Quito, Ecuador, is not considered a
global leader by most measures. But there is one way in which Quito is at the forefront of metropolises
worldwide: in planning for climate change. For more than a decade, officials in
Ecuador’s
mountainous capital have been studying the effects of global warming on nearby
melting glaciers, developing ways of dealing with potential water shortages and
even organizing conferences on climate change for leaders of other Latin
American cities.
In
so doing, Quito
officials represent a global trend: The cities that are most active in
preparing for climate change are not necessarily the biggest or wealthiest.
Instead, they are often places buffeted by natural disasters and increasing
changes in temperature or rainfall. In places where the climate seems to be a
growing threat to human lives, resources and urban infrastructure, local
officials have been working with scientists, conducting assessments and
examining which new measures may best prepare them for the future.
Indeed,
as an Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) survey released today shows,
95% of major cities in Latin America are planning for climate change, compared
to only 59% of such cities in the United States.
Leadership
on climate adaptation “can come from cities of many different sizes and ilks,”
says JoAnn Carmin, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies
and Planning and lead author of the survey’s report. While international
climate policy measures—such as potential agreements limiting greenhouse gas
emissions—require agreement among national governments, Carmin says, “cities
are able to make some important strides in this area. There are numerous
examples from around the world where there are no national policies or explicit
support for adaptation, but where local governments are developing plans and
taking action to address climate impacts.”
The
survey is the first to systematically investigate the efforts of cities around
the globe to adapt to climate change. Among 468 cities worldwide that
participated in the survey, 79% have seen changes in temperature, rainfall, sea
level or other phenomena attributable to climate change; 68% are pursuing plans
for adapting to climate change; and 19% have completed a formal assessment of
global warming’s impact.
U.S. cities are lagging in
this area, Carmin believes, because climate change, for various reasons, is a
more politically contentious issue in this country than elsewhere. “Climate
change discussion is off the table, quite frankly, more in the U.S. than
anywhere else,” Carmin says. “We are caught up over the cause of climate
change, and this has led all climate-related issues to become highly
politicized, undermining our potential to focus on promoting long-term urban
resilience. This is not the case in many other countries where they take
climate change as a given and are able to move forward with adaptation
alongside their efforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.”
Same effects, but to a greater degree?
The survey report—”Progress and Challenges in Urban Climate Adaptation”—was
written by Carmin and MIT graduate students Nikhil Nadkarni and Christopher
Rhie. The survey was conducted in partnership with ICLEI—Local Governments for
Sustainability, a membership organization of local governments from 70
countries. The survey was funded by a grant from the National Science
Foundation.
While
many factors explain the willingness of some cities to pursue
climate-adaptation planning, local governments moving ahead in this realm tend
to integrate adaptation efforts into existing departmental responsibilities.
Climate change may become a problem of unique magnitude, but some of its
possible effects—such as the potential to create large storms and flooding, or
deadly heat waves—are hazards local governments already grapple with.
“We
expect government departments will work mostly in the same ways they always
do,” Carmin says. “Some cities have established task forces and commissions to
jumpstart adaptation. However, it’s not like they’re going to set up some
separate major department to try to implement everything. … If you’re working
on stormwater management or public health provisions or emergency preparedness,
you’re going to continue to work on those using the tools you have available, it’s
just that now you account for projected climate changes in the context of your
planning and implementation.”
Some
of Carmin’s own field research, apart from the new survey, explores this issue
in depth. In a paper published this spring in the Journal of Planning Education
and Research, “Urban Climate Adaptation in the Global South,” Carmin and
co-authors Isabelle Anguelovski and Debra Roberts analyzed the local politics
of climate planning in Quito and Durban, South
Africa, another leader in planning for the
potential effects of climate change. Places such as these, the authors
concluded in the paper, are “creatively linking new agendas to existing goals,
plans and programs.” Durban,
for instance, has suffered from extensive flooding in the past and is now
addressing the matter as a climate-change policy issue.
The
extent of change in many cities throughout the developing world, through rapid
growth or migration, should also give leaders in those places reason to
consider how climate change could affect those areas, notes Karen Seto, an
associate professor of the urban environment at Yale University.
“A
place that is rapidly developing needs to think about both climate change
adaptation and mitigation,” Seto says. By contrast, she notes, “I’m not surprised
that a smaller percentage of cities in the U.S. are thinking about adaptation.
In the U.S. and in countries where income levels are relatively high, there is
this false belief that we can buy ourselves out of it, that we can buy some
technology to fix things, or that some other institution, whether it’s local,
regional, or national government, will come help save us.”
As
Carmin observes, climate change does present one new hurdle for urban planners
in any part of the world: the need to start using scientific projections to
understand the potentially novel impact of global warming.
“Urban
planning traditionally uses historical trends as a baseline,” Carmin says. “We
also need to begin looking at the projections. If we want to protect human
lives and urban assets over the long term, we need to be prepared for new
impacts and for greater variability and magnitude in impacts than we have
experienced in the past. That means looking at both historical data and climate
projections and generating multiple scenarios of what a city might face in 50
or 100 years. It’s not perfect, but we need to plan based on a forward vision,
instead of only looking backward.”
National help needed
To be sure, some large U.S.
urban areas, such as New York and Chicago, have also been
leaders in planning for climate change. But as Carmin acknowledges, even the
largest city can only do so much by itself; help from the national government,
including financial support, is ultimately essential.
“Many
cities feel that national governments don’t understand the challenges they
face,” says Carmin, who readily notes that “there’s a limit” to what cities can
accomplish without more federal support.
Moreover,
because global warming is a highly complex phenomenon, long-range climate
models inevitably contain uncertainty. That means local governments in some
cities may be reluctant to invest in physical infrastructure or specific
programs based on these projections. “Cities are aware of the uncertainty,”
Carmin says. “While many are not going to sit and wait for the science to be
perfected, they are also not going to put all their resources in one basket.”
As
a result of the uncertainty and limited resources, she adds, much of what local
governments are doing at the moment “is small-scale change, incremental
planning and a lot of nonstructural measures, like planning and outreach to the
public. In the long term, that will not be sufficient. For now, however, cities
are being creative and taking action in ways that are feasible given the scientific,
political, and resource constraints they face.”
