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Part I
Resilience for sustainable development in a changing environment
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1 Building resilience to disasters and climate change in the age of urbanization
Abhas Jha, Henrike Brecht and Zuzana Stanton-Geddes
Managing risks responsibly and effectively has the potential to bring about security and a means of progress for people in developing countries and beyond.
World Development Report 2014
Introduction
Around the world, unplanned urban growth is expanding slums and degrading ecosystems, leaving millions exposed to disaster and climate risks. Disaster and climate risks pose a serious challenge for urban dwellers and systems. Over the past decades, economic losses have been increasing due to the rising concentration of people and assets in hazardous areas, turning many of todayâs cities into disaster hotspots. This trend is set to continue unless disaster and climate risk management becomes part of urban planning and governance.
This chapter argues that rapid urbanization, if properly managed, can be an opportunity to strengthen urban resilience. To reach this goal, key principles need to be followed, including using risk assessments for better decisions in urban planning, integrating structural and non-structural risk management measures, prioritizing adaptive and multi-purpose approaches, enabling the sharing of risk information, engaging with different stakeholders, and using recovery as an opportunity to forge stronger and safer communities.
The first section describes current trends in urbanization, and how poorly planned urbanization can translate into increased exposure and vulnerability of cities. The second section highlights some of the key implications, and provides recommendations and examples of innovative ways of reducing and managing disaster risk, encouraging readers to view disasters both as a risk and an opportunity. The final section summarizes the discussion and ways forward.
Cities as disaster hotspots: the imperatives for action
Rapid urbanization requires a new paradigm. A century ago, one out of every ten people in the world lived in urban areas. Now, the majority of people live in cities. By 2050, the United Nations projects that almost three-quarters of the worldâs population will be urban dwellers. In the next two decades, the world will witness unprecedented urban infrastructure expansion â in developing countries the expansion is equivalent to building a city of one million people every five days (Muller 2013).1 Research on urban growth in the East Asia and the Pacific region, which used satellite imagery to analyze built-up areas for the entire region in the years 2000 and 2010, suggests that in this time frame, the total amount of built-up land in the region increased by 34,000 sq. km (World Bank 2015). A dominant trend is that urban areas in the region grew simultaneously larger and denser while becoming administratively fragmented, which poses a challenge for integrated urban planning, service delivery and infrastructure development (World Bank 2015).
Much of the urbanization is taking place in slums and hazardous areas. Globally, about one billion people live in slums, and this number is expected to shoot up to three billion by 2050 if rapid urbanization is not addressed (United Nations 2013). In urban areas in developing countries, slum dwellers already account for more than 50 percent of the population (UN Habitat n.d.). In sub-Saharan Africa, some 72 percent of urban dwellers live in slums, up from 62 percent 10 years ago (UN Human Settlements Programme 2006). Typically settling in informal areas, often at risk from disasters and with limited or no access to services such as water and sanitation, the urban poor are disproportionately affected by disaster impacts (World Bank 2012b). For example, it is estimated that in Metro Manila some 800,000 people, mostly informal settlers, live in high-risk areas. In Jakarta, spatial analysis of slum settlements and flood risk areas shows strong correlation between informal and high-risk areas (World Bank 2013).
The substantial growth of population and assets in at-risk areas is among the main reasons for the increase of disaster losses in recent years. Historically, many cities propagated around sites with agricultural advantages or importance, in areas with fertile volcanic soils, for example, or along major trade and transportation routes, such as coasts and river systems naturally prone to flooding and erosion (Dilley et al. 2005). In the past few decades, coastal areas have become even more densely populated:2 between 1970 and 2010, while global population growth was 87 percent, populations living in flood plains grew by 114 percent and in cyclone-prone coastlines by 192 percent (United Nations secretariat of the ISDR 2013). Globally, between 2010 and 2015, the number of people living in large cities exposed to tropical cyclones and earthquakes have doubled â with 680 million people exposed to tropical hazards, and 870 million to earthquakes (Brecht et al. 2013).
The potential for losses is particularly high in urban areas. While, over the past decades, the human loss due to the impact of natural hazards has decreased significantly, thanks to improvements in hazard monitoring and early warning systems among others, economic losses have been increasing (see Figure 1.1). The concentrations of population, industry, infrastructure and economic activities in cities contribute to increased exposure and susceptibility to natural hazards: 1.5 percent of the worldâs land is estimated to produce 50 percent of worldwide gross domestic product (GDP). The same area accommodates about one-sixth of the worldâs population (World Bank 2009). A recent study quantifying the present and future flood losses in the 136 largest coastal cities estimates that by 2050, these cities will experience flood losses in the amount of US$52 billion (Hallegatte et al. 2013). In 2005, these 136 cities encountered flood losses of approximately US$6 billion per year (Hallegatte et al. 2013). Another study reports that more than 80 percent of all losses resulting from disasters reported in Latin America were in urban areas (Hardoy 2013).
In the global context, even local events can have consequences reaching beyond a country or region. The 2011 Thai floods affected industrial production, cutting down manufacturing for export, and affecting commodity-related manufacturing in the whole region (World Bank 2012c). Making a quarter of the worldâs hard drives, and serving as the South-East Asian production hub for Japanese car makers, the halt in production created supply chain disruptions for the automobile and electric industries, including Apple, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Nikon, Sony, Canon and Toshiba, among others (Yang 2011).
Disasters are among the greatest threats to poverty reduction and shared prosperity: they can roll back years of development gains and plunge millions of people into poverty. In the Philippines, due to the recent Typhoon Haiyan, it is estimated that an additional 2.3 million people have been pushed into poverty, raising the poverty rate from 41 percent to about 56 percent in the worst affected areas. In Myanmar, 2 years after Cyclone Nargis, the average maximum debt of laborers and fishermen more than doubled, and that of small farmers was almost twice as high (World Bank 2013d). Research suggests that the impacts of climate change upon poverty will be regressive, âaffecting most significantly the urban poor and highly vulnerable countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where the number of exposed poor may reach 325 million by 2030.â3
Figure 1.1 Loss events worldwide: 2013 vs. 1980â2012 in US dollars
Source: Natural Catastrophes in 2013. Loss Events by Continent. Globally, disasters in 2013 brought some US$125 billion in losses (Munich Re 2014).
The growing recognition of development partners that disasters threaten the global goal of poverty reduction helped place disaster and climate resilience firmly in the global development agenda. The World Bank Group (WBG) is committed to reducing poverty and increasing shared prosperity. As part of this goal, disaster and climate risk management are now at the core of the new WBG strategy approved at the 2013 Annual Meeting. The growing commitment of the World Bank to urban resilience and disaster risk management is reflected in many ways. Seventy percent of the World Bankâs Country Assistance and Partnership Strategies now include disaster and climate risk in their approach to development. The Bank has also doubled its investments in disaster risk management, investing, on average, US$2.3 billion per year in disaster prevention, preparedness and post-disaster construction, with two-thirds of new lending focusing on prevention and preparedness.
In the East Asia and the Pacific region, the World Bank supports urban planning and investments that take into account disaster and climate risks. For example, in the Philippines, the bank supported the development of the Master Plan for Metro Manila â a set of actions and priorities for sustainable flood risk management of Metro Manila and surrounding areas until 2035. The plan includes structural measures, land use management and resettlement, improvements in the urban drainage system, establishment of an integrated flood risk management institutional system, flood forecasting and early warning systems, along with community-based flood risk management. In Vietnam, the Bank supports climate-resilient development in a number of cities, including Ho Chi Minh City and Can Tho, among others. In Indonesia, the National Community Empowerment Program in urban areas (PNPM) supports community-driven development that also includes disaster adaptation (e.g. flood prevention, water retention and storage facilities, slope stabilization and emergency evacuation routes). In Lao PDR, the Bank contributed to integrating resilience aspects into the five-year National Socio-Economic Development Plan (2011â2015), enabling, for the first time in Lao PDR, the allocation of the national budget for risk reduction investments.
Ten principles for developing a resilient city of the future
In the face of these challenges, there are many opportunities for cities to make a change. Poorly planned urban development, degraded ecosystems, poverty and climate change are all factors that contribute to the rising exposure and vulnerabilities of cities. However, these processes do not have to translate into increased risk if preventive measures are embedded into the design of cities. The following outlines ten tools that cities can use to increase resilience.
1 Use risk assessments for better-informed decisions
Reliable risk information at different levels helps assess and communicate the impacts of disasters, formulate effective risk management strategies and guide development planning. Risk assessments, prepared at various scales, serve as tools for quantifying the probable impacts of disasters in terms of the spatial distribution of damage and loss. Risk assessment results may be visualized through risk maps and integrated into a costâbenefit analysis for any given measure, which are useful for both making decisions and communicating the risks to stakeholders (World Bank 2013e). For example, in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a risk assessment and resulting risk map of the city were used to review the Dhaka City Master Plan to evaluate the adequacy of existing measures for flood mitigation. Similarly, in Istanbul, a risk assessment informed a strategic plan for the development of the Earthquake Mitigation Plan consisting of a city contingency plan and local action plans for high-risk areas.
Risk assessments can have many policy applications. They may be used, for instance, for territorial planning to identify flood plains, assessment of expected damage to infrastructure from specific hazard scenarios, costâbenefit analysis for mitigation planning, preparedness for support of emergency and contingency planning for different crisis scenarios, as well as insurance premium calculations that require accurate information about annual expected losses and probable maximum losses for a specific area (World Bank 2013e). In Latin America, a number of countries use the Probabilistic Risk Assessment (CAPRA) Program â an open-source risk calculation platform â which evaluates risk in terms of physical damage and direct economic and human losses using standard risk metrics (annual average loss and probable maximum loss). The platform can also visualize hazards and risk through geographical information systems (GIS).
2 Mainstream resilience into development planning and investments
Authorities need to integrate resilience strategies into their daily decisions about urban development. This, however, poses many challenges, as discussions about disasters have traditionally taken place in the emergency relief arena, resulting in an institutional division between disaster and development departments. Forward-looking cities are working to overcome this gap. For example, as part of the âStronger, More Resilient New Yorkâ initiative, New York City is working with utilities to strengthen existing infrastructure resilience to flood and heat hazards, reconfigure networks for greater redundancy, and review with regulators the current system designs to include extreme weather conditions when evaluating performance. In Lao PDR, the government is taking steps to mainstream disaster and climate resilience into the strategic policies of the transport, irrigation, and urban sectors to disaster-proof new infrastructure. The following steps may be taken to mainstream resilience into sectors and line ministries.4 First, sectoral risk assessments need to be developed. For example, in the transport sector, this would translate to mapping vulnerable road stretches. Second, technical guidelines should be specified to address the identified vulnerabilities, including options such as the relocation of roads to higher ground, larger culverts and bioengineering solutions for slope stabilization. Third, awareness raising and training should be provided for all levels of government as well as for the road engineers, supervisors and construction workers.
Mainstreaming resilience needs to be coordinated by a high-level ministry to enforce and monitor implementation. Following the 1999 Marmara earthquakes, Turkey established a high-level DRM agency under the Prime Ministerâs Office. This high-level agency has the mandate and authority to mainstream DRM into different sectors. It has overseen a number of significant initiatives that have positioned Turkey as a more resilient ...
