Setting the foundation: climate change adaptation at the local level.

• Author: Gremillion, Thomas M.

1. INTRODUCTION II. ADAPTING TO A WARMER WORLD III. TOWARDS A POLYCENTRIC MODEL OF CLIMATE REGULATION A. Evolution of the Polycentric Model B. Adaptation in a Polycentric Model IV. ADAPTATION AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT A. Focus on the Urban Setting B. Strategies for Building the Resilient City V. CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTION IN AMERICAN CITIES A. Urban Adaptation Planning in New York, Boston, and King County B. Top-Down Adaptation Planning: The Federal Role C. A National Climate Change Adaptation Fund VI. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION

   As the world grapples with the implications of rising temperatures for the next 100 years, the once taboo subject of climate change adaptation has taken center stage in environmental policy debate. (1) As of May 2011, developed countries had pledged several billion dollars to help developing countries adapt to climate change impacts, following through on pledges made in Copenhagen and formalized in Cancun. (2) National adaptation plans are assuming a central policy-making role in countries like the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. (3) And in the United States, local governments in places like New York City, Boston, and Seattle are refining metropolitan adaptation plans that date back several years or decades. (4) Policy makers hope that these plans will help to avoid wasted investment and pay ecological and economic dividends.

   The stakes are high considering the projected costs of climate change, even under optimistic scenarios. (5) One recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change study pegs adaptation expenses at $49 to $171 billion per year by 2030 across the globe, (6) while a recent World Bank report estimates that by 2050 a two degree Celsius temperature rise would require between $70 to $100 billion per year of adaptation investment. (7) This includes substantial capital investment. For example, California state officials have estimated that "coastal armoring" to protect against flooding on the Pacific Coast and San Francisco Bay would require an initial investment of $14 billion and recurring maintenance expenses of over $1 billion dollars annually. (8) But the greater burden of adaptation lies in directing government and private investment towards climate-resilient development. Often this is synonymous with better valuation of ecosystem services. (9) In New York City, for example, where temperature increases are expected to make heat waves an increasing threat to public health, the city has embarked on a major tree planting campaign--"Greening the Bronx"--to combat urban heat island effect and severe ozone pollution on hot summer days. (10) New York City also faces serious vulnerabilities to sea level rise, with conservative estimates indicating that a 1-in-100 year flood may become a 1-in-15 year event over the next few decades, (11) and so the city has begun updating flood insurance rate maps in order to better guide zoning and construction policy. (12)

   Climate change presents a serious obstacle to development and poverty reduction, and adaptation costs will hit hardest among those least able to afford them. (13) In the words of Bangladeshi Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia, "[For some] the impacts might be lifestyle threatening, for others it is life threatening." (14) In the United States, the experience of Hurricane Katrina has lent credence to this distinction. (15) Effective climate change adaptation, including better emergency preparedness, thus takes on an equitable dimension that should endear it to those concerned with the United States' growing inequality and the sinking fortunes of its poorest citizens.

   In addition to greater equality, adaptation should increase public awareness of climate change. (16) It should do so in a tangible way, because adaptation has an inherently local focus. Eventually, emerging adaptation institutions and policies may serve to re-orient climate regulation away from the top-down, unitary model of global regulation embodied in the Kyoto Protocol. This is critical, because at the local level, reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions itself reaps no discernable local benefit. (17) To be sure, mitigation strategies may coincide with policy solutions to other problems of local character, such as air or water pollution, but in many cases--e.g., a municipality's purchase of power from renewable sources rather than from downwind coal-fired plants--they will not. By contrast, adaptation policies inherently reap local benefits, and in many ways, align with climate change mitigation and help to build up the supporting governance structures for an effective mitigation regime. (18) And by integrating reforms across a broad range of policy areas, from water management to land use planning to public health, adaptation aid can play a critical role in regions where government is already struggling to cope with basic needs.

   The next Part of this Article begins with a brief description of climate change adaptation policy. Part III introduces the notion of polycentric climate change regulation. Part IV considers the specific climate challenges facing urban development, and puts forth the case for directing resources for adaptation to cities. The experience of adaptation planning in various cities in the United States provides helpful guidance on effective policy responses to climate change, and Part V takes a look at these and proposes policy reforms for expanding this work and eventually setting the foundation for a national climate change mitigation program. The Article concludes with a proposal for a national climate change adaptation fund to work toward these objectives.

2. ADAPTING TO A WARMER WORLD

   References to climate change adaptation bring to mind large-scale infrastructure projects such as the Thames Barrier in London, (19) or the relocation of entire villages threatened by melting permafrost and rising sea levels, as detailed in the Inuit Circumpolar Conference's landmark petition before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. (20) For the most part, however, climate change will simply make existing social and environmental problems worse. (21) And the solutions to these problems consist in large part on building local government capacity. Specifically, local government capacity to address problems associated with water management, public health, and disaster response are paramount, including capabilities to identify climate change-related vulnerabilities, craft plans to address them, and implement those plans with adequate monitoring and enforcement. (22) These capabilities also promote broader economic and social goals. (23)

   Adaptation presents the challenge of "mainstreaming" climate change planning into more general development goals. (24) In other words, plans and policies for confronting climate risks cannot be developed in isolation. Rather, effective adaptation policy needs to draw on authorities across a broad spectrum of policy areas--public works, energy, water, transportation, public health--collaborating to integrate adaptation plans into their respective regulatory jurisdictions. A climate change adaptation program should thus represent a bundle of parallel initiatives--water management, emergency preparedness, land use planning--to respond to climate vulnerabilities facing a particular locality, and better align local economies with the ecologies that support them. (25) Mainstreaming has proven difficult, however, precisely because it involves a broad range of actors, including community groups and private sector developers. (26) Information regarding the actual impact of climate change at the local level, where impacts matter most, can be highly uncertain. This uncertainty frustrates efforts to link individual decisions to relevant climate data and projections. (27)

   Climate change poses an unprecedented challenge for human civilization. The projected speed and intensity of anticipated changes to the earth's temperature and atmospheric makeup resulting from anthropogenic GHG emissions will surpass those of any other period that mankind has ever witnessed. (28) According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, climate change is causing and will continue to cause more frequent heat waves, more extreme storms and cyclones, an increase in the areas affected by drought, and a rise in sea levels, including a higher frequency of extreme storm surges. (29) These phenomena will have overlapping effects, producing feedback cycles and confounding models based on assumptions rooted in historical, typically linear trends. This carries important implications for managing food security, public health, urban infrastructure, and other critical areas. (30) For example, rising sea levels and increased frequency of extreme storm surges will compromise water supplies as a result of salinity intrusion, increase the incidence of coastal flooding, and lead to permanent property loss in many areas. (31) Increased temperatures and more frequent heat waves will diminish crop yields, increase urban "heat island" effects, worsen ground-level ozone smog and other air pollution problems, and increase the incidence of vector-borne diseases. (32) The intensity of climate change impacts will vary from area to area, but adaptation policy may prove the most important determinant of which areas incur the greatest losses. (33)

   Unlike efforts to mitigate GHG emissions, adaptation policy does not fall neatly within the domain of pollution control or even environmental law. (34) Because climate change impacts will affect so many different aspects of human welfare, adaptation will have to take place across a wide range of jurisdictions and policy areas. The success of projects will largely depend on local conditions. More generally, the uncertainty of climate change impacts (35) translates into policy uncertainty at the point of implementation. Thus, unlike mitigation projects that might proceed relatively independent of local...