy intake for cooling and heating purposes in respective climatic scenarios, this typology has also proven that the glass is the worst form of health hazard particularly noticed during Covid-19. Instead, more ventilated houses must be the way forward.
Hence, to imagine secure and better adaptability led urban system, one must focus on urban planning which is driven by people’s interests.

The Indian Scenario

The Indian cities are considered to be one of the most vulnerable from a climate change impact perspective. The coastal towns and cities are already facing the perilous danger of receding shorelines. The towns in plains and mountains are experiencing both heat island effects as well as frequent flooding.
The vulnerability has increased in the last few decades owing to faulty city development processes. Akin to the global trend, Indian policy decisions were also adapted to make cities competitive and attract investments from global capital.
Take for example in the mobility sector, the push was and continues to be for more flyovers, expanding the road networks in the cities, instead of public transport. The latest addition of such reforms is the “smart city plan”; these cities were supposed to be lighthouses for BJP’s model of urban development. However, most of the smart cities chosen for development have proven to be the ones where urban flooding has increased. Because hard infrastructure without a comprehensive plan has damaged the existing water channels, thus blocking their pathways. Patna, Gurgaon etc., are part of such plans.
So, what India needs to do is to revisit its strategy of planning which should be people centric. Simultaneously, it should empower local governments in meeting their adaptive capacities, but at least providing them support to prepare their disaster atlas ensuring minimum damage to lives and assets.

Coastal cities across the globe find a special mention owing to disproportionate impact on them. The report states, because of exposure of multiple assets, economic activities and large populations concentrated in narrow coastal zones, their vulnerability is high. Early impacts of accelerating sea-level rise have been detected