Description of the PIK-contribution to the BMBF - Megacities project:

Climate and Energy in a Complex Transition Process towards Sustainable Hyderabad: Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies by Changing Institutions, Governance Structures, Life Styles and Consumption Patterns

Website of the overall project

PIK contributes mainly to the following two workpackages:

WP1: Potential Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Measures in Hyderabad 

WP2: Knowledge and Concepts on Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies towards Sustainability Transition in Lifestyles, Consumption and Health 

 

ad WP1:

Potential Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Measures in Hyderabad

Matthias Lüdeke, Diana Reckien, Oleksandr Kit, Martin Budde, Lutz Barenhoff, Sonja Hofmann (until May 2009)

 

Interim-Reports:

EVALUATING CLIMATE CHANGE SCENARIOS - From AOGCMs to Hyderabad. Matthias K.B. Lüdeke & Martin Budde

QUALITATIVE CLIMATE CHANGE - IMPACT NETWORKS FOR HYDERABAD/INDIA. Diana Reckien, Sonja Hofmann, Oleksandr Kit

 

WORKPLAN and BACKGROUND:

Objectives

Expected Climate Change is an important factor to be considered in the complex transition process towards a “sustainable Hyderabad”. It may alter significantly the present natural situation which can therefore no longer be taken as constant boundary condition for the assessment of development options.

The main aim of this workpackage is to contribute to

  1. a “Sustainable Development Framework” by the systematic identification of potential climate change adaptation options as an important prerequisite for the development of a sustainable urban food and health system, policy solutions for environmental management and local capacity building
  2. the formulation of a “Perspective Action Plan” by ensuring the consideration of the climate change adaptation aspects on the best level of present knowledge
  3. the set up and assessment of respective pilot projects by ensuring mechanisms of considering updates in knowledge/certainty on climate change and it's impacts    

 This implies the following research objectives:

-        Identification of the expected climate change signals for the city of Hyderabad and it's peri-urban region. This includes the investigation of the sensitivity of these projections with respect to global greenhouse gas emission scenarios and the consideration of uncertainty of the projections for fixed emission scenarios. 

-        Identification of the impacts of these expected climate change signals on Hyderabad and its peri-urban region emphasizing the sectors of Food, Poverty, Natural Resource Management and Public Health. These sectors are expected to be climate sensitive and are covered with respect to the “non-climate” development context by the project partners in work packages 2-5. Stakeholder participation is mandatory as it is a normative decision which of the multitude of climate change effects are relevant and notable impacts.  

-        Identification of potential adaptation options with respect to these expected impacts. Here the degree of uncertainty with respect to future impacts (this includes projections of small or even positive impacts) has to be considered  explicitly. Stakeholder participation has to enrich the scope of options gained from systemic scientific knowledge.    

 

State of the art

Projected climate change for greater Hyderabad

The presently most advanced knowledge on global climate change projections is represented by the AOGCM (atmosphere-ocean general circulation models) comparison done for the 4th Assessment Report of the IPCC (Meehl et al., 2007). Here 22 different AOGCMs were driven by a standardized set of global emission scenarios (SRES, Nakićenović and Swart, 2000) and generated contrastable results, i.a. for temperature and precipitation change. Choosing an intermediate global emission scenario (A1B), one finds for the region of Hyderabad (until the end of the century)

With respect to these statements the results of the different models are highly consistent, i.e. within the range of our present knowledge on climate generating mechanisms these projections can be viewed as certain under the assumed emission scenario. The projected change in annual precipitation in the Hyderabad region is more inhomogeneous: some models predict significant increase (+30%), others a more moderate decrease (-15%) while the remaining models predict values in between. Here Hyderabad has to adapt to a possibly significant change in total annual precipitation - taking the average of the projections (slightly increasing annual precipitation) as a best guess would be highly misleading in this case.

Furthermore there are studies relying on nested regional circulation models (e.g. using PRECIS, Rupa Kumar et al.,2006) which have on the one hand a much finer spatial resolution but, on the other hand, do not take systematically into account the inhomogeneity of the AOGCMs projections which drive the nested regional model via the boundary conditions. Therefore these results have to be interpreted very carefully.

The rapid development of the quality of climate projections during the last years shows the necessity to constantly update the climate change information on which impact assessments and thereby climate adaptation measures are based on (1) during the proposed project and (2) ensuring that beyond the project adequate mechanisms are established to consider this development of scientific knowledge.  

Impacts of projected climate change for Hyderabad

Despite the obvious importance of this problem, systematic impact assessments for Asian Megacities do not exist so far, while for urban areas in the North  comprehensive studies exist (e.g. "London's warming", 2002).  As major sensitive sectors for Asian Megacities “energy, communication, transportation, water run-off and water quality, as well as the interrelatedness of these systems, and implications for public health” are suggested for closer investigation by McMichael (McMichael et al., 2003).

For a projected increase in the frequency of extreme events an impact estimation can be done by comparing with respective historical events. For both, the impacts of the projected increase in rainfall intensity and frequency of heat waves such historical examples exist and show that we have to expect a significant impact of climate change on Hyderabad - probably highly differential and hitting particularly vulnerable groups strongest. In August 2000 extremely intense rainfall (half of the annual precipitation in one day, last comparable extreme event over 40 years ago) totally destroyed 77 slum areas in Hyderabad, twenty people died by drowning or in collapsing houses (Oxfam, 2000). A significantly higher frequency of such extreme events clearly calls for serious adaptation measures. The same is true for heat waves (the last one in 2003 with about 1300 deaths in Andhra Pradesh – AFP, 6.June 2003). This kind of extreme weather events is amplified by the urban heat island effect and again, hits mainly the poorest part of the population. Beside this expected increase in extreme weather events the effects of a continuous increase of the average temperature accompanied by a uncertain development of the total annual precipitation has to be taken into account, in particular with respect to groundwater refill and the water balance with its water quality implications. From various studies the PIK applicants have experiences in sectoral (e.g., Lüdeke et al., 1999, 2007) as well as regional impact assessments (e.g., Kropp et al, 2006). 

Stakeholder participation in climate change impact assessment is a crucial element as amongst the multitude of consequences of climate change a particular subset has to be characterized as relevant, thereby normative decisions are necessarily involved.

 

Adaptation measures  for Hyderabad

Specific adaptation studies for Hyderabad do not exist so far. The following figure summarizes the conceptual framework underlying the proposed impact/adaptation studies along the lines of the IPCC: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Role and structuring of the described project part – after the IPCC vulnerability concept adapted to the project context. Key: Orange -  symbolises aspects that are covered by the impacts and adaptation part of PIK contribution, Green – describes aspects that are covered by the other project parts; Orange and Green boxes: Close intern between PIK and the other project parts. Dashed arrow: Indirect influence of mitigation efforts in Hyderabad. Red arrows: Direct influences on Hyderabad

This structuring of the problem makes clear that impact and adaptation studies are closely interlinked via the climate change sensitivity of the investigated system.  Therefore starting with the knowledge of the impact mechanisms including autonomous adaptation, the barriers to overcome for achieving the full compensation of the climate impacts occur naturally. With respect to technological options (improvements, alternatives) and institutional aspects of adaptation options additional informations have to be considered. From a rough assessment of climate change signals and probable impacts on Indian urban areas Revi (2007) identified the following dimensions as relevant for adaptation measures: new construction and development, building retrofitting and strengthening, lifeline infrastructure development and strengthening, hazard modification, relocation and rehabilitation, joining-up with ongoing hazard risk reduction programs, strengthening regional and rural-urban linkages and, at least, institutional capacity for urban climate risk adaptation. A more general overview can, e.g., be found in Satterthwaithe (2007). These and other sources like the UNFCCC adaptation measures data base provide elements of  an adaptation strategy for Hyderabad, but the main guiding line for the identification will be the specific and comprehensive climate change impact analysis and the institutional analysis, the first performed by PIK, the latter mainly by the project partners.

 

Work plan

The research strategy will be to target climate change impact (potential and residual) and adaptation studies for Hyderabad at:

(1)   the climate change sensitivity of the food (distribution) system and options to improve food security and quality

(2)   the sensitivity of the actual and possible future transportation system options for Hyderabad

(3)   the climate change impact on the quantity and quality of water resources and its implications on strategies of river/lakes restoration

(4)   climate change impacts on rural regions which possibly increase push factors for rural-urban migration and thereby aggravate a sustainable urban development

(5)   climate change impacts on energy plant option

These fields cover major climate sensitive aspects of the planned pilot projects.  As climate change impacts are always closely interacting with other drivers of change these assessments will be performed in close cooperation with the project groups investigating the respective themes in WP2 and 3, allowing to combine the research expertise on climate impact paths and adaptation options with profound expertise in investigating the field including actor constellations and institutional settings.

Scientific methods for climate change impact analysis to be applied are mainly:

¨      If historical climate variation covers the range of expected climate change, statistical investigations on the relation of climate variables and their impacts can be performed. Here the attribution problem (there is usually more then one potential driver of change) and the sometimes problematic assumption of structural similarity of past and future conditions has to be carefully considered. The latter applies even stronger if analogues from different regions have to be used because of insufficient historical climate variability or lacking observations. In case a relation of climate stimulus (+ further driving variables) and impact can be established, the climate change projection can be used to assess the future impact.

¨      If well established mechanistic models of a sector exist, they can be directly used by driving them with the climate change prognosis. This is often the case for the potential impacts on hydrological and agrarian systems – but for managed natural systems human action will necessarily follow in the sense of “autonomous adaptation”. So for the identification of the remaining “residual impacts” often scenario-like additions are necessary.

¨      For the exploration of both, historical and potential impact paths relevant for human well-being different forms of stakeholder consultations are mandatory. Depending on the topic, different forms of interviews, focus groups or other canonical forms are appropriate.

PIK has a large experience in developing and applying these methods in the context of climate impact studies (by the applicants i.a. Lüdeke et al, 1999; Downing and Lüdeke, 2002; Kropp et al., 2001, Eisenack et al., 2007, Lüdeke et al., 2007; Jäger et al., 2007).

 The identification of adaptation options will follow three different lines:

¨      starting with the knowledge of the impact mechanisms including autonomous adaptation, the barriers to overcome for achieving the full compensation of the climate impacts occur naturally (this is covered by the PIK applicants)

¨      technological options (improvements, alternatives) have to be derived from the basic systemic knowledge of the physical system aspects and the overview over present technological developments (expertise at PIK, access to the emerging PIK-based adaptation data bank)

¨      institutional aspects of adaptation options have to be systematically based on the analysis of interests and power relation of actors (institutional analysis mainly covered by project partners)