Adapting Infrastructure to Climate Change

Advancing Decision-Making Under Conditions of Uncertainty

Todd Schenk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317272632
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Sustainable Development
• Index: Economics

Many of the challenges that decision-makers grapple with in relation to climate change are governance related. Planning and decision-making is evolving in ambiguous institutional environments, in which many key issues remain unresolved, including relationships between different actors; funding arrangements; and the sources and procedures for vetting data. These issues are particularly acute at this juncture, as climate adaptation moves from broad planning processes to the management of infrastructure systems. Concrete decisions must be made.

Adapting Infrastructure to Climate Change draws on case studies of three coastal cities situated within very different governance regimes: neo-corporatist Rotterdam, neo-pluralist Boston and semi-authoritarian Singapore. The book examines how infrastructure managers and other stakeholders grappling with complex and uncertain climate risks are likely to make project-level decisions in practice, and how more effective decision-making can be supported. The differences across governance regimes are currently unaccounted for in adaptation planning, but are crucial as best practices are devised. These lessons are also applicable to infrastructure planning and decision-making in other contexts.

This book will be of great interest to scholars of climate change and environmental policy and governance, particularly in the context of infrastructure management.

1
Introduction

Adapting infrastructure to climate change

The need for adaptation

It has been 25 years since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was negotiated in Rio, and by now the issue is on the radars of many government agencies and other stakeholders around the world. However, most of the attention has been paid to how we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from industry, vehicles and other sources to avoid the consequences of climate change. Climate change mitigation remains critically important to our long-term well-being, particularly if we are to reduce the chances of catastrophic impacts, but by now most experts agree that we are ‘locked in’ to fairly substantial climatic changes, including increases in temperature and associated sea level rise and shifts in weather patterns (IPCC 2014).

These changes pose a range of significant threats to our built environments and infrastructure, as climate change strains the ability of planners and decision-makers to sustainably manage urban environments, including key infrastructure systems (de Sherbinin, Schiller and Pulsipher 2007; Dorfman et al. 2011; HM Government 2011; Rosenzweig et al. 2011). The threats will vary from place to place, but include sea level rise and associated coastal flooding and saltwater intrusion, more frequent and intense storms, prolonged periods of drought and associated water scarcity, heat waves, shifting ecosystem ranges and disease vectors, and biodiversity loss (IPCC 2014). The way we plan and implement our infrastructure systems will need to be revised in response; planners, decision-makers and other stakeholders will need to adapt.

Adaptation will surely involve technical solutions, but it is not a purely technological problem. It will require fundamental changes not only to how we design our infrastructure, but also to how we fund and manage it over time and think of the various infrastructures as interconnected systems of systems (Bollinger et al. 2014). Adapting infrastructure to climate change is a particularly wicked challenge (i.e., one that is difficult to definitively solve and involves a complex web of interdependencies) for a number of reasons (Levin, Cashore, Bernstein and Auld 2012; Rittel and Webber 1973). First of all, the complex and interconnected nature of most climate threats leaves responsibility unclear among agencies and levels of government (Moser and Ekstrom 2010). Furthermore, the nascence of climate adaptation, and the fact that it often requires cooperation across traditional institutional boundaries, make it characteristic of what Hajer (2003) calls “policy-making in the institutional void”. That is, policymaking in unestablished or weakly established institutional environments.

While our understanding of the impacts of climate change is getting better, significant uncertainty persists and climatic conditions are irreconcilably dynamic and complex (IPCC 2014; Walker, Haasnoot and Kwakkel 2013). We have traditionally used historical data when setting design standards but may no longer be able to use the past as a reliable predictor of the future. This leads to the critical question of what information we should use. Answering this question is not so simple, with competing knowledge claims (van Buuren and Edelenbos 2004) and climate information usability gaps (Lemos, Kirchhoff and Ramprasad 2012). Real or perceived uncertainty in climate forecasts further clouds this question. We typically build our infrastructure with the expectation that it will remain operational for decades, and most infrastructure has traditionally been fairly static once built. However, it is decreasingly clear what the future will look like. It is often expensive to retrofit, and our funding and management models are not set up to support ongoing adaptation.

A further challenge is that infrastructure decisions are often made in highly constrained budgetary environments; resources are scarce, so the costs and benefits of making projects more robust must be considered. In general, there is often competition among different interests and priorities (Susskind 2010). Finally yet importantly, our governance systems are often slow to change, even when challenges like the threats posed by climate change are acknowledged. Planning, design and management occur in complex institutional environments with various hurdles and leverage points.

Adaptation in an institutional context

Efforts to understand and intervene in complex systems have often neglected the governance challenges involved (Bea, Mitroff, Farber, Foster and Roberts 2009). This book focuses on how to manage uncertainty and complexity in decision-making, considering the institutional dynamics. It explores the challenges associated with adapting infrastructure to climate change and makes a variety of suggestions, including around how we can:

• institutionalize better praxis of flexibility in infrastructure planning and decision-making;
• implement good process design to bring multiple stakeholders together for decision-making in complex and ambiguous institutional environments;
• use decision-support tools, including multiple scenarios, to enhance these processes and frame uncertainties; and
• use role-play simulation exercises for stakeholder engagement and action research around nascent issues like climate change.

It makes these recommendations while acknowledging and describing the implications of the wider governance regimes and institutional frameworks that decision-makers and other stakeholders find themselves in. Responding to the risks posed by climate change does not happen in a vacuum; existing institutional environments provide both opportunities and constraints.

Paradigmatic shifts notwithstanding, planning and policymaking generally follows entrenched patterns, with policy subsystems slow to take up new challenges and moving only incrementally when they do (Howlett and Ramesh 1998). Policy communities are often reticent to take on issues outside of the explicit domains of responsible agencies and interests of the other stakeholders. Well-entrenched institutional norms, or patterns, can make systemic changes, cooperation outside of established, discrete relationships, and flexibility over time difficult (Baumgartner and Jones 2009; Downs 1967; Perrow 1986; Powell and DiMaggio 1991; Pressman and Wildavsky 1984). Emerging issues, like the impacts of climate change, can strain existing arrangements. The ‘streams and windows’ model of policymaking suggests that the strain of new issues and actors pushing against the policy subsystem is the source of periodic paradigm shifts in a world of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ (Baumgartner and Jones 2009). The problem is that issues that involve significant complexity, persistent uncertainty and dynamic conditions, like climate change, may require more flexible and dynamic planning and policymaking that goes beyond punctuated equilibrium. This is a tall order, but one this book tackles as it considers how we can better institutionalize climate change adaptation into our planning and decision-making.

The uncertainty factor

Uncertainty may be a significant X factor in climate change adaptation. Systems are by nature dynamic and difficult to predict; no one knows what the future will bring. In response, infrastructure planning typically involves established models or forecasts of the future, enshrined standards and informal but institutionalized heuristics (Rahman, Walker and Marchau 2008). Air quality, economic growth, traffic demand and other models play prominent roles in planning and decision-making. The procedures and variables for constructing these models and procedures are often dictated in government law and policy, and they are reinforced in organizational and professional norms and via the allocation of organizational resources. Forecasts cannot divine what will actually happen, but they get it right often enough. As poignantly put by Box and Draper (1987), “all models are wrong, but some are useful”. Despite their fallibilities, they facilitate ‘satisficing’ and thus the advancement of decision-making (Simon 1956).

An important question is whether the models and forecasts that inform our climate adaptation efforts really are sufficient, given the particularly dynamic and uncertain nature of climate change and deviation from past trends. That is, are they satisfactory both technically and politically for our decision-making? Climate change may involve a higher degree of uncertainty and thus necessitate new approaches (Birkmann et al. 2010; Bollinger et al. 2014; Eakin and Lemos 2010; Lemos et al. 2012). There are multiple possible emissions scenarios, based on different economic growth and technological change trajectories, and different global circulation models of how greenhouse gas concentrations will actually alter the climate (Sainz de Murieta, Galarraga and Markandya 2014). Climate models used to support decision-making at the local level involve substantial additional uncertainty, because downscaling from global models compounds the higher-level model uncertainties (Termeer et al. 2011). Furthermore, the uncertainties are not only climatological in nature; they also result from unpredictability around how socioeconomic and biophysical systems will respond to climate change (Biesbroek, Klostermann, Termeer and Kabat 2011; Moser and Ekstrom 2010).

Rahman et al. (2008) categorize the situation that infrastructure planners and decision-makers find themselves in vis-à-vis climate change as ‘deep uncertainty’. Deep uncertainty is a condition in which

analysts do not know, or the parties to a decision cannot agree on, (1) the appropriate conceptual models that describe the relationships among the key driving forces that will shape the long-term future, (2) the probability distributions used to represent uncertainty about key variables and parameters in the mathematical representations of these conceptual models, and/or (3) how to value the relative desirability of the various outcomes.

(Rahman et al. 2008, 43)

Uncertainty is not one element of the decision-making process, but pervades the cascade of plans and decisions. Mearns (2010) uses the term ‘meta-deep uncertainty’ to describe the fact that there is not even agreement among decision-makers, climate scientists and other stakeholders around how important it is to decision-making that uncertainty in climate models be reduced, and that consensus on this matter may be impossible to achieve. She is skeptical of the focus on constructing ever more complex climate models, asserting that we need “a truly balanced research program that also [provides] sufficient funding for in-depth vulnerability assessments and investment in improving or expanding decision making protocols under deep uncertainty” (Mearns 2010, 84). That is, we need to figure out how to work with uncertainty rather than focusing solely on how to resolve it.

Climate adaptation planning

While significant work remains, there is a growing body of literature and practice around climate adaptation planning. It is slowly emerging as an acknowledged necessity and increasingly sophisticated area of activity for government agencies in numerous sectors and at all levels around the world. At the local level, many municipalities, including all three focused on in this book, have prepared either standalone or integrated climate change adaptation strategies and initiated various activities. Some planning efforts are cross-sectoral, while others are sector-specific. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which devoted significant attention to climate impacts and adaptation in its most recent (5th) Assessment Report, defines adaptation as “The process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects. In human systems, adaptation seeks to moderate or avoid harm or exploit beneficial opportunities” (2014, 5). Whether proactive or reactive, adaptation is the suite of responses to a changing climate, from heightening and strengthening levees to keep the rising sea at bay to planting trees to counteract the urban heat island effect as temperatures rise.

Adaptation planning involves the integration of concern for and responses to climatic changes and potential future climate risks into our governance systems. It is the process through which public officials and other stakeholders better understand, prepare for and respond to the risks and uncertainty climate change poses (Adger et al. 2007; National Research Council 2010; Schipper and Burton 2009). The actions communities take today are important, because they will shape the nature and degree of risk they face in the future (IPCC 2014). While adaptation often involves non-governmental actors, and a parallel set of activities are taking off in the private sector, this book largely focuses on public-sector-centric adaptation planning. It is important to note, however, that the public-private divide is often blurred. In many countries, significant proportions of various infrastructure systems are privately owned and operated – including electricity, water and sanitation and even transportation– albeit with significant government oversight. Furthermore, civil society organizations often play significant roles in influencing government decisions, including those around infrastructure. Nonetheless, government agencies often have critical parts to play in advancing climate change adaptation, whether directly through their own policy and investment decisions or indirectly through their oversight.

It is important to note that risks, adaptive capacity and resilience – which is the capacity of a system to cope with events or changing conditions – are not equally distributed within or among communities (Berrang-Ford, Ford and Paterson 2011; IPCC 2014). Different groups face different types and levels of threat, and they have varying capacity to prepare and respond based on spatial, socioeconomic and other factors. Unfortunately, if not surprisingly, disparities in both risks and adaptive capacity often overlap with other disparities. It is important to keep this in mind as we consider the uneven costs and benefits of different adaptive responses.

It is also important to note that this book is not a comprehensive ‘how to’ on the mechanics of adaptation planning. It focuses on how adaptation can be better institutionalized into planning and decision-making. Fortunately, a wide variety of guidelines and resources has been developed by government agencies, non-governmental organizations, private consultancies and academics to inform ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• Preface
• 1 Introduction: adapting infrastructure to climate change
• 2 Learning across contrasting governance regimes
• 3 Rotterdam: a neo-corporatist approach to adaptation
• 4 Singapore: adapting a strong city-state
• 5 Boston: many hands on deck in the neo-pluralist U.S.
• 6 Role-play simulation exercises for social learning and collaborative problem solving
• 7 Uncertain decision-making: the use of multiple scenarios
• 8 Moving forward: flexible and collaborative governance
• Index