Urban Resilience to Droughts and Floods

The Role of Policies and Governance

Cecilia Tortajada, James Horne, Larry Harrington, Larry Wallace Harrington

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429683541
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

This book focuses on policies and governance on how to build the resilience of cities to droughts and floods in the short-, medium-, and long-term. There are discussions on how cities prepare for, cope with, learn from, manage, and recover from these extreme events. The chapters also consider aspects such as changing paradigms, policy responses under uncertainty, scenario development, institutional responses, adaptive forecasting, governance perspectives, infrastructure development, overall investments, and technological innovation. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction are discussed at length.

Most of the cities and regions studied are in Asia, however, cities from Oceania, Europe, Africa, and North America are also included. Analyses are not limited to cities but to the basins and regions from which urban populations obtain their resources, and on which their resilience depends.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Water Resources Development.

Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: improving water services in cities affected by extreme weather events

James Horne, Cecilia Tortajada and Larry Harrington

ABSTRACT

This article discusses how key risks from extreme weather events might affect progress towards meeting Sustainable Development Goals 6 and 11 in cities in developing countries. It outlines the magnitude of the existing shortfall in safe water and sanitation services, and how climate change will exacerbate existing problems. It argues that the performance of many governments thus far has lacked urgency and purpose. Unless governments in particular become more committed, with redoubled effort, the goals are unlikely to be achieved.

Introduction

Only a well-functioning and corruption-free water sector will be able to overcome the enormous challenge ahead. (Water Integrity Network, 2016)

In the context of the evolution of urban areas in developing countries, this article discusses how key risks from extreme weather events might affect progress towards meeting the United Nations (UN) 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 6 and 11, and what can be done about it.

First, it outlines the two SDGs and the size of the task of meeting them. Second, it considers how extreme weather events and their future change in intensity fit into the mosaic of factors affecting urban water service provision. Third, it discusses the importance of solid information in judging how to move forward. Fourth, it considers a number of policy questions that national and city governments will need to grapple with if they are to address SDG 6 and 11 both now and in the face of emerging risks from the intensification of extreme events to water services and sanitation. This specifically includes the impact on the poor and vulnerable, few of whom currently have access to safe water and sanitation, and the large group of inbound migrants who will be in a similar position in coming years. The issues will be significant for some cities, including for many a need to fundamentally revisit governance arrangements.

Although this article focuses on cities in developing countries, there are important issues in many developed countries as well, in both urban and regional areas. In the US, Canada and Australia, for example, indigenous communities far too regularly must put up with poor service provision and poor water quality (see e.g. Horne, 2018; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency & U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2014). There are also many developed-country delta cities, such as Rotterdam, New Orleans, New York and Tokyo, that anticipate heightened water-related risks resulting from more frequent and intense extreme weather events, particularly storm surges (Aerts, Botzen, Bowman, Dircke, & Ward, 2012). Nonetheless, this paper focuses on cities in developing countries, because this is where the bulk of effort relative to available resources must go.

The article is based on a large body of academic literature, reports by international organizations such as the OECD and UN agencies, and reports by advocacy groups and national water institutions that discuss the underlying issues. It also draws on discussion at two workshops held under the auspices of the Institute of Water Policy, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore during 2016 and 2017.

Achieving SDGs 6 and 11: the size of the task

Since the late 1970s, the UN and its member states have grappled with the provision of safe drinking water worldwide, and the diffusion of basic sanitation services:

The decade 1980-90 should be designated the International Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation Decade and should be devoted to implementing national plans for drinking water supply and sanitation in accordance with the Plan of Action.… Action must focus on promoting (a) increased awareness of the problem; (b) commitment of national Governments to provide all people with water of safe quality and adequate quantity and basic sanitary facilities by 1990. (United Nations, 1977)

Safe drinking water remains outside the reach of over 2 billion people, with a UN estimate that 600 million of that number are in urban areas. Two SDGs seek to address this massive shortfall. SDG 6 seeks to ‘ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’ (United Nations Development Program, 2016). SDG 11 seeks to ‘make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’. See Box 1.

Box 1: SDGs affecting water services in cities

SDG 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

Target 6.1: By 2030, achieve universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for al.l. (Indicator 6.1.1: Proportion of the population using safely managed drinking water services)

Target 6.2: By 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all, and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations.

Target 6.3: By 2030, improve water quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimizing release of hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater, and increasing recycling and safe reuse.

Target 6.4: By 2030, substantially increase water-use efficiency across all sectors and ensure sustainable withdrawals and supply of freshwater to address water scarcity, and substantially reduce the number of people suffering from water scarcity.

Target 6.5: By 2030, implement integrated water resources management at all levels, including through trans-boundary cooperation as appropriate.

SDG 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

Target 11.5: By 2030, significantly reduce the number of deaths and the number of people affected and substantially decrease the direct economic losses relative to global gross domestic product caused by disasters, including water-related disasters, with a focus on protecting the poor and people in vulnerable situations.

Source: UNDP, 2016.

The importance of the SDGs is well established. These goals are characterized as global in nature and universally applicable, with targets being aspirational (United Nations General Assembly, 2015; UN-Water, 2017; World Bank, 2017). Key questions are how much progress is likely, and what the barriers are to that progress. The growth of informal settlements, despite their precarious legality and a very low level of infrastructure services, underscores the size of the tasks around SDG 6 and 11 (UN Habitat, 2016). Over the past decade the migration from rural to urban areas has been rapid, and this is expected to continue to 2030, in developing countries in particular. Four billion people inhabited urban areas in 2015, some 54% of the world’s population. Despite the efforts of governments, international organizations and NGOs, the absolute number of people in informal settlements or slums has risen from around 689 million to 880 million, even though they have declined as a proportion of the total population (UN Habitat, 2016). Box 2 outlines some basic facts around access to safe water.

Box 2: Progress towards 'safe' water

Using access to ‘improved water services’ as an indicator of safe drinking water, the UN stated that the Millennium Development Goals Target 7c, to halve the proportion of the population without access to safe water and sanitation by 2015, had been met well ahead of time (WHO/UNICEF, 2015).

As WHO (2017) now states clearly, the notion of improved water services does not take account of ‘location, availability, or quality of the water’. The lack of access to safe drinking water leads to nearly one million people dying annually ‘from diarrhoea as a result of unsafe drinking-water, sanitation, and hand hygiene’.

Progress towards SDG Target 6.1 is being assessed using a much more appropriate indicator, access to ‘safely managed drinking water services’. Using 2015 data, WHO suggests that 2.1 billion people, or 29% of the world’s population, do not have access to safely managed drinking water services. And this is probably an underestimate, as, in 2015, estimates of safely managed drinking water services were only available for countries representing 35% of the world’s population (WHO & UNICEF, 2017).

Many countries have openly acknowledged that achieving the target by 2030 is beyond their capability (UN-Water, 2017), with nearly one-third of countries not on track to achieve even ‘improved’ drinking water coverage by 2030 (WHO & UNICEF, 2017).

Against a background of urban migration and growth in area under urban settlement, water managers have been challenged to maintain and improve water quality and availability. Delivery of safe water and sanitation has declined in many urban areas across many countries. Even where everyday service fully meets expected standards, urban areas may be at risk from extreme weather events, including flooding from pluvial or fluvial sources, storm events (including cyclones or hurricanes) and drought. Over time the nature of these risks may change significantly. Growth in urban populations caused by natural growth and inward migration could push the footprint of many urban areas into increasingly marginal and risky areas, including the floodplain, and reduce the capacity of the city to maintain existing infrastructure as it grows or as the risks change. This ongoing change in footprint will be enormous. By 2030, it is projected that there will be 104 cities worldwide with a population over 5 million, compared to only 40 in 2000. In addition, there are projected to be 558 cities with a population between one million and five million (UN Habitat, 2016; Varis, Biswas, Tortajada, & Lundqvist, 2006).

As noted above, currently at least 600 million (or 15%) urban inhabitants do not have access to safely managed drinking water services. Given the large number of cities and smaller urban areas where water quality is currently not regarded as safe, and around 900 million people living in informal settlements, this figure looks like an underestimate. On its own, securing access to safe water and sanitation for this current population is an enormous task. But the population of urban areas is projected to increase from 4 billion today to around 5 billion in 2030, with a major part of that increase located in African and Asian cities (UN, 2016). That is, at least 1.6 billion urban inhabitants will need new or upgraded water and sanitation services by 2030 if SDGs 6 and 11 are to be fully met.

The starting point for tackling the unserved population varies greatly between cities, as does the capacity of specific cities to provide modern water and sanitation services. In some important dimensions, making progress over the next decade will be even harder than it has been over the past decade. Urban population growth will inevitably be concentrated on more marginal land. Around half of the expansion in the footprint of urban areas is expected to occur in flood zones (Guneralp, Guneralp, & Liu, 2015). This poses massive challenges for large and small cities alike (Gu, Gerland, Pelletier, & Cohen, 2015; Hallegatte, Green, Nicholls, & Corfee-Morlot, 2013).

Moreover, water and sanitation services to many existing and new urban areas will be even more vulnerable to extreme climatic events associated with climate change (McDonald et al., 2011). Water and sanitation infrastructure in delta cities, such as Guangzhou, Ho Chi Minh City, Mumbai and Jakarta, will be vulnerable to rising sea levels and storm surges (Aerts et al., 2012; Hallegatte et al., 2010). Greater preparedness is necessary in most cities Preparedness for climate change can be in the form of continued diversification of water portfolios and managing infrastructure risk, as in the case of Singapore, a city that for decades has been trying to anticipate future conditions and plan the most appropriate response ahead of time (Chow, 2017; Tortajada, Joshi, & Biswas, 2013). Hong Kong provides a contrast (Hartley, 2017), where political complexity prevails and where diversification of water resources in the face of extreme events is not yet considered a priority.

Extreme events in the context of existing water service provision

Urban water managers have always had to manage climate variability (which is more of an issue in some regions than others). Looking forward, they are now required to routinely consider the impact of non-stationarity of climate (Milly et al., 2008). As is well recognized, a key feature of climate change is that in some areas it will result in higher intensity of extreme weather events, with magnified impacts that affect urban areas in new ways, well outside hitherto expected risk profiles in relation to pluvial and fluvial flooding and coastal storm surges (WHO, 2017). More frequent flooding, for example, will endanger an unquantified number of currently safe water services, particularly through increased likelihood of contamination of drinking water from sewerage overflow. On the other hand, extended drought conditions affecting the water supplies of large cities will cause major economic and social dislocation.

Climate variability will also result in hitherto unexpected floods in arid environments, which may result in infrastructure design being challenged and found wanting, and in the aftermath resulting in the spread of disease. Each year we see new records from extreme weather events, many affecting urban areas (Blunden & Arndt, 2017). Climate change is already having an impact, and will continue to exacerbate water-related problems in many areas (Hirabayashi et al., 2013), necessitating a city-by-city review of how these events are managed, both now and in the future. In Thailand, recurrent floods have affected almost all cities. Institutional fragmentation and politics have prevailed over holistic policy, exacerbating rather than solving problems (Lebel & Lebel, 2017).

In 2000 around 150 million urban dwellers faced perennial water shortages, and even more were exposed to seasonal shortages. With urban migration, the numbers facing perennial shortages are projected to grow to 1 billion by 2050. A further 100 million people will face water availability shortages as a result of climate change (McDonald et al., 2011). Water service providers will need to adapt or improve their infrastructure simply to maintain the level of services ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: improving water services in cities affected by extreme weather events
• 2 Using water management infrastructure to address both flood risk and the urban heat island
• 3 Antifragility and the development of urban water infrastructure
• 4 The impact of weather extremes on urban resilience to hydro-climate hazards: a Singapore case study
• 5 Environmental resilience and intergovernmental collaboration in the Pearl River Delta
• 6 Exposure and resilience of China's cities to floods and droughts: a double-edged sword
• 7 The political economy of flood management reform in China
• 8 Governance of the Sponge City Programme in China with Wuhan as a case study
• 9 Towards adaptive governance for urban drought resilience: the case of Da Nang, Vietnam
• 10 Policy narratives help maintain institutional traps in the governance of floods in Thailand
• 11 Resilience in major Australian cities: assessing capacity and preparedness to respond to extreme weather events
• 12 Rainproof cities in the Netherlands: approaches in Dutch water governance to climate-adaptive urban planning
• 13 Devolving water governance in the Kenyan Arid Lands: from top-down drought and flood emergency response to locally driven water resource development planning
• Index