A City Climate-Action Sweet Spot: Where Adaptation and Mitigation Link
INC WORK IN PROGRESS
The other day we started to look at materials from 14 cities in North America, Europe, and Australia that have been figuring out how to link/integrate their plans and actions for reducing GHG emissions in the city with the same for increasing the city’s resilience to climate changes.
We haven’t drilled down too far yet, but found ourselves using two frameworks to analyze and sort out what’s in the cities’ documents, and starting to develop a third framework.
The first framework came from our partners at Meister Consultants Group and lays out four big categories into which various actions may fall:
- Some actions benefit mitigation or adaptation, but not both.
- Some actions further adaptation but increase GHG emissions (a.k.a., mal-adaptation)
- Some actions harm both adaptation and mitigation (e.g., deforestation)
- Some actions have strong adaptation and mitigation impacts
The “sweet spot,” of course, is #4. But not a lot is known yet about which actions under which circumstances fall into this category. Meister and others have described some of them in general terms: green infrastructure reduces building cooling loads while reducing flood risks; water efficiency is an adaptation solution, but also can reduce energy required to transport, heat, and treat water; the location of renewable energy production systems (wind turbines, site-scale solar) and energy-efficiency technologies can be designed to increase resilience.
A second framework comes out of an initial review of some of the city plans and reflects some of how cities approach the linkage challenge:
- An overarching city vision/plan. The adaptation-mitigation linkage is embedded in and enabled by the city’s integrated approach to sustainability, development, broad resilience—instead of being in standalone mitigation or adaptation plans.
- Orienting principles for linkage. There appear to be a number of principles for where linkages can be found. Two orienting examples: energy efficiency = both climate resilience and GHG reduction, and decentralized/distributed design of energy supply and mobility infrastructure = resilience and mitigation.
- Sector- or system-specific approaches. As cities become more advanced in developing climate actions, they focus at the level of core urban systems (energy supply, water, waste, buildings, mobility, etc.), not just individual projects. As a part of this system emphasis, cities identify adaptation-mitigation linkages at the system level.
- Specific solutions. As the list grows of actions that cities can pursue in linked ways—e.g., green infrastructure—so does the need for deep, trustworthy information about specific solutions: what they can and cannot achieve, how reliable they are and in which contexts, what they cost, what it takes to implement them, what co-benefits they generate, and so on.
- City capacities. As with other challenges of climate action, the process of identifying, selecting, and implementing mitigation-adaptation linkages requires organizational/decision-making integration in cities, scientific, engineering, legal, and other technical capacities, and communication with and engagement of stakeholders, residents, and businesses in the city.
With these two frameworks in mind, we’re starting to look at the 14 cities’ plans with an eye to identifying and categorizing the orienting principles, system approaches, and specific solutions already being used in cities. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, we welcome your feedback and guidance, as well as referrals to useful materials.
