Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change (2010) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
5 Linking Adaptation Efforts Across the Nation
5 Linking Adaptation Efforts Across the Nation
Pages 159-184
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From page 159... ...
. Adaptation is primarily about developing a multiparty, public-private national framework for becoming more adaptable over time: improving information systems for telling us what is happening, both with climate change impacts and with adaptation experiences; working together across institutional and social boundaries to combine what each party does best; and making it a part of our national culture to continually revisit what risk management strategies make sense as we learn more about what we are facing from climate change.
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From page 160... ...
Therefore, assessing and building adaptive capacity will be a critical factor in determining the nation's vulnerability to the impacts of a changing climate (Adger and Vincent, 2005)
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From page 161... ...
. As described in Chapter 2, the United States is vulnerable to a wide range of climate change impacts such as increased droughts, sea level rise, flooding, loss of biodiversity, increased heat waves, and other effects.
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From page 162... ...
Increased exposure to climate impacts over time (heat waves, sea level rise, hurricanes, extreme droughts, wildfires, extreme precipitation events, etc.) will exacerbate these risks.
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From page 163... ...
Likewise, local land use regulations usually do not address anticipated sea level rise, increased storm surges, or changes in 100-year flood cycles, and many other local systems are currently failing to consider climate change vulnerabilities. Local governments are increasingly recognizing and addressing climate change adaptation through various planning efforts (examples in Chapters 3 and 4 in this report; Feldman and Kahan, 2007; a recent inventory is provided by Moser, 2009a)
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From page 164... ...
To the Keene participants, GHG-reduction measures represented an effective form of adaptation, and climate change responses were part of a larger need for sustainability. In the year and a half since publishing its plan, Keene officials have undertaken a number of actions to increase resilience, including investigating improved building design standards to withstand expected climate change impacts and the use of wetlands for flood storage.Their major effort, however, is to make the goals and targets of the adaptation plan part of the everyday process of local development, permitting, and code enforcement by including climate change adaptation, mitigation, and sustainability in the Community Master Plan to be approved in 2010.
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From page 165... ...
. An important factor in adaptive capacity is the availability of technical and human resources to identify vulnerabilities, and the knowledge to make effective adaptation decisions (NRC, 2009b)
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From page 166... ...
flood maps -- to reflect future projected sea level rise in local jurisdictions. These updated maps can serve as guidance for city decision making on land use issues and infrastructure investment and also provide the city with the basis for the regulatory framework needed to direct future growth away from projected inundation areas.
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From page 167... ...
According to a recent survey by the Pew Commission on Global Climate Change, 8 states (Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah, and Vermont) currently recommend creating plans for adaptation in their climate action plans, and 10 states have begun comprehensive adaptation planning efforts that parallel ongoing planning activities for GHG emissions reductions (Alaska, California, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, Virginia, and Washington; Pew Center on Global Climate Change, 2009; see also the California case study in Box 5.3, and the Alaska case study in Box 3.1)
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From page 168... ...
calling for increased federal support of adaptation in relation to the coastal impacts of climate change. While focused on coastal issues, this resolution has broader implications for intergovernmental coordination of climate adaptation activities: Federal agencies are currently collecting useful data and administering programs for climate change adaptation, in addition to providing a range of federal funding sources to assist adaptation-related activities.
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From page 169... ...
• Communities with local coastal plans or general plans should amend them to assess climate change impacts and vulnerabilities and develop risk-reduction strategies. • State firefighting agencies should begin immediately to use climate change impact information to inform future fire program planning efforts.
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From page 170... ...
For climate adaptation, the federal government has several roles to play, including • Addressing transboundary and interjurisdictional conflicts, resources, vulner abilities, and adaptations; • Benefiting from economies of scale and established federal capacities in scien tific and technical research and training on adaptation; • Protecting assets necessary for functions historically assigned to the federal government, including securing interstate commerce and providing for na tional security; • Protecting existing federal infrastructure investments, including highways, sewage and water treatment plants, ports, dams, and other infrastructure threatened by climate change; • Protecting federal lands; and • Ensuring adaptive risk management in other federal agency facilities and programs. The federal government can also play a key role in supporting adaptation at regional, state, and local scales by providing coordination, guidance, and financial and technical assistance in response to user needs.
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From page 171... ...
cannot require the use of future sea level rise projections for floodplain management or insurance ratings unless statutory and regulatory changes are made to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP; CCSP, 2009b; ASFPM, 2007)
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From page 172... ...
Department of Agriculture Federal Crop Insurance Corporation for failing to take into account potential changes in the frequency and severity of weatherrelated impacts. Conflicts or limitations related to other federal mandates, such as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act, were also cited as potentially constraining options for resource management measures targeted for adaptation.
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From page 173... ...
. This approach to quantifying water rights allows the annual water rights volumes to fluctuate based on water supply availability.
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From page 174... ...
A large investment has gone into downscaling regional climate change impacts and helping people understand the probabilities of different outcomes."UKCP09"1 provides the latest informa tion on how continued emissions of GHGs may change the United Kingdom's climate over the 21st century. UKCP09 uses probabilistic projections at a resolution of 25-km (approximately 15.5 mile)
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From page 175... ...
SOURCE: CSIRO Climate Adaptation Flagship, Australia, 2010. In addition to its Climate Adaptation Flagship, Australia's federal government assumed central leadership in addressing climate change challenges by creating the Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency to coordinate the nation's climate change response based on three integral pillars: mitigation (i.e., limiting the magnitude of future climate change)
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From page 176... ...
Adaptation efforts can also benefit from "boundary organizations" that link climate science and technology with local decision makers to strengthen adaptive capacity. For example, NOAA's Regional Integrated Science and Assessment (RISA)
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From page 177... ...
. Another effective model of a climate adaptation boundary organization is found in the United Kingdom Climate Impacts Programme (see Box 5.5)
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From page 178... ...
Climate Resilient Communities Program, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Global Cities Institute: Global Climate Change Adaptation Program, and the World Bank have each sponsored efforts supporting local urban planning for climate change impacts (Pew Center on Global Climate Change, 2009)
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From page 179... ...
THE NEED FOR A COORDINATED NATIONAL APPROACH TO CLIMATE CHANgE ADAPTATION As indicated in previous sections of this report, several local, state, and regional institutions in the United States have begun to engage in planning and implementing responses to climate change impacts, both governmental and nongovernmental. These examples are small in number relative to the overall number of jurisdictions, programs, sectors, and vulnerabilities; and there are even fewer examples of "comprehensive" adaptation plans that have attempted to take into account interactions across sectors and to prioritize resource allocations based on cross-sector vulnerability analyses.
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From page 180... ...
SARA Title III requires states to establish a State Emergency Response Commission (SERC) to oversee the emergency planning requirements specified in the act.
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From page 181... ...
The CZMA, in fact, already authorizes limited funding for state and local programs for sea level rise planning activities. It also provides an interesting framework to consider with respect to adaptation planning -- national policies and standards with strong focus on state-level planning and with provisions for federal consistency with approved state plans.
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From page 182... ...
Conference of Mayors, National Governors Association, and the findings of this chapter, the panel concludes that there is a need for the federal government to provide leadership by developing and pursuing a collaborative and inclusive national climate adaptation strategy. Conclusion: The impacts of climate variability and climate change are or will be felt within regions, communities, and sectors and are fundamentally place based.
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From page 183... ...
The strategy should be action- and results-oriented and should measure progress in terms of improving the nation's adaptive capacity, improving quality of life, and building economic advantages by finding solutions to high-priority climate change impacts and reducing risks and vulnerabilities. Conclusion: The magnitude and complexity of the adaptation problem require forging new relationships among the public and private sectors, academia, interest groups, government agencies at all levels, and private citizens.
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From page 184... ...
. Conclusion: Finally, a national adaptation program itself needs to be adaptive and continually strive to increase its own effectiveness.
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