Disputation Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel,...

Disputation Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche FakultätChristian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, 4. Februar 2003

Coastal Vulnerability, Resilience and Adaptationto Climate Change — An Interdisciplinary Perspective

RICHARD J.T. KLEIN

Coastal Vulnerability, Resilience and Adaptation to Climate Change —An Interdisciplinary Perspective

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OUTLINE

• Climatic and non-climatic pressures on coastal zones.

• Early approaches to assessing coastal vulnerability.

• The importance of adaptation and adaptive capacity.

• A new assessment framework.

• Lessons learnt and to be learnt.

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POPULATION GROWTH AND URBANISATION

• 37% of the world’s population lives within 100 km from the coastline.

• In many places, population growth in coastal zones is double that of national average population growth.

• 23 cities are expected to have more than 10 million inhabitants by 2015; 18 of these are coastal.

• With the exception of Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles and Osaka, all coastal megacities are in developing countries.

Coastal pressures In the beginning Adaptive capacity A new framework Lessons learnt


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ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AND COMPETING DEMANDS

• Natural coastal systems provide many goods and services that support a range of socio-economic activities.

• Important activities include tourism and recreation, fisheries and aquaculture, mining, industry, transportation and infrastructure development.

• Overexploitation of one particular good or service can inhibit the provision of goods or services that are valued less financially or which enable the system to self-regulate.



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CLIMATE CHANGE AND ACCELERATED SEA-LEVEL RISE

• Global mean sea level is expected to rise by 9 to 88 cm by 2100, with a central value of 48 cm. This is 2.2 to 4.4 times the rate of rise observed over the 20th century.

• Sea-level rise will show regional variations, with some areas experiencing no rise and others facing a rise of more than twice the average.

• On a local scale, land subsidence will add to climate change-induced sea-level rise.



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POTENTIAL IMPACTS OF SEA-LEVEL RISE

Biogeophysical effect

SectorFlood

frequencyErosion Inundation

Risingwater tables

Saltwater intrusion

Biological effects

Water resources Agriculture Human health Fisheries Tourism Human settlements


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INTEGRATED COASTAL ZONE MANAGEMENT

• Traditional approaches to coastal management have tended to focus on single issues.

• In view of the increasing potential for resource-use conflicts, a policy process is needed to strike a balance between sectoral interests, both in the short and the long term.

• Integrated coastal zone management can be such a process, although its implementation is constrained by a lack of operational clarity and guidance.



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COASTAL VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT

• Usually based on the IPCC Common Methodology (1992).

• Sea-level rise as only climate variable.

• Limited number of impact indicators (people affected, people at risk, wetland loss, dry land loss, infrastructure loss, protection costs).

• Lack of data often constrained meaningful assessment.


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ASSESSING PEOPLE AT RISKGlobal sea-level rise scenarios

Vertical land movements

Relative sea-level rise scenariosStorm surge flood curves

Raised flood levelsCoastal topography

Size of flood hazard zonePopulation density

Number of people exposedProtection status

Average annual number of people flooded


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VALUE OF THESE ASSESSMENTS

• Raised awareness of the potential impacts of climate change and thus contributed to the international climate policy process.

• Limited usefulness for coastal planning and management, mainly because of a mismatch between the spatial and temporal scales of the assessment and the scales at which coastal planners and managers operate.

• Other problems: lack of data, study team composition, institutional fragmentation, lack of adaptation guidance.



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LIMITED INITIAL FOCUS ON ADAPTATION

• Preventionists emphasise the need for mitigation and fear that increased adaptation efforts will lead to diminished mitigation efforts.

• Adaptationists stress natural and human ability to adapt to many different climates and trust technological progress.

• IPCC Second Assessment Report (1996): “Discernable human influence on global climate”, emergence of a third school of thought: Realists.

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REALISTS

• Acknowledge that climate change is a fact but that impacts are still uncertain.

• Realise that planning and implementation of adaptation measures will take time.

• Stress that a process must be set in motion to consider adaptation as a realistic option, along with mitigation.

• Are aware that adaptation must be integrated with other social and environmental policies.

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OBJECTIVES OF THIS PHD RESEARCH

• To contribute to improved assessments of coastal vulnerability to climate change by developing a stronger conceptual and methodological basis for understanding the process of adaptation.

• In so doing, to ensure greater policy relevance of vulnerability assessments, as well as to improve the academic rigour and validity of the assessments.



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RESEARCH APPROACH

• No single, well-defined PhD project but a combination of studies commissioned and funded by different clients.

• Common theme is the description and analysis of elements that determine how coastal systems and communities would and could respond to climate change and, in particular, how this response may be assessed as part of coastal vulnerability assessments.

• Starting point: UNEP Handbook on Methods for Climate Change Impact Assessment and Adaptation Strategies.


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SIX PEER-REVIEWED AND PUBLISHED PAPERS

• Klein and Nicholls, 1999: Assessment of coastal vulnerability to climate change. • Klein et al., 1998: Resilience and vulnerability: coastal dynamics or Dutch dikes?

• Klein and Bateman, 1998: The recreational value of Cley Marshes Nature Reserve: an argument against managed retreat?

• Smit et al., 2000: An anatomy of adaptation to climate change and variability.

• Klein et al., 1999: Coastal adaptation to climate change: can the IPCC Technical Guidelines be applied?

• Klein et al., 2001: Technological options for adaptation to climate change in coastal zones.


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WHAT IS VULNERABILITY?

• IPCC CZMS, 1992: The degree of incapability to cope with the consequences of climate change and sea-level rise.

• IPCC SAR, 1996: The extent to which climate change may damage or harm a system; it depends not only on a system’s sensitivity, but also on its ability to adapt to new climatic conditions.

• IPCC TAR, 2001: The degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change [...]. Vulnerability is a function of the character, magnitude, and rate of climate variation to which a system is exposed, its sensitivity, and its adaptive capacity.



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WHAT IS VULNERABILITY?

• IPCC CZMS, 1992: The degree of incapability to cope with the consequences of climate change and sea-level rise.

• IPCC SAR, 1996: The extent to which climate change may damage or harm a system; it depends not only on a system’s sensitivity, but also on its ability to adapt to new climatic conditions.

• IPCC TAR, 2001: The degree to which a system is susceptible to, or unable to cope with, adverse effects of climate change [...]. Vulnerability is a function of the character, magnitude, and rate of climate variation to which a system is exposed, its sensitivity, and its adaptive capacity.



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SIMPLE RULES OF THUMB FOR ADAPTATION

• Dumb farmer: No adaptation,no reduction in damage costs.

• Dumb engineer: Inefficientadaptation, adaptation costs notjustified by damage cost reduction.

• Clairvoyant farmer: Economicallyoptimal adaptation, minimisesexpected damages.

dam

age c

ost

s

adaptation costs



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WHAT IS ADAPTATION?

• IPCC SAR, 1996: Not defined.

• IPCC TAR, 2001: Any adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected impacts of climate change, aimed at moderating harm or exploiting beneficial opportunities.

• Three generic strategies to adapt to flood risk in coastal zones: protect, accommodate and (managed) retreat.



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FORMS OF ADAPTATION

• Increasing robustness of infrastructural designs and long-term investments.

• Increasing flexibility of vulnerable managed systems.

• Enhancing adaptability of vulnerable natural systems.

• Reversing trends that increase vulnerability (“maladaptation”).

• Improving societal awareness and preparedness.

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NATURAL SYSTEM

SUSCEPTIBILITY RESILIENCE / RESISTANCE

NATURAL VULNERABILITY

BIOGEOPHYSICAL EFFECTS

AUTONOMOUS ADAPTATION

PLANNED ADAPTATION

SOCIO-ECONOMIC SYSTEM

IMPACT POTENTIAL

ABILITY TO PREVENT OR COPE

SOCIO-ECONOMIC VULNERABILITY

RESIDUAL IMPACTS

OTHERCLIMATIC AND NON-CLIMATIC

STRESSES

PLANNED ADAPTATION

AUTONOMOUS ADAPTATIONACCELERATED

SEA-LEVEL RISE

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IS RESILIENCE AN IMPORTANT CONCEPT?

• Resilience has developed from a straightforward concept in mechanics to a desirable attribute of linked human and ecological systems.

• Resilience now refers to the ability to absorb stress without changing, to self-organise and to learn to adapt.

• Limited scope for measurement, testing and formalisation.

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RESILIENCE OF THE DUTCH COAST (1)

• Morphological, ecological and socio-economic resilience.

• Resilience cannot be used in the traditional context of single perturbations and equilibrium states because the coast is an evolving system.

• The coast has been managed for centuries with the aim of reducing shoreline movement, which has increasingly created a state of disequilibrium as long-term changes have occurred.

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RESILIENCE OF THE DUTCH COAST (2)

• A resilient coast can respond dynamically to environmental changes, whilst continuing to perform all its actual and potential functions, such as flood protection, recreation and nature conservation.

• To make this definition operational requires a tool to evaluate trade-offs between morphological, ecological and socio-economic resilience and the functions they facilitate.

• More importantly, insights need to be developed as to how coastal resilience can best be enhanced.

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MANAGED RETREAT IN NORTH NORFOLK, UK

• Managed retreat is seen as a strategy that enhances coastal (ecological) resilience.

• Along the North Norfolk coast, cost-benefit analysis has shown that continued protection of the low-grade agricultural land is not economically viable.

• However, the recreational value of an important bird reserve in a freshwater marsh near Cley was not considered in this cost-benefit analysis.

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QUANTIFYING THE RESERVE’S RECREATIONAL VALUE

• Visitors’ revealed and stated preferences were elicited and used to assess the annual value of recreation in the reserve in monetary terms.

• The recreational value was found to be considerably higher than the present maintenance costs of the shingle bank that protects the reserve.

• Therefore, would continued protection be justifiable?

• What does this say about coastal resilience?



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THE BROADER CONTEXT

• Following a breach in 1996, the maintenance cost of the shingle bank increased by at least a factor of six.

• There are doubts that the shingle bank can provide sustainable protection in the medium to long term.

• It is unclear what would be the potential environmental impacts of any coastal defence option for the reserve on the adjacent North Norfolk coast.



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FROM ADAPTATION TO ADAPTIVE CAPACITY

• Implicit in most vulnerability studies to date is the assumption that there are no constraints on implementing the adaptation options identified and analysed.

• Information on the extent to which mechanisms are in place and technologies, expertise and other resources are available is likely to give a more reliable picture of vulnerability to climate change.



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LEARNING FROM COPING WITH CLIMATE VARIABILITY

• Weather-related hazards are due to natural climate variability. This climate variability will be affected by climate change, leading to increased hazard potential.

• Weather-related hazards and climate change are clearly related and so are the possible adaptation measures to these phenomena.



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Value ofclimaticattributeor effect

Time

+X*

-X*

Xpc

Xcc

Xpc Mean value of the climatic attribute X at the start of the time series.

Xcc Mean value of the climatic attribute X at the end of the time series.

+X* Upper critical value of X for the system of interest.-X* Lower critical value of X for the system of interest.

Trend in mean value of X.Coping range or zone of minimal hazard potential for system of interest.



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THE PROCESS OF ADAPTATION

• Case studies of changes in coastal management in The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Japan in response to increasing awareness of vulnerability to current climate variability and future climate change.

• Coastal adaptation has been recognised as a multi-stage and iterative process.



Climatechange

Impacts Response

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Developmentobjectives

Policycriteria

Mitigation

Adaptation

Monitoring,Evaluation

Climatevariability

Otherstresses

Existingmanagement

practices

Information,Awareness

Planning,Design

Implemen-tation



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ADAPTIVE CAPACITY

• The ability to plan, prepare for and implement adaptation measures.

• Factors that determine adaptive capacity of human systems include economic wealth, technology and infrastructure, information, knowledge and skills, institutions, equity and social capital.

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A NEW GENERATION OF VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT

• First generation: characterised by model and scenario-based analyses of potential impacts, limited consideration of adaptation.

• Second generation: includes assessment of adaptive capacity, links climate change with climate variability, involves stakeholders.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF STAKEHOLDERS

• Analysis of a stakeholder’s ability to cope with impacts associated with today’s natural climate variability can provide useful empirical information on their capacity to adapt to climate change.

• It can also be the basis of a prioritisation of adaptation options to reduce vulnerability to both today’s and tomorrow’s climate.

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SECOND-GENERATION VULNERABILITY ASSESSMENT

• Advantages: increased policy relevance, results relate directly to stakeholders’ activities and opportunities.

• Disadvantages: greater reliance on expert judgement, qualitative results hamper mutual comparison, no clear methodology available yet.

• AIACC: develops scientific and technical capacity by stakeholder-based vulnerability assessments.

• APF: methodological elaboration of second-generation assessment framework.


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Non-climatic factorsClimate

variability

Emissions

Concen-trations

Climatechange

Exposure Sensitivity

Impacts

Adaptivecapacity

Vulnerability

Mitigation

Adaptation

Facilitation

Facilitation

Imple-mentation

Imple-mentation

Mitigativecapacity

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MAIN FINDINGS (1)

• The traditional approach to assessing vulnerability has limited utility for coastal management on a local scale.

• Also on a national scale, vulnerability assessments have failed to provide the expected impetus in integrated coastal zone management.

• Meanwhile, the vulnerability of coastal communities to climate variability and change continues to increase, even though technologies to reduce this vulnerability are available.


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MAIN FINDINGS (2)

• Place-based analysis and rigorous conceptual development are the foundation for a second generation of vulnerability assessment, which focuses on adaptive capacity.

• A methodology for second-generation vulnerability assessment is currently being developed and tested.

• Further research is needed to understand adaptive capacity and the process of adaptation.


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FURTHER RESEARCH ON ADAPTIVE CAPACITY

• Empirical research on coping with climate variability can provide information on today’s adaptive capacity.

• Representing adaptive capacity by proxy indicators can enable the projection of future adaptive capacity, using models and scenarios.

• Agent-based modelling can be used to better understand the process of developing and using adaptive capacity.


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ADAPTATION LINKAGES BEYOND CLIMATE CHANGE

• Natural resource management (e.g., IUCN).

• Natural disaster reduction (e.g., IFRC).

• Sustainable development (e.g., OECD, World Bank).

• Adaptation is being “mainstreamed” into existing plans and policies: new interdisciplinary research is required to facilitate and analyse this process.

• In coastal zones, the interest in mainstreaming may be a new impetus for integrated coastal zone management.


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