Guide to Climate Change Adaptation in Cities
Cities face significant impacts from climate change, both now and into the future. These impacts have potentially serious consequences for human health, livelihoods, and assets, especially for the urban poor, informal settlements, and other vulnera...
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Language: | English en_US |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2017
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Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/691721468320045373/Guide-to-climate-change-adaptation-in-cities-executive-summary http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27396 |
Summary: | Cities face significant impacts from
climate change, both now and into the future. These impacts
have potentially serious consequences for human health,
livelihoods, and assets, especially for the urban poor,
informal settlements, and other vulnerable groups. Climate
change impacts range from an increase in extreme weather
events and flooding to hotter temperatures and public health
concerns. Cities in low elevation coastal zones, for
instance, face the combined threat of sea-level rise and
storm surges. The specific impacts on each city will depend
on the actual changes in climate experienced (for example,
higher temperatures or increased rainfall), which will vary
from place to place. Climate change will increase the
frequency at which some natural hazards occur, especially
extreme weather events, and introduce new incremental
impacts that are less immediate. However, few climate
impacts will be truly unfamiliar to cities. Cities have
always lived with natural hazards, such as earthquakes,
tsunamis, hurricanes, and flooding. In some situations,
cities will experience an increase in the frequency of
existing climate-related hazards, such as flooding. Climate
change considerations can be integrated with disaster risk
reduction (DRR) in cities. DRR efforts already familiar to
many may be used as a platform from which to develop climate
change adaptation plans. In practical terms, disaster risk
reduction and climate adaptation can be integrated in many
instances, although cities should also consider incremental
or gradual changes in climate that affect government
operations or community life in less immediate and visible
ways than conventional disasters. Approaches to collecting
information on climate change impacts in a city can range
from highly technical and resource-intensive, to simple and
inexpensive. Technically complex assessments are likely to
require collaboration with external experts, if a city is
not large or well-resourced with sufficient in-house capacity. |
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