As my home city of New York recovers from Superstorm Sandy,city leaders across the world are asking how their city would respond to asimilar event and examining their resilience to extreme weather patterns. While many lack the resources of New YorkCity and the United States, the good news is that a number of low-costsolutions are available, but governments and the private sector need to starttaking action now.
Asia, in particular, will see events like Sandy grow morefrequent “ and with even greater extremes and losses “ as the confluence ofclimate change and rapid urbanisation generate heightened vulnerabilities,especially for the hundreds of millions of urban poor residents. In comingyears, 60 percent of the world’s population increase will be in Asian cities.Of the cities that contain the largest numbers of people exposed to the risksof flooding caused by climate change, 5 of the top 10 are Asian. By 2070, itwill be 9 of the top 10.
Asian cities “ particularly smaller but rapidly growing ones“ have significantly fewer resources available to them than those in NorthAmerica and Europe to prepare for and manage the challenge of major storms. If transplantedto a typical low- or middle-income Asian city, Sandy would almost certainlyhave resulted in far greater damage to property, loss of lives and overalldisruption of basic infrastructure and services.
Encouragingly, however, what stands out from New York City’spreparedness are not the expensive investments in hard infrastructure like seawalls, but rather a collection of softer measures focused on effectiveinstitutional coordination, rapid and accurate information sharing and timelydecision making. The closing down of bridges and tunnels before they wereflooded was done efficiently and unambiguously, thanks to considerablefront-end coordination, contingency exercises and preparedness measuresdeveloped across multiple layers of government and over years of carefulplanning.
New York City also embraced the concept of “failing safely.”Before the storm hit, it was accepted that power outages would occur and thatpublic transportation would face massive disruptions. The subway system wasclosed early and parts of the electric grid were shut off before the storm hit,to allow them to be reopened more quickly. Many of the actions that made acritical difference were not prohibitively expensive. This is essential whenconsidering transferability to low and middle income Asian contexts, whereplenty can be done now with constrained resources. The good news is thatpositive examples are emerging from Asia.
A small but growing city, Quy Nhon in Vietnam, has enduredfloods and typhoons. Quy Nhon recently initiated an effort to protect andexpand a mangrove forest in an urban lagoon adjacent to land that is in theflood plains, but is also targeted for urban growth. Not only do the mangrovesserve as a physical barrier to absorb storm surges, but the replanting helpsbuild the case for more resilient overall land use and urban development thatprotects urban flood plains.
The Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network is analliance of 10 cities in Vietnam, India, Indonesia and Thailand. Supported by theRockefeller Foundation, this alliance was built to help cities understand, planfor, recover from and even thrive in the changing environmental conditionsbrought on by global warming. The learning is now being shared with 40 othercities.
As debris is cleared from New York’s subway tunnels,millions regain power and the billions of dollars in damages are quantified,let us ensure that the lessons of Sandy’s pounding are recalled across thedeveloping world, where rapidly growing cities are even more vulnerable andwhere the need for action is urgent.
Judith Rodin is president of the Rockefeller Foundation
