Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Barriers to Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation

Given the cross-cutting nature of climate change as a policy issue, decisions over which mitigation and adaptation measures to adopt will be determined by the social, economic and political circumstances in individual cities and guided by the weight given to climate change concerns, rather than any absolute evaluation of their effectiveness.

There are multiple drivers and potential barriers to both mitigation and adaptation and the smart option is to recognize that climate change is here and inaction now will lead to higher costs in the future. Some of those barriers are detailed below.


  1. Uncertainty about the nature and extent of climate change and its impacts.
  2. The complexity and challenges of climate change impacts, adaptation needs and the reality of reducing emissions are often more challenging than anticipated.
  3. Lack of consensus around certain issues, both in terms of evidence and potential solutions.
  4. Lack of awareness among stakeholders.
  5. The short planning horizons of many stakeholders compared to those of climate change.
  6. Resource constraints and perception of additional costs of mitigation and adaptation.
  7. Lack of maturity of certain markets for goods and services to support adaptation.
  8.  Dependency on regulations, codes and standards, which do not yet reflect anticipated climatic conditions or current good practice.
  9. The perception that the business case for adaptation has not been proven in some sectors.
  10. Lack of senior management buy in and/or political support for mitigation and adaptation responses.
  11. Lack of awareness and in-house expertise.
  12. Organizational and professional inertia leading to inflexibility and resistance to change.
  13. Difficulties associated with changing the behavior of individuals.
  14. Lack of joined up policy within and between different levels of decision making (national, regional and local levels).
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                            Challenges to Socially Equitable Land Use Management

                            For decades, modernistic planning traditions have imposed zoning ordinances in developing countries that were designed for European towns. 
                            The development standards were not affordable to the poor and enforcement was unrealistic. Additionally, middle- and higher-income groups used planning as a way of maintaining their property values and excluding “less desirable” low-income residents, ethnic minorities and traders from their areas. 
                            Consequently, such a top-down planning approach failed to accommodate the needs of the majority of residents in rapidly growing and largely poor informal cities and contributed to urban poverty and socio-spatial marginalization. 

                            Unfortunately, modernistic planning remains the dominant form of planning in most parts of the world. Limitations of conventional approaches to address urban poverty include:
                            1. Slum clearance and relocation, which sees slums as visually unacceptable in their plans for modernization. 
                            2. Slums were demolished and their residents were provided land, in some cases housing, at the periphery of the city. 
                            3. The crucial dependence slum dwellers had on their livelihood opportunities at their earlier locations within the city was ignored. 
                            4. Many slum dwellers have moved back to the city to resume their earlier work.
                            5. Public housing provided as a state responsibility. 
                            6. This has proved to be expensive and is being gradually abandoned since governments lack the resources to provide housing for the vast number of slum dwellers.
                            7. Land use policies and regulations, such as low floor area ratio (FAR) and rent control legislation, have restricted the supply of land and housing for the urban poor, e.g., in Lahore, Dhaka and Mumbai.
                            8. Piecemeal upgrading through multiple agencies has provided secure tenure, housing or basic services in selected high-profile slum pockets prior to election times. 
                            9. Lack of a comprehensive strategy that is not sustained politically has wasted resources. Granting of title to land has usually not taken into account renters, other informal tenure arrangements in slums, non-family slum units and women as head of households. 
                            10. The excluded sections of slum communities have either established new slums or enlarged existing ones.
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                                Why is disaster prevention important?

                                The occurrence of extreme catastrophic events can be sudden, quick and unpredictable. 

                                However, the recurrences of minor disaster events that cause enormous losses in human lives and economic assets over a long period of time are abetted by changing patterns of land use, especially deforestation, poorly planned development and the increasing concentration of people and capital in vulnerable areas (for example, in the coastal regions exposed to windstorms, in the fertile river basins exposed to floods, and in urban areas exposed to earthquakes. 

                                Disaster vulnerability is enhanced by an overburdened urban infrastructure, urban and rural poverty, and overuse of environmental resources. Prevention of such disasters is possible if we rethink the way we live and use our resources. 

                                Several factors contribute to any disaster, some less obvious than others. For example, the immediate cause of a bridge or building collapse may be a mud slide, though poor design or construction, or unsafe siting may be the reasons. 

                                The mudslide itself may have been caused by denuded hillsides that increased sediment flow that the bridge could not withstand and the denuded hillsides may be due to poor communities that are struggling to survive on forest produce. 

                                Symptoms are easily and often mistaken for the cause. Likewise, disaster prevention requires many actions, but they are not always obvious. 

                                For example, improving the public delivery of some services like reliable public transport, allows people to move from unsafe areas close to work to safer locations. 

                                Reducing deforestation prevents heavy rains from washing mud, rock, and debris into populated areas. Disaster prevention measures are in fact basic sustainable development measures.

                                Focusing on 3R is the most for disaster management:
                                Relief, Recovery and Reconstruction but not enough on prevention and preparedness only. 

                                Hence, a successful policy response for effective prevention includes information, interventions and infrastructure. Underpinning this policy response is the role of institutions without which any policy response would be ineffectual. 

                                Pre-event risk management for natural disasters is a planned and structured approach that aims at:
                                • Risk identification and assessment: identifying and prioritizing vulnerable areas and populations through advanced information systems,
                                • Risk Control:  Risk mitigation: reducing the intensity and frequency of the peril and the potential losses through interventions and infrastructure development, and Risk transfer: transferring or spreading the risks through innovative institutions to lessen the burden on the victims and to facilitate the recovery process.
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