The development of effective strategies for responding to climate change and the impact of changing patterns of vulnerability to other natural hazards will, in many cases, require re-envisioning strategies for managing resources and responding to risks within regions and sectors. Conventional approaches to reducing the risk associated with storms in coastal areas, for example, emphasize structural protection measures. If mean sea level rises rapidly or coastal storms increase in intensity and frequency, direct protection of coastal regions through structural measures will no longer be feasible. Instead, visions are required for coastal regions that reflect the technical and economic limitations of attempts to protect large areas and focus instead on developing environmentally and economically productive systems within areas affected by storms or inundated as sea levels rise. Similar issues also arise in large river basins, arid regions, mountain areas and urban agglomerations. They also arise in specific contexts. Consider the case of disaster management. Most formal systems for disaster management emphasize risk spreading and the replacement of assets and reconstruction to pre-existing conditions. Insurance, for example, generally replaces the specific assets lost. Similarly most programs for post-disaster reconstruction provide individuals, households and communities with the resources needed to reconstruct houses and infrastructure or to replace other assets – but not to change the location or nature of such assets in ways that reduce future sources of risk. In many such environments and contexts, the basic objectives underlying existing strategies do not respond either to existing sources of vulnerability or to the new ones emerging as climate and other change processes proceed. As a result, the objectives and strategies underlying conventional approaches will, in many cases, need to be re-envisioned as a basis for supporting effective risk reduction and adaptation.
Our approach to re-envisioning emphasizes learning to live with risk, climatic variability and change. Rather than attempting to control the climate or insulate society from disaster risks, we recognize that a blend of hard resilience measures (the direct strength of structural control measures) and soft resilience measures (the ability of systems to absorb variation while maintaining basic environmental and human services) are needed. Within large river basins, for example, soft resiliency measures are those that, rather than attempting to control water, emphasize the maintenance of flood plains and wetlands while creating livelihood systems, institutions and physical structures that are adapted to variability and intermittent inundation. Similarly in coastal areas, harnessing the opportunities of the “newly created” shallow water ecosystems along our changed coastlines could allow continued use of these highly productive ecosystems. Thinking on hard resiliency measures will also have to evolve. More specifically, rather than attempting to directly control floods, protective strategies will need to rely on a combination of early warning, flood plain maintenance, refuge points and drainage. Similarly, rather than attempting to utilize large dams as the primary mechanism for water storage (a strategy that will be required in some cases but is unlikely to be technically or economically viable in many) populations will need to actively manage both their own use and the natural storage systems, such as groundwater, that buffer climatic and seasonal variability.
In South Asia, we are working with communities in the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu and Gujarat and within the Ganges basin. Coastal lands within a couple of meters above sea level are extensive throughout Tamil Nadu and Gujurat and are threatened by sea level rise. Higher tides and changes in the upstream dynamics of rivers as they enter the sea combined with increased storm surges and potential increases in the intensity or frequency of tropical cyclones will result in intermittent inundation and, probably more importantly, salinization of areas that are currently well inland. Low-lying coastal villages, because of their location, livelihood bases and current natural resource management practices, are vulnerable to changes in climate, alterations in river dynamics and salinization of water resources. We are working on strategies to transition from livelihoods based in agricultural and fishing to a more diverse array of livelihoods that are not land or natural resource based. Other strategies involve gradual relocation of the villages and construction of small, raised protected areas for shelter or protection of areas that are ecologically or economically important. Temporary structures to protect areas during transitional periods to other livelihoods and settlements are also viable solutions. Such measures are only the beginning to re-envisioning approaches to natural resource management, disaster risk reduction, and adapting to and living with climate variability and change.
