Climate change 2014: well, what now?

Citation

Dilanthi, R. and Amaratunga, H. (2014), "Climate change 2014: well, what now?", International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment, Vol. 5 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJDRBE-04-2014-0032

Climate change 2014: well, what now?

Article Type: Editorial From: International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment, Volume 5, Issue 2

On 13 April in Berlin, Germany, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report that assesses the options for mitigating climate change and their underlying technological, economic and institutional requirements. It transparently lays out risks, uncertainty and ethical foundations of climate change mitigation policies on the global, national and sub-national level, investigates mitigation measures for all major sectors and assesses investment and finance issues.

According to the Working Group III contribution to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, it would be possible, using a wide array of technological measures and changes in behaviour, to limit the increase in global mean temperature to 2°C above pre-industrial levels. However, only major institutional and technological changes will give a better than even chance that global warming will not exceed this threshold.

The warnings are dire, the consequences of inaction portrayed to be catastrophic and the proposed solutions made to seem within reach. Yet the UN IPCC’s compendium on global warming – the body’s third in the past year – has already largely faded into the background of the news cycle.

The impending Synthesis Report will be the final product of the Fifth Assessment cycle. It will integrate key messages from the three recent working group reports: the physical science basis (September 2013); climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability (March 2014); and mitigation (April 2014).

The next major climate report from the IPCC will not come out for another four to seven years – if it iss approved at all. Meanwhile, though the vast majority of Americans claim they would support limits on greenhouse gas emissions, even at some economic cost, surveys have shown that fewer and fewer citizens rank global warming as one of the nation’s top priorities.

Conservatives and industry groups have also kept up the push against tighter limits on greenhouse gases. The Environmental Protection Agency’s initiative to introduce stricter emissions regulations for power plants, for example, will lead to “higher electricity costs, lost jobs and a weaker economy”, said Laura Sheehan, Senior Vice President of Communications for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, in a statement.

Taken together, all this raises a question for environmental advocates: well, what now?

It is worth recalling that the IPCC is the international body for assessing the science related to climate change. It was set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme to provide policymakers with regular assessments of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and future risks and options for adaptation and mitigation.

At the 28th Session of the IPCC held in April 2008, the members of the IPCC decided to prepare a Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). A Scoping Meeting was convened in July 2009 to develop the scope and outline of the AR5. The resulting outlines for the three Working Group contributions to the AR5 were approved at the 31st Session of the IPCC in October 2009.

Working Group III, which assesses options for the mitigation of climate change, is co-chaired by Ottmar Edenhofer, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Ramón Pichs-Madruga, Centre for World Economy Studies, and Youba Sokona, South Centre. The Technical Support Unit of Working Group III is hosted by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and funded by the government of Germany.

Few readers of the International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment will probably doubt the effort of such panels and working groups. Indeed, some contributors and readers of the journal have likely been engaged. For example, a total of 309 coordinating lead authors, lead authors and review editors, representing 70 countries, were selected to produce the Working Group II report. They enlisted the help of 436 contributing authors, and a total of 1,729 experts and government reviewers provided comments on drafts of the report. For the Fifth Assessment Report, 837 coordinating lead authors, lead authors and review editors participated.

However, the impact of such advocacy might be open to greater scrutiny.

“There seems to be a debate going on on some level in the advocacy community about exactly what the right, next step is”, says Billy Pizer, a professor of public policy, economics and environment at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy. “What do you do if you’re really passionate about this issue, what do you do if you want to see accelerated progress? How do you motivate people?”

Even within the IPCC itself, “they are evaluating internally if they will do this again”, says an IPCC spokeswoman. “Is this the same formula they want to pursue as an organisation? Are there other ways to do this?”

It is a question that has challenged climate advocates for years, if not decades. How does one garner support for an issue that is at once urgent and potentially ruinous, yet whose main effects won’t be felt for decades?

“I don’t see the IPCC report changing much as far as USA policy goes,” says David Konisky, a public policy professor at Georgetown University who studies environmental politics and policy:

The scientists are getting more and more resolute about the impact of climate change. Congress will continue to, you know, talk about things. But I don’t really anticipate it leading to any sort of legislative initiative.

Daniel J. Weiss, though a Senior Fellow and Director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, argues the IPCC reports’ most effective role may actually be as a long-term “tool” for advocates.

“The fact that it’s a one-day story for the media says a lot more about the media than about the urgency to act to slow climate change”, Weiss says:

The IPCC provided voluminous documentation of what we already knew to be true – it’s analogous to another study on cigarette smoking on lung cancer. The data that it’s gathered is going to be a tool that advocates can use to remind people of the urgency to act.

The Synthesis Report is due in September 2014.

Opening this second issue of the fifth volume of the International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment, Allan and Bryant argue that the key to the successful integration of recovery planning and urban design lies in a shift of thinking that sees resilience as a framework for the design of cities that not only contribute significantly to the quality of everyday urban life but also can be adapted as essential life support and an agent of recovery in the event of an earthquake.

In the second paper, Thurairajah and Bichard report the results of a study into the use of motivational behaviour change strategies to promote investing in flood protection measures by homeowners. This paper builds trials the measures suggested in earlier attitudinal studies in a flood-threatened community in the North-West of England.

Syed presents a study to assess the vulnerability of communities prone to earthquake hazards in Baluchistan, at the community and as well as household levels, and identifies the determinants accounting for the vulnerability of those communities.

In the fourth article, Tucker, Gamage and Wijeyesekera discuss aspects of post disaster housing building design with a focus on the use of appropriate materials and technology to suit the climate and site and draw lessons from traditional housing types and settlement patterns.

Baroudi and Rapp identify stakeholder issues on disaster restoration projects from a contractor perspective. While past research has tended to adopt macro perspectives on disaster preparedness, response and management, this study focusses on repairing and restoring disaster-affected buildings and structures from a restoration industry standpoint.

In the sixth article, Charlesworth draws on research in five divided cities to explore the descending spiral that results when the ‘urban contract’ between vulnerable ethnic communities and their city is broken. The author identifies lessons for urban managers from the various approaches to reconstruction that were implemented.

In the final research article, MacKee, Askland and Askew propose an alternative strategy for preparing, recovering and conserving cultural built heritage in the context of natural disasters. It presents the idea that disaster preparedness is integral to cultural built heritage protection and conservation.

Korstanje contributes a review of Community-based disaster risk reduction by Rajib Shaw. The issue also includes two doctoral abstracts: Thurairajah’s study on empowering women in post disaster reconstruction and Ophiyandri’s study on project risk management for community-based post-disaster housing reconstruction. Completing the issue is news from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and their City Disaster Resilience Scorecard, an article by Patricia Holly Purcell on the UN-Habitat’s City Resilience Profiling Programme, as well as details of the launch of Horizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation.

Haigh Richard and Amaratunga Dilanthi