Climate change adaptation (CCA) is a challenge requiring largely local solutions. This has presented an obstacle for practitioners trying to interpret regional climate change predictions at the local level. This has been recognised as a source of uncertainty in CCA, however there are many other sources of climate change uncertainty, some of which get considerably less attention. These include scenario uncertainty (the extent of greenhouse gas production), model uncertainty (the gap between our understanding of the system and its actual functioning) and internal variability (the partly random nature of the climate system). There may also be uncertainty caused through low quality or patchy meteorological data needed for model calibration, poor resolution of the links between regional and local climate, and lack of technical capacity to understand the predictions themselves.
So how does a local practitioner deal with climate change uncertainty? The first step is to acknowledge what sorts of uncertainty exist. Doing this will help to define the parameters which will need to be monitored over time and those which are well understood today. Adaptation options can then be identified focusing on the factors and conditions that enable successful coping with climate change rather than on predicting the exact future climate scenario. Two principles can be used to underpin the analysis of adaptation options and will greatly assist with addressing uncertainty:
- Flexibility and adaptability: Will this option limit other adaptation options in the future? Can this option be implemented in stages and/or be changed in the future to reflect new information or priorities?
- Robustness and Sensitivity: How does the solution respond to a range of plausible climate scenarios?
In the case of cities and urban environments, CCA uncertainty is compounded by many other uncertainties including changing population sizes, economic conditions and demographics. Cities, by definition, are permanent and immobile with increasingly complex infrastructure and organizational systems. Uncertainty is therefore an added challenge due to the inflexible and irreversible nature of urban planning interventions and their direct relationship with vulnerability.
Jacqui Bonnitcha recently returned from working with UN-Habitat’s Cities and Climate Change Initiative (CCCI) in Nairobi, Kenya. While working with CCCI she developed a process to incorporate uncertainty in to their standard climate change adaptation processes for cities. This article draws on the work completed. If you would like to discuss any of these concepts in more detail, please do not hesitate to get in touch here.