Chapter 8: Toward a Sustainable and Resilient Future
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8.3. Integration of Short- and Long-Term Responses to Extremes
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8.3.2. Barriers to Reconciling Short- and Long-Term Goals
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Climate change is typically viewed as a slow-onset, multigenerational problem. Consequently, individuals, governments, and businesses have been slow to invest in adaptation measures. Research in South Asia shows that in those regions where past development had prioritized short-term gains over long-term resilience, agricultural productivity is in decline because of drought and groundwater depletion, rural indebtedness is increasing, and households are sliding into poverty with particularly insidious consequences for women, who face the brunt of nutritional deprivation as a result (Moench et al., 2003; Moench and Dixit, 2007). Connecting short- and long-term perspectives is thus seen as critical to realizing the synergies between disaster risk management and climate change adaptation.
8.4. Implications for Access to Resources, Equity, and Sustainable Development
8.4.1. Capacities and Resources: Availability and Limitations
Children, the elderly, and women stand out as more vulnerable to extreme climate and weather events. The vulnerability of children and their capacity to respond to climate change and disasters is discussed in Box 8-2 (see also Section 5.5.1 and Case Study 9.2.14). Among the elderly, increasing numbers will become exposed to climate change impacts in the coming decades, particularly in OECD countries where populations are aging most rapidly. By 2050, it is estimated that one in three people will be older than 60 years in OECD countries, as well as one in five at the global scale (UN, 2002). The elderly are made additionally vulnerable to climate change-related hazards by characteristics that also increase vulnerability to other social and environmental hazards (thus compounding overall vulnerability): deterioration of health, personal lifestyles, social isolation, poverty, and inadequate access to health and social infrastructures (OECD, 2006). Gender impacts vulnerability in many ways. In the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh, the death toll among women was reportedly five times higher than among men (UNDP, 2007b). Cultural as well as physiological factors are widely cited for the over-representation of female deaths from flooding. Gender inequality extends into female-headed households to compound the vulnerability of dependent children or elderly (Cannon, 2002; UNISDR, 2008; Oxfam, 2010). Inequality has many other important faces: race, caste, religious affiliation, and physical disability, all of which help determine individual and household vulnerability, and they cross-cut gender and age effects. Importantly, the social construction of vulnerability through these characteristics highlights the ways in which vulnerability changes over time – in this case with changes in family structure and access to services in response to economic cycles and political and cultural trends evolving as the climate changes with potentially compounding effects (Leichenko and O’Brien, 2008).
Studies also show that female-headed households more often borrow food and cash than rich and male-headed households during difficult times. This coping strategy is considered to be a dangerous one as the households concerned will have to return the food or cash soon after harvests, leaving them more vulnerable as they have less food or cash to last them the season and to be prepared if disaster strikes (Young and Jaspars, 1995). This may leave households in a cycle of poverty from one season to the next. Literature shows that this outcome is linked to unequal access by women to resources, land, and public and privately.
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FAQ 8.3 | What practical steps can we take to move toward a sustainable and resilient future?
The disruptions caused by disaster events often reveal development failures. They also provide an opportunity for reconsidering development through reconstruction and disaster risk reduction. Practical steps can address both the root causes of risk found in development relations, including enhancing human rights, gender equity, and environmental integrity, and more proximate causes expressed most commonly through a need for extending land and property rights, access to critical services and basic needs, including social safety nets and insurance mechanisms, and transparent decisionmaking, especially at the local level. Identifying the drivers of hazard and vulnerability in ways that empower both those at risk and risk managers to take action is key. This can be done best where local and scientific knowledge is combined in the generation of risk maps or risk management plans. Greater use of local knowledge when coupled with local capacity can initiate enhanced accountability in integrated risk decisionmaking that helps to break unsustainable development relations.
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8.7. Synergies between Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change Adaptation for a Resilient and Sustainable Future
Disasters often require urgent action and represent a time when everyday processes for decisionmaking are disrupted. Although it is a useful approach in responding to emergency events and disaster relief, such top-down command and control frameworks work less well in disaster risk reduction and this is likely to be the case too in integrated adaptive risk management. In such systems, it is often the most vulnerable to hazards that are left out of decisionmaking processes (Pelling, 2003, 2007; Cutter, 2006; Mercer et al., 2008), whether it is within households (where the knowledge of women, children, or the elderly may not be recognized), within communities (where divisions among social groups may hinder learning), or within nations (where marginalized groups may not be heard, and where social division and political power influence the development and adaptation agenda). Disaster periods are frequently the times when the development visions and aspirations for the future of those most affected are not recognized. This reflects a widespread limitation on the quality and comprehensiveness of local participation in disaster risk reduction and its integration into everyday development planning. Instead, the humanitarian imperative, limited-term reconstruction budgets, and an understandable desire for rapid action over deliberation means that too often international social movements and humanitarian nongovernmental organizations, government agencies, and local relief organizations impose their own values and visions, often with the best of intentions. It is also important to recognize the potential for some people or groups to prevent sustainable decisions by employing their veto power or lobbying against reforms or regulations based on shortterm political or economic interests (Klein, 2007). The distribution of power in society and who has the responsibility or right to shape the future through decisionmaking today is thus significant, and includes the role of international as well as national and local actors. Within the international humanitarian community, efforts such as the Sphere Standards and the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership are steps toward addressing this challenge.
