Study Session 12 Resilience and Coping Strategies

Study Session 12Resilience and Coping Strategies

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Study Session 12Resilience and Coping Strategies

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Introduction
Learning Outcomes for Study Session 12
12.1What is resilience?
12.2Resilience in the water sector
12.2.1Adaptation measures
12.2.2Water conservation
12.2.3Recycling water
12.2.4Catchment management
12.3Response to climate change in Ethiopia
12.3.1 Ethiopia’s Climate Resilient Green Economy
12.4Resilience in urban areas
12.5Early warning systems
Summary of Study Session 12
Self-Assessment Questions (SAQs) for Study Session 12

Introduction

People, communities and society are vulnerable to harm arising from a range of sources. Extreme weather events and climate change add to the challenges of rapid urbanisation, population growth and environmental degradation. In order to cope with these problems, people, communities and society need to be resilient; that is, to be able to recover from such shocks and stresses, and have coping strategies to deal with them.

In this study session, you will be looking at Ethiopia’s approaches to climate change resilience. You will learn about some particular features of resilience in the water sector, as well as Ethiopia’s strategic response to climate change. You will also find out about resilience in urban areas and early warning systems that provide information to help us respond to hazards.

Learning Outcomes for Study Session 12

When you have studied this session, you should be able to:

12.1 Define and use correctly all of the key words printed in bold. (SAQs 12.1, 12.3 and 12.5)

12.2 Describe how resilience in the water sector can be improved. (SAQ 12.2)

12.3 Explain how Ethiopia’s Climate Resilient Green Economy can contribute to the adaption to and mitigation of climate change. (SAQ 12.3)

12.4 Describe the key principles for urban resilience to climate change (SAQ 12.4)

12.5 Explain the importance of preparedness and early warning systems. (SAQ 12.5)

12.1What is resilience?

Resilience is the ability of an individual, household, community, society or system to withstand, cope with and quickly recover from shocks and stresses. Shocks and stresses might include drought, floods and other natural hazards, as well as long-term changes in the climate and environmental degradation. They can result in shortage of resources and failed infrastructure and other situations that have the capacity to cause harm.

Understanding the concept of resilience is useful in addressing climate risk and unexpected events. Responses to climate change largely fall into two categories: mitigation and adaptation. Mitigation involves trying to reduce the causes of climate change, such as reducing carbon emissions and protecting forests and wetlands which act as carbon sinks. Thus, mitigation strategies aim to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases (IPCC, 2001). In contrast, climate change adaptation involves addressing the effects of climate change by making communities more resilient. It involves adjustments in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic effects in order to moderate the harm they may cause (IPCC, 2007b). Plans for improving climate change resilience should include adaptation measures, mitigation actions and disaster risk reduction.

Choose a place you know or have read about that is threatened by climate change. This could be a small village, a town or a particular region of Ethiopia.
What is the name of your place and where is it located?
In what ways is it threatened?
In what ways can it be made resilient?

You will have your own answer to these questions but in answering them you need to identify the threats to your place, and then consider what can be done to protect it. You might consider what local people could do, as well as what the government or others could do. Possibilities may have been extreme, like relocating people to safer areas; or more manageable such as improving people’s education about the risk and improving preparation for emergencies.

Individuals and communities with low resilience are vulnerable to shocks and stresses and have little ability to recover. Vulnerability means the degree to which individuals, communities or systems are susceptible and less able to cope with harm (IPCC, 2007b). On a wider level, you could think of resilience as the capability of the system or country to manage risks and reduce the occurrence of hazards and to adapt to change over the long term. The ability of a system to adapt to climate change and cope with its consequences is called the adaptive capacity of the system.

12.2Resilience in the water sector

In Study Sessions 1 and 4 you read about the limited availability of water in terms of both quantity and quality. By 2025, half of the world’s population will live in water-stressed river basins (World Wildlife Fund, 2015). You have also read about population growth, urbanisation, changing land use and the increasing demand for water for domestic, industrial and agricultural purposes. Climate change will aggravate these growing human pressures on water systems.

12.2.1Adaptation measures

Improving resilience in the water sector means developing the adaptive capacity of the system. Countries need to adopt appropriate adaptation measures in their water supply sector that will reduce wastage, promote wise use of fresh water and improve water management practices. These adaptation measures include:

Efficient use of water resources: ensure effective use and fair sharing of existing resources; develop new water sources and reservoirs; promote efficient use of water by consumers through education and tariff structures; develop water reuse and recycling; develop rainwater harvesting schemes.
Leakage reduction: ensure that equipment and fittings of the water supply system are properly maintained to reduce the frequency of leakage, and that they are repaired promptly.
Testing existing technologies for resilience: water and sanitation services should be robust enough to ensure that water quality, water quantity and sanitation systems can be maintained.
Protecting ecosystem resilience: the impacts of natural disasters and climate change should be monitored to maintain the resilience of water and wetland ecosystems. Ecosystem resilience means that the effects of events like fires or drought do not make fundamental long-lasting changes to biodiversity within the ecosystem.
Flexible management approaches: decision makers need to be able to adapt to the full range of climate scenarios and the demands they generate.

Following these principles for adaptation will help to ensure that increasing problems of water stress can be managed appropriately and that the water sector improves its resilience to future change. Many of these measures are about the sustainable use of water and require changes to the way water resources are managed. We will now look at three examples of water management practices that will help improve resilience: water conservation, water reuse and catchment management.

12.2.2Water conservation

Water conservation covers a broad range of activities from using less water at home to national policies to protect freshwater ecosystems. Its purpose is to manage water sustainably by using less or using it more efficiently so that present and future needs of people and the environment can be met.

Freshwater conservation efforts are designed to protect and restore biodiversity in water and wetland ecosystems and the ecosystem services they provide. Ecosystem services are the benefits that people obtain from these systems, such as the provision of drinking water and food. Freshwater ecosystems support 12% of known species, while they account for only 1% of the Earth’s surface (Gleick, 2012). They include rivers, ponds, lakes, marshes, bogs and swamps, but they are becoming increasingly rare. Wetlands are also important carbon sinks but they are often drained to support agriculture or for human settlement.

An example of water conservation in agriculture is the use of drip-feed irrigation, which provides water directly to the soil near the roots of the growing crops (Figure 12.1). It requires a great deal less water than conventional methods of flood or spray irrigation in which much of the water is lost by evaporation. By using less water, the volume taken from rivers is reduced which helps to maintain the river ecosystem.

Figure 12.1Drip-feed irrigation system reduces water loss by evaporation.

Other examples of water conservation from agriculture include changing the variety of crop that is grown to those that require less water and are more drought-resistant. Changing techniques for planting can also reduce water use, for example, creating a small hollow around the stem of a plant can ensure that water seeps into the ground close to the roots rather than running off over the surface.

12.2.3Recycling water

Wastewater recycling will become an increasingly important source of new water resources. It means finding ways to use water more than once. Recycled water can be used to recharge groundwater aquifers, supply industrial processes, irrigate certain crops and supplement domestic supplies. Recycling helps provide usable water and reduces pollution of existing supplies. Many industrial and domestic processes do not require water of drinking standard. For example, water for flushing toilets does not need to be of the same quality as drinking water. There has been a significant increase in the availability and use of treated wastewater for a wide range of applications in different parts of the world and this is an area that is likely to grow.

12.2.4Catchment management

In the past, responsibility for management of water resources has often been divided among several different agencies or administrative departments. For example, responsibility for providing water supply for domestic users would be entirely separate from water for irrigation, even though they would both be using the same resource. This lack of coordination creates problems because it does not recognise the processes and connections of the water cycle or the links between the various parts of the water resource system.

To overcome this problem, the natural boundaries of the water catchment should be recognised. The catchment area, also known as the watershed, of a river is the total area of surrounding land that slopes towards the river. Rainwater that falls in a catchment flows into the river and is therefore affected by the type of land over which it flows. Water can be contaminated by pollution sources in the catchment even though they may be some distance away. Adopting an integrated catchment management approachmeans that these connections are take into account. Integrated catchment management involves both water use and land use within the catchment area. It recognises the connections between water quality and water quantity and those between surface water and groundwater. Importantly, the needs of the environment are also taken into account. This integrated approach can improve resilience because understanding the connections within a system helps managers to predict impacts and identify strategies for coping with change.

12.3Response to climate change in Ethiopia

Have you experienced periods of drought or cuts in water supply? How did you cope?

Most of us in Ethiopia have experienced drought and cuts to supply. While access to drinking water is the main concern, we quickly realise how dependent we are on water for many other things that make life comfortable. Bottled water and tankers that transport water should ensure we have water to drink, but we quickly adjust to washing less frequently, cooking less and eating more raw food. In other words, we adapt and cope.

For reasons you have read about in previous study sessions, climate change is a growing concern for the Ethiopian government. At the heart of Ethiopia’s climate change initiatives is the Climate Resilient Green Economy strategy.

12.3.1 Ethiopia’s Climate Resilient Green Economy

Awareness of climate change impacts has intensified in recent years. The Ethiopian government has decided to respond in a way that not only seeks to mitigate and adapt to climate change, but also to use this as an opportunity to switch to a new development model that will be sustainable. To this end, the government has initiated the Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) strategy (FDRE, 2011). This aims to protect the country from the adverse effects of climate change and to build a green economy that will help realise Ethiopia’s ambition to reach middle-income status before 2025. The term green economy is defined as asustainable economyand society withzero carbon emissionswhere all energy is derived fromrenewable resourceswhich are naturally replenished. In contrast, a black energy economy is based on carbon-intensive fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

Ethiopia’s CRGE strategy identifies more than 60 initiatives to limit greenhouse gas emissions while still bringing economic development. The aim is for emissions in the year 2030 to be roughly the same as they were in 2011 when the strategy was published. This is less than half the level estimated under a conventional development path.

The CRGE plan is based on four pillars (FDRE, 2011):

Agriculture: improving crop and livestock production practices for higher food security and farmer income while reducing emissions.
Forestry: protecting and re-establishing forests for their economic and ecosystem services, including as carbon stocks.
Power: expanding electricity generation from renewable sources of energy for domestic and regional markets.
Transport, industrial sector and buildings: leapfrogging to modern and energy-efficient technologies in transport, industrial sectors and buildings. (Leapfrogging means jumping ahead without going through a slow development process.)

The required budget for the CRGE is US$150 billion for 20 years, most of which is expected to come from external sources (Gebremedhin and Mengistu, 2014). Four key initiatives have been identified for fast-track implementation:

Exploiting Ethiopia’s vast hydropower potential.
Large-scale promotion of advanced rural cooking stoves.
Efficiency improvements in livestock rearing.
Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation.

Taking each of these in turn, the country’s vast hydroelectric power potential through its 12 river basins is being exploited by building large dams such as the three Gilgel Gibe dams and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (Figure 12.2), which is expected to be Africa’s largest dam. These provide renewable energy but, internationally, these projects are contested because of the potential impact they could have downstream in terms of reducing supply, particularly in Egypt (BBC, 2014).

Figure 12.2The construction site for the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam in northern Ethiopia. When completed, the reservoir will cover an area of 1800 km2.

Secondly, the government favours the large-scale promotion of advanced rural cooking stoves because they are fuel efficient (Figure 12.3). Traditionally, most rural households burn wood and charcoal on open fires to cook, causing indoor and outdoor air pollution. The new stoves use less fuel, are safer and produce less smoke which brings health benefits.

Figure 12.3An Ethiopian family enjoys a meal cooked on an advanced cooking stove.

Thirdly, efficiency improvements in the rearing of livestock can bring economic benefits. Ethiopia has more cattle than any other African country and is the eighth-largest producer of livestock in the world (CNFA, 2015). Yet in 2011 Ethiopia accounted for less than 1% of total global meat exports, so this is clearly an area of potential growth.

Fourthly, the government is prioritising the reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. This initiative aims to lower the emission of greenhouse gases as a result of changing land use. The country’s diverse landscapes provide food, water, firewood, construction materials and medicines, and if well managed can help reduce the risk of flooding, drought and famine. While climate change has increased the frequency of these risks, effective land use management can contribute to resilience against such risks, as well as improve biodiversity and carbon stocks in the soil and vegetation (World Bank, 2014). The pressures on land use are due to the expansion of subsistence agriculture and livestock grazing in fragile areas, leading to land and water degradation. But this is now changing, with large-scale landscape restoration underway in Tigray, for example (World Bank, 2014).

The CRGE strategy demonstrates Ethiopia’s commitment to responding to climate change. The government is developing national frameworks for adaptation and establishing the institutional structures to manage climate change such as the country’s Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) which coordinates and makes climate change policy an integral part of development initiatives.

12.4Resilience in urban areas

Although Ethiopia is currently one of the least urbanised countries in the world, this is likely to change over the next couple of decades.

Do you recall, from Study Session 5, what the percentage urban growth rate is in Ethiopia? How does this compare with other countries in Africa?

Ethiopia’s urban growth rate is more than 4% per year, which is one of the highest in Africa.

The increasing urban population puts added pressure on housing, transport, water supply and other systems and services. Urban resilience is when the systems and services of the town or city survive shocks and stresses, the people and organisations are able to accommodate these stresses into their day-to-day decisions, and the city’s institutional structures continue to function (Asian Development Bank, 2014). There is no single action that will make a city resilient to climate change. Resilience is developed through many actions, which build upon each other and where the focus is on preparation for disaster rather than response to it. This means that plans for resilience should be included as part of any urban development plan. The Asian Development Bank (2014) identifies the following guiding principles for urban resilience:

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