Editing IPCC:AR6/WGII/Chapter-6 (section)

== Frequently Asked Questions ==

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=== FAQ 6.1 | Why and how are cities, settlements and different types of infrastructure especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change? ===

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''Cities, settlements and infrastructure become vulnerable when investment decisions fail to take the risks of climate change fully into account. Such failures can result from a lack of understanding, competing priorities, a lack of finance or access to appropriate technology. Around the world, smaller cities and poorer populations are often most vulnerable and suffer the most over time, while large cities can register the greatest losses to individual events.''

The world is urban. Billions of people live in towns and cities. Hardly anyone, even in remote rural locations, is separated from the flows of trade that connect the world and are held together by networks of transport and communication infrastructure systems. Connected networks once broken can cascade out, multiplying impacts across urban and rural areas. When major manufacturing centres or regionally important ports are impacted, global trade suffers. For example, flooding in Bangkok in 2011 led to a global shortage in semiconductors and a slowdown in global computer manufacturing.

Despite cities generating wealth, additional vulnerability to climate change is being created in urban areas every day. Demographic change, social and economic pressures, and governance failures that drive inequality and marginality mean that increasing numbers of people who live in towns and cities are exposed to flooding, temperature extremes and water or food insecurity. This leads to an adaptation gap, where rich neighbourhoods can afford strategies to reduce vulnerability while poorer communities are unable to do the same. Although this would be so even without a changing climate, climate change increases the variability and extremes of weather, exposing more people, businesses and buildings to floods and other events. The combination of rising vulnerability and increasing exposure translates to a growth in the number of people and properties at risk from climate change in cities worldwide.

Around the world, vulnerability is rising but differs considerably between and within urban areas. Settlements of up to 1 million people are the most rapidly expanding and also among the most vulnerable. These settlements often have limited community level organisation and might not have a dedicated local government. Coping with rapid population growth under conditions of climate change and constrained capacity is a major challenge. For large cities, multiple local governments and well-organised community-based organisations interact with large businesses and national political parties in a complicated cocktail of interests that can interfere with planning and action to reduce vulnerability.

For the poorest living in urban slums, informal settlements or renting across the city, lack of secure tenure and inadequate access to basic services compound vulnerability. But even the wealthy in large cities are not fully protected from climate change-related shocks. Just like breaks in infrastructure between towns and rural settlements, big city infrastructure can be broken by even local landslides, floods or temperature events, with consequences cascading across the city. Electricity blackouts are the most common and can affect water pumping, traffic regulation and streetlights, as well as hospitals, schools and homes. Still, it is the urban poor and marginalised who experience the greatest exposure, most vulnerability and least capacity to cope.

Rounds of exposure and impact can reduce the capacity of survivors to cope with future events. As a result, the already vulnerable and exposed become more vulnerable over time, increasing urban inequalities. But this need not be the case. Focussing on vulnerability reduction is not easy, it requires joined-up action across social and economic development sectors, together with critical infrastructure planning. It often also means partnering local government with informal and community-based actors. But there is considerable experience globally on what works and how to deliver reduced vulnerability for the urban poor and for cities as a whole. The challenge is to scale up this experience and accelerate its application to keep pace with climate change and address the adaptation gap.

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=== FAQ 6.2 | What are the key climate risks faced by cities, settlements and vulnerable populations today, and how will these risks change in a mid-century (2050) 2°C warmer world? ===

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''Climate change will interact with the changing physical environment in cities and settlements to create or exacerbate a range of risks. Rising temperatures and heatwaves will cause human illness and morbidity, as well as infrastructure degradation and failures, while heavy rainfall and sea level rise will worsen flooding. Low-income groups and other vulnerable populations will be affected most severely because of where they live and their limited ability to cope with these stresses.''

Cities and settlements are constantly changing. Their populations grow and shrink, economic activities expand or decline, and political priorities shift. The risks that cities and their residents face are influenced by both urban change and climate change. The seriousness of these risks into the 21st Century will be shaped by the interactions between drivers of change including population growth, economic development and land use change.

In a warming world, increasing air temperature makes the urban heat island effect in cities worse. One key risk is heatwaves in cities that are ''likely'' to affect half of the future global urban population, with negative impacts on human health and economic productivity. Heat and built infrastructure such as streets and houses interact with each other and magnify risks in cities. For instance, higher urban temperatures can cause infrastructure to overheat and fail, as well as increase the concentration of harmful air pollutants such as ozone.

The density of roads and buildings in urban areas increases the area of impermeable surfaces, which interact with more frequent heavy precipitation events to increase the risk of urban flooding. This risk of flooding is greater for coastal settlements due to sea level rise and storm surges from tropical cyclones. Coastal inundation in the Miami-Dade region in Florida, USA, is estimated to have caused over USD 465 million in lost real estate value between 2005 and 2016, and it is ''likely'' that coastal flood risks in the region beyond 2050 will increase without adaptation to climate change.

Within cities, different groups of people can face different risks. Many low-income residents live in informal settlements alongside coasts or rivers, which greatly heightens exposure and vulnerability to climate-driven hazards. In urban areas in Ghana, for example, risks from urban flooding can compound health risks, and have resulted in outbreaks of malaria, typhoid and cholera. Those outbreaks have been shown to disproportionately affect poorer communities.

Severe risks in cities and settlements also arise from reduced water availability. As urban areas grow, the amount of water required to meet basic needs of people and industries increases. When increased demand is combined with water scarcity from lower rainfall due to climate change, water resource management becomes a critical issue. Low-income groups already face major challenges in accessing water, and the situation is ''likely'' to worsen due to growing conflicts over scarce resources, increasing water prices and diminishing infrastructure provisions in ever-expanding informal settlements.

These key risks already differ greatly between cities, and between different groups of people in the same city. By 2050, these discrepancies are likely to be even more apparent. Cities with limited financial resources, regulatory authority and technical capacities are less equipped to respond to climate change. People who already have fewer resources and constrained opportunities face higher levels of risk because of their vulnerability. As a result of this, key risks vary not only over time as climate change is felt more strongly, but also over space, between cities exposed to different hazards and with different abilities to adapt, and between social groups, meaning between people who are more or less affected and able to cope.

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=== FAQ 6.3 | What adaptation actions in human settlements can contribute to reducing climate risks and building resilience across building, neighbourhood, city and global scales? ===

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''Settlements bring together many activities, so climate action will be most effective if it is integrated and collaborative. This requires (i) embedding information on climate change risks into decisions; (ii) building capacity of communities and institutions; (iii) using both nature-based and traditional engineering approaches; (iv) working in partnership with diverse local planning and community organisations; and (v) sharing best practice with other settlements.''

Settlements bring together people, buildings, economic activities and infrastructure services, and thus integrated, cross-sector, adaptation actions offer the best way to build resilience to climate change impacts. For example, actions to manage flood risk include installing flood proofing measures within and outside properties, improving capacity of urban drainage along roads, incorporating nature-based solutions (NbS) within the urban areas, constructing flood defences and managing land upstream of settlements to reduce runoff.

Adaptation actions will be more effective if they are implemented in partnership with local communities, national governments, research institutions, and the private and third sector. Climate action should not be considered as an additional or side action to other activities. Rather, climate action should be mainstreamed into existing processes, including those that contribute to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2015) and New Urban Agenda adopted at the UN Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in 2016. Cities are already coming together through international networks to share good practice about adaptation actions, speeding up the dissemination of knowledge.

This integrated approach to adaptation in human settlements needs to be supported by various other actions, including potential co-benefits with carbon emissions reductions, public health and ecosystem conservation goals. First, information on climate risks needs to be embedded into the architectural design, delivery and retrofitting of housing, transportation, spatial planning and infrastructure across neighbourhood and city scales. This includes making information on climate impacts widely available, updating design standards and strengthening regulation to avoid development in high-risk locations. Second, the capacity of communities needs to be strengthened, especially among those in informal settlements, the poorest and other vulnerable groups including minorities, migrants, women, children, elderly, disabled and people with serious health conditions such as obesity. This involves raising awareness, incorporating communities into adaptation processes, and strengthening regulation, policies and provision of infrastructure services. Third, nature-based solutions should be integrated to work alongside traditional ‘grey’ or engineered infrastructure. Vegetation corridors, greenspace, wetlands and other green infrastructure can be woven into the built environment to reduce heat and flood risks, whilst providing other benefits such as health and biodiversity.

Although even the largest city covers only a small area of the planet, all settlements are part of larger catchments from which people, water, food, energy, materials and other resources support them. Actions within cities should be mindful of wider impacts and avoid displacing issues elsewhere.

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=== FAQ 6.4 | How can actions that reduce climate risks in cities and settlements also help to reduce urban poverty, enhance economic performance and contribute to climate mitigation? ===

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''If carefully planned, adaptation actions can reduce exposure to climate risk and reduce urban poverty, advance sustainable development and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. When adaptation responses are equitable, and if a range of voices are heard in the planning process, the needs of the disadvantaged are more likely to be addressed and wider societal benefits can be maximised.''

Urbanisation is a global trend which is interacting with climate change to create complex risks in cities and settlements, especially for those that already have high levels of poverty, unemployment, housing informality and backlogs of services. Many cities and settlements are seeing increasing action to manage climate risks. On top of reducing communities’ exposure to climate risk, adaptation actions can have benefits for reducing urban poverty and enhancing economic performance in ways that reduce inequality and advance sustainability goals. Adaptation actions, however, can also have unintended consequences. That is why care needs to be taken to ensure climate adaptation planning and development of new infrastructure does not exacerbate inequality or negatively impact other sustainable development priorities. Climate adaptation planning is most effective when it is sensitive to the diverse ways that low-income and minority communities are more ''likely'' to experience climate risk, including women, children, migrants, refugees, internally displaced peoples and racial/ethnic minority groups, among others.

Adapting to climate change can have benefits for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and urban inequalities. In cities where growing numbers of people live in informal settlements, introducing risk-reducing physical infrastructure such as piped water, sanitation and drainage systems can enhance the quality of life of the community. At the same time, those measures can increase health outcomes and reduce urban inequalities by reducing exposure to flooding or heat impacts. In less developed countries, less than 60% of the urban population have access to piped water which, in turn, impacts their health and well-being. Increasingly, housing is being built better to manage heat risk through insulation or changing building orientation, or to flood risk by raising structures, which then contributes to well-being and ability to work. Improvements to early warning systems can help people evacuate rapidly in case of storm surges or flooding. Although the most vulnerable often do not get these warnings in time.

Carefully planned nature-based solutions (NbS), such as public green space, improved urban drainage systems and storm water management, can deliver both health and development benefits. When these adaptation actions succeed, water, waste and sanitation can be improved to better manage climate risk and provide households and cities with better services. Many nature-based solutions entail bringing back plants and trees into cities, which also helps to reduce the concentration of heat-trapping GHGs in the atmosphere.

When care is taken to ensure that adaptation responses are equitable, and that a range of voices are heard in planning, the needs of the disadvantaged are more likely to be addressed. For example, a study that looked at transport plans across 40 cities in Portugal saw that some urban communities have prioritised the needs of disadvantaged users such as the elderly and disabled, while at the same time reducing urban transport emissions and enhancing public well-being and equity of transport. On the other hand, in some cities, there is evidence of emerging trade-offs associated with climate adaptation actions where sea walls and temporary flood barriers were erected in economically valuable areas and not is less well-off areas. Going forward, it is important to ensure that vulnerable groups’ needs are carefully considered, both in terms of climate and other risks, as this has not been sufficiently done in the past.

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=== FAQ 6.5 | What policy tools, governance strategies and financing arrangements can enable more inclusive and effective climate adaptation in cities and settlements? ===

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''Inclusive and effective climate adaptation requires efforts at all levels of governance, including the public sector, the private sector, the third sector, communities and intermediaries such as universities or think tanks. Inclusive and effective adaptation requires action fit for the diverse conditions in which it is needed. Collaborative dialogues can help to map both adaptation opportunities and potential negative impacts.''

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to ensure that climate adaptation efforts have positive results and include the concerns of everyone affected. Cities and local communities are diverse, and thus they have diverse perspectives on what responses to prioritise. Moreover, adaptation efforts may impact people’s lives in very different ways. Policy tools, strategies and financial arrangements for adaptation can include all society sectors and address socioeconomic inequalities. Planning and decision making must respond to marginalised voices and future generations (including children and youth).

Efforts to adapt to climate change can be incremental, reformist or transformational, depending on the scale of the change required. Incremental action may address specific climate impacts in a given place, but do not challenge the social and political institutions that prevent people from bouncing back better. Reformist action may address some of the social and institutional drivers of exposure and vulnerability, but without addressing the underlying socioeconomic structures that drive differential forms of exposure. For example, social protection measures may improve people’s capacity to cope with climate impacts, but that improved capacity will depend on maintaining such protection measures. Transformative action involves fundamental changes in political and socioeconomic systems, oriented toward addressing vulnerability drivers (e.g., socioeconomic inequalities, consumption cultures). All forms of adaptation are relevant to deliver resilient futures because of the variability of conditions in which adaptation action is needed.

Local and regional governments play an essential role in delivering planning and institutional action suited to local conditions in cities and settlements. Potential strategies can span multiple sectors and scales, ranging from land use management, building codes, critical infrastructure designs and community development actions, to different legal, financial, participatory decision making and robust monitoring and evaluation arrangements. NGOs or third sector organisations can also play a coordinating role by building dialogues across governments, the private sectors and communities through effective communication and social learning. Local action tends to falter without the support of national governments as they are often facilitators of resources and finance. They can create institutional frameworks that facilitate (rather than impede) local action. National governments also play a crucial role in the development of large-scale infrastructures.

Private actors can also drive adaptation action. The evaluation of private-led infrastructure and housing projects suggests that the prioritisation of profit, however, may have a detrimental impact on the overall resilience of a place. New institutional models such as public–private partnerships respond to the shortcomings of both the public and private sectors. Still, the evidence of them facilitating the inclusion of multiple actors is mixed.

The private sector can mobilise finance. However, the forms of finance available for adaptation are limited and directed to huge projects that do not always address local adaptation needs. Private actors tend to join adaptation projects when there is an expectation of large profits, such as in interventions that increase real estate value. Private-led adaptation can lead to ‘gentrification’ whereby low-income populations are relocated from urban centres and safer settlements. Models that enable the collaboration between public, private and civil society sectors have greater potential to mobilise adaptation finance in inclusive ways.

Forms of collaborative planning and decision making can create dialogues for a sustainable future in cities, settlements and infrastructure systems. Adaptation action needs multiple approaches. For example, adaptation needs both actions that depend on dialogues between multiple actors (e.g., urban planning and zoning) and action that follows strong determination and leadership (e.g., declarations of emergency and target commitments). There are adaptation actions that depend on place-based conditions (e.g., flood defences) and those that require considering interactions across scales (e.g., regulatory frameworks). The growth of adaptation capacities, fostering dialogues, empowered communities, multi-scalar assessments and foresight within current institutions can support effective and inclusive adaptation action that is also sustained in the long term.

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