climate resilient society

Photo: UNDP Georgia/Giorgi Shengelia. We know that climate change presents risks to nature, people and infrastructure around the world. CRF and its partners aim to expand the collective capacity of communities to create a more adaptive, sustainable, climate-resilient society. Both the urgency and the complexity of the climate change crisis require actions at a new depth and scale. Pursuit of this vision will require creative thinking, holistic problem solving, engagement of non-traditional stakeholders in decision-making, and collaboration across sectoral and jurisdictional boundaries. Climate resilience is about successfully coping with and managing the impacts of climate change while preventing those impacts from growing worse. We do this by mobilizing resources to build sustained capacity in boundary organizations that bring knowledge and expertise about climate change impacts as well as resources, tools and strategies for addressing them to local and regional decision-makers and practitioners. Wilson said they wanted to provide a driving force for the nations climate services community and help ensure that adaptation action actually does get done. This is the focus of the UK Climate Resilience Programme, which is a government-backed initiative with the goal of understanding the risks the nation faces and helping people to adapt accordingly. CRF began operations in 2016 with a seed grant from the MacArthur Foundation. Business can acknowledge its role in contributing to climate change, and seek to counter past harm by supporting communities in building resilience as well as transitioning to net zero in a just and equitable manner. Climate change adversely impacts lives and livelihoods, infrastructure and ecosystems, undermining the ability of vulnerable people and countries to achieve their sustainable development goals. 2017. Several of the projects involved working closely with local communities to support adaptation. If the definition of resiliency is the ability to recover from a negative event, in this case climate change, then talking about preparations beforehand and strategies for recovery (aka adaptations), as well as populations that are more or less capable of developing and implementing a resiliency strategy (aka vulnerable populations) are essential. In essence, actions that bolster climate resilience are ones that will enhance the adaptive capacity of social, industrial, and environmental infrastructures that can mitigate the effects of climate change. It identifies the main barriers in the financial system to accelerated investment in adaptation-related programmes and projects and proposes six sets . One issue identified by speaker Prof Nigel Arnell, a climate scientist at the University of Reading, was the programmes somewhat narrow approach to projecting changes to climate hazards in the UK. He is a Director on the International Board of the Indo Global Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture, and founder of Mitidaption & Mark and Focus. The power grid makes modern life possiblebut its also holding us back. Resilience is made up of a range of processes and characteristics, many of which are intangible and difficult to observe (such as social capital). As such, society in all countries both developing and developed need to increase their resilience to the impacts of climate change, where resilience is the ability of a system to absorb stresses and adapt in ways that improve the overall sustainability of the system; enabling it to be better prepared for future climate change impacts. Dale himself has been developing a set of standards to ensure better quality control amid the wild west of climate services. Dr Alice Harvey-Fishenden, a historical geographer at the University of Liverpool, worked with communities in Cumbria, Staffordhire and the Outer Hebrides to understand how they have historically experienced and adapted to climate change. [3] Despite this, there is a robust and ever-growing movement fueled by local and national bodies alike geared towards building and improving climate resilience. Climate resilience Even if warming is limited to 1.5oC, livelihoods and infrastructure will be increasingly affected by climate change and extreme weather, which threaten to displace millions of people. [11][44], By the mid 1970s, resilience began gaining momentum as an idea in anthropology, culture theory, and other social sciences. This is the focus of the UK Climate Resilience Programme, which is a government-backed initiative with the goal of understanding the risks the nation faces and helping people to adapt accordingly. Eventually by the late 1980s and early 1990s, resilience had fundamentally changed as a theoretical framework. Find out more about our programme of work on climate-resilient development. Last week, researchers involved with the programme gathered at the Wellcome Collection in London to present and discuss their findings. Several of the talks explored the issue of overheating in UK buildings as temperatures continue to rise. Elena Serfilippi and Daniele Giovannucci, Schoon, M. (2005, 2 21). Springer Reference Earth & Environm. It supports the transformation of the EU into a fair and prosperous society with a modern and competitive economy. While several speakers mentioned social inequalities across the conference, none of the projects discussed focused specifically on this aspect of climate resilience and adaptation. The Climate Resilient Societies Major Reference Work includes chapters covering a range of themes that provide readers with an invaluable overview on how various levels of government have attempted to create climate resilient societies. [1]:7, The fact that climate resilience encompasses a dual function, to absorb shock as well as to self-renew, is the primary means by which it can be differentiated from the concept of climate adaptation. We must act now to mobilize resources and knowledge to proactively address climate change impacts. [38], Most of the recent initiatives to measure resilience in rural development contexts share two shortcomings: complexity and high cost. Specifically, investments in climate-safe energy, transportation, water and communications systems and technologies offer "win-win-win" opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase resilience to climate stresses and ensure access to energy, food, and clean air and water. Considering The public and private sectors, civil society organisations, communities and households all play important roles in addressing these challenges to achieve climate-resilient development that benefits the most vulnerable. Update: This article was updated on 15/03/2023 to clarify that the 2.2km high-resolution projections are a subset of the wider UKCP18 package of products. Our long-term vision is to serve as a hub for investor and other strategic partners working cooperatively and collaboratively to advance the widespread development and adoption of climate-smart strategies to benefit people and the natural systems on which we all rely. [36], Efforts to measure climate resilience currently face several technical challenges. Building climate resilience should be a core ambition of climate activists and policymakers. Supporting governments, civil society and communities to achieve climate-resilient development outcomes for the most vulnerable people. Altmetric. Like-for-like comparisons of objective and subjective measures of resilience", "Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems", http://michaelschoon.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/historical_critique-of-resilience-working-paper.pdf, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Climate_resilience&oldid=1138012384, This page was last edited on 7 February 2023, at 15:22. So, we also need climate change adaptation, where we protect against the threats already here and prepare for more change to come. Learn more. Published under a CC license. Boldy, dramatically cutting emissionson the order of 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, here in the United Statesis essential to a safe climate future. Basically, it means adjusting how we live, work, and play to keep us safe from the impacts of climate change. In developing countries and in areas that are particularly exposed to climate change (e.g. The causes and the broad impacts affect everyone on the planet, but resilience efforts must be executed at the asset, neighborhood, or individual level. We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Do Electric Vehicles Work in Cold Temperatures. The 20 million people who live near estuaries in the UK are vulnerable to compound flooding as high rainfall combines with storm surges from the sea. Only by pursuing mitigation and adaptation in tandem can we achieve and sustain climate resilience. Compared to a full autonomous territory, it brings more resilience because a territory can be overwhelmed by a natural disaster and so needs help from other areas that are not affected. [1]:29, To achieve climate resilient development, the following actions are needed: increasing climate information, and financing and technical capacity for flexible and dynamic systems. Everyone knows we need to cut emissions. One finding from the project is that storms in the UK could become more slow-moving in future, giving them longer to unleash rainfall over towns and cities, he explained. For too long, Tyson Foods has gotten away with putting farmers out of business, exploiting workers, poisoning our water and land, and gouging consumers. On the first day of the conference, Prof Michael Davies, a researcher at University College London, presented the preliminary findings of Climacare, a project examining the impact of overheating on UK care homes. If temperatures exceed 2C of warming, climate resilient development will become impossible in some regions of the world. Resilience was no longer just about absorbing shocks, but also about harnessing the changes triggered by external stresses to catalyze the evolution the social-ecological system in question. In short: the world is facing a long list of complex and interacting challenges that need to be dealt with simultaneously. A resilience-based framework would require far more cross-talk, and the creation of environmental protections that are more holistically generated and implemented.[31][33]. Climate resilience is about successfully coping with and managing the impacts of climate change while preventing those impacts from growing worse. What are the latest findings for climate hazards in the UK? We use cookies to improve your experience. It will take a combined and coordinated effort, like none ever seen before, to address this issue. International Institute for Sustainable Development, 2017. CRF was created to help advance a positive vision of a climate resilient society and to mobilize the resources for achieving it. The UK Climate Resilience Programme is a 19m scientific research project running from late 2018 to early 2023. Climate resilience: Is the UK ready for the impacts of global warming? CRF aspires to help our philanthropic partners reduce climate vulnerability in the systems and places where they work already, supporting the outcomes they are already focused upon with layered investments in climate services capacity and coordination to help local and regional decision makers incorporate climate change considerations into their plans, policies, and programs. Investing today in climate resilience, particularly through better forecasting, climate-proof infrastructure and In recent years, a large number of resilience measurement tools have emerged, offering ways to track and measure resilience at a range of scales - from individuals and households to communities and nations. These risks will increase with every small increase in warming, and reducing them is made more complicated by other global trends such as over-consumption, population growth, rapid urbanization, land degradation, biodiversity loss, poverty and inequity, etc. This largely relates to the capacity of social-ecological systems to sustain shocks and maintain the integrity of functional relationships in the face of external forces. Reply STOP to cancel. The prospects for effective action improve when governments at all levels work with citizens, civil society, educational bodies and scientific institutions, the media, investors and businesses and form partnerships with traditionally marginalised groups, including women, youth, Indigenous Peoples, local communities and ethnic minorities. The US food system should be providing healthy, sustainable food for everyone. IIED supports stakeholders across the whole of society to access knowledge, develop systems, build institutions and enhance the capabilities they need to manage climate risks, minimise climate impacts and achieve equitable, climate-resilient development. This exciting new journal, published in conjunction with . Rather than minimize imposed changes, ecosystems could integrate and manage those changes, and use them to fuel the evolution of novel characteristics. It doesn't provide full services but minimum services to survive the time needed to come back to a better situation. Carbon Brief attended the conference and has captured the key points from the research projects, which are now intended to help businesses and policymakers adapt to climate change. A new World Bank report, "The Adaptation Principles: A Guide for Designing Strategies for Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience", lays out 6 universal principles to help policymakers plan for adaptation Elsewhere, Dr Laura Dawkins at the Met Office explained how high-resolution maps of hot day increases across the UK could be used to identify schools that are particularly at risk from overheating. This could have implications for flood risk. An overview of CRFs grantmaking can be found here. PubMed Referencing her own work advising the government with the CCC, she made it clear that the UK governments action on adaptation action still contained significant gaps. Our report clearly states Climate Resilient Development is already challenging at a warming level of less than 1.5C, and will become more limited by 2C. A climate resilient society would be low-carbon and equipped to deal with the realities of a warmer world. A keynote speech on the second day was given by Prof Swenja Surminski, an adaptation researcher in the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and member of the Climate Change Committees (CCC) Adaptation Committee. The regional and crosscutting fact sheets give a snapshot of the key findings, distilled from the relevant Chapters. In particular, each chapter, under its respective theme, will address how a government, or series of governments, at various levels in non-OECD and/or OECD countries, have implemented innovative climate resilient policies that seek synergies across strategies, choices and actions, in an attempt to build a climate resilient society. At Huhana Smith's iwi farm . [8]:12 Climate change vulnerability encompasses "a variety of concepts and elements, including sensitivity or susceptibility to harm and lack of capacity to cope and adapt". Meanwhile, Louise Wilson and Dr Natalie Garrett from the Met Office laid out their recommendations for a UK National Framework for Climate Services. Incorporating climate justice in resilience means, on the adaptation side, prioritizing the wellbeing of people and communities most exposed to climate harm and least able to cope with it. There was significant work in these relatively non-traditional fields that helped facilitate the evolution of the resilience perspective as a whole. Resilience is an increasingly common word in the climate change vernacular. [40], Most objective approaches use fixed and transparent definitions of resilience and allow for different groups of people to be compared through standardized metrics. Acknowledging and addressing those injustices is central to working toward just resilience, now and for the future. Book Title: The Palgrave Handbook of Climate Resilient Societies, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32811-5, eBook Packages: Support arms control, not nuclear weapons. IIED supports stakeholders across the whole of society to access knowledge, develop systems, build institutions and enhance the capabilities they need to manage climate risks, minimise climate impacts and achieve equitable, climate-resilient development. Accelerating degradation of natural systems, increased incidence and intensity of extreme weather events, and rippling socioeconomic effects are foremost among emergent and growing impacts. Because one population's level of vulnerability is constantly shifting (as are the threats and impacts of climate change) the efforts to provide adaptive strategies must offer multiple opportunities and outcomes. 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