Social, Ecological, and Technological Strategies for Climate Adaptation

Resilient cities are able to persist, grow, and even transform while keeping their essential identities in the face of external forces like climate change, which threatens lives, livelihoods, and the structures and processes of the urban environment (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, How to make cities more resilient: a handbook for local government leaders. Switzerland, Geneva, 2017). Scenario development is a novel approach to visioning resilient futures for cities. As an instrument for synthesizing data and envisioning urban futures, scenarios combine diverse datasets such as biophysical models, stakeholder perspectives, and demographic information (Carpenter et al. Ecol Soc 20:10, 2015). As a tool to envision alternative futures, participatory scenario development explores, identifies, and evaluates potential outcomes and tradeoffs associated with the management of social–ecological change, incorporating multiple stakeholder’s collaborative subjectivity (Galafassi et al. Ecol Soc 22:2, 2017). Understanding the current landscape of city planning and governance approaches is important in developing city-specific scenarios. In particular, assessing municipal planning strategies through the lens of interactive social–ecological–technological systems (SETS) provides useful insight into the dynamics and interrelationships of these coupled systems (da Silva et al. Sustain Dev 4(2):125–145, 2012). An assessment of existing municipal strategies can also be used to inform future adaptation scenarios and strategic plans addressing extreme weather events. With the scenario development process guiding stakeholders in generating goals and visions through participatory workshops, the content analysis of governance planning documents from the SETS perspective provides key insight on specific strategies that have been considered (or overlooked) in cities. In this chapter, we (a) demonstrate an approach to examine how cities define and prioritize climate adaptation strategies in their governance planning documents, (b) examine how governance strategies address current and future climate vulnerabilities as exemplified by nine cities in North and Latin America where we conducted a content analysis of municipal planning documents, and (c) suggest a codebook to explore the diverse SETS strategies proposed to address climate challenges—specifically related to extreme weather events such as heat, drought, and flooding

Sensemaking for Entangled Urban Social, Ecological, and Technological Systems in the Anthropocene

Our urban systems and their underlying sub-systems are designed to deliver only a narrow set of human-centered services, with little or no accounting or understanding of how actions undercut the resilience of social-ecological-technological systems (SETS). Embracing a SETS resilience perspective creates opportunities for novel approaches to adaptation and transformation in complex environments. We: i) frame urban systems through a perspective shift from control to entanglement, ii) position SETS thinking as novel sensemaking to create repertoires of responses commensurate with environmental complexity (i.e., requisite complexity), and iii) describe modes of SETS sensemaking for urban system structures and functions as basic tenets to build requisite complexity. SETS sensemaking is an undertaking to reflexively bring sustained adaptation, anticipatory futures, loose-fit design, and co-governance into organizational decision-making and to help reimagine institutional structures and processes as entangled SETS

A social-ecological-technological systems framework for urban ecosystem services

As rates of urbanization and climatic change soar, decision-makers are increasingly challenged to provide innovative solutions that simultaneously address climate-change impacts and risks and inclusively ensure quality of life for urban residents. Cities have turned to nature-based solutions to help address these challenges. Nature-based solutions, through the provision of ecosystem services, can yield numerous benefits for people and address multiple challenges simultaneously. Yet, efforts to mainstream nature-based solutions are impaired by the complexity of the interacting social, ecological, and technological dimensions of urban systems. This complexity must be understood and managed to ensure ecosystem-service provisioning is effective, equitable, and resilient. Here, we provide a social-ecological-technological system (SETS) framework that builds on decades of urban ecosystem services research to better understand four core challenges associated with urban nature-based solutions: multi-functionality, systemic valuation, scale mismatch of ecosystem services, and inequity and injustice. The framework illustrates the importance of coordinating natural, technological, and socio-economic systems when designing, planning, and managing urban nature-based solutions to enable optimal social-ecological outcomes

A social-ecological-technological systems framework for urban ecosystem services

As rates of urbanization and climatic change soar, decision-makers are increasingly challenged to provide innovative solutions that simultaneously address climate change impacts and risks and inclusively ensure quality of life for urban residents. Cities have turned to nature-based solutions to help address these challenges. Nature-based solutions, through the provision of ecosystem services, can yield numerous benefits for people and address multiple challenges simultaneously. Yet, efforts to mainstream nature-based solutions are impaired by the complexity of the interacting social, ecological, and technological dimensions of urban systems. This complexity must be understood and managed to ensure ecosystem-service provisioning is effective, equitable, and resilient. Here, we provide a social-ecological-technological system (SETS) framework that builds on decades of urban ecosystem services research to better understand four core challenges associated with urban nature-based solutions: multi-functionality, systemic valuation, scale mismatch of ecosystem services, and inequity and injustice. The framework illustrates the importance of coordinating natural, technological, and socio-economic systems when designing, planning, and managing urban nature-based solutions to enable optimal social-ecological outcomes

Climate Change Decision-Making at the Metropolitan Level: Current Estimates and Future Drivers of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in U.S. Metropolitan Areas

<p>As concerns and understanding of climate change have continued to grow, cities and local governments have taken a leadership role in developing climate action plans to quantify and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. A primary component of most climate action plans is the development of regular or semi-regular GHG inventories. These inventories are typically confined to the city-limits of a given area and report emissions from on-road transportation, electricity generation, residential and commercial buildings, and waste generation and disposal. Although there have been many advances in the data and methods used for forming these inventories, some challenges still remain. For example, the inventories can often be expensive and time consuming, data availability and scope/boundary choices often lead to inconsistencies between inventories across time periods or locations, and over-looked factors like climate and population change may have drastic impacts on emissions in the future. Given these challenges, this thesis seeks to develop a consistent method for evaluating metropolitan-level GHG emissions and some of the key factors that may drive emissions and cities’ ability to meet reduction targets moving forward. First, we use publically available national datasets (e.g. the EPA’s National Emissions Inventory, the EPA’s Mandatory GHG Reporting Program, etc.) to develop an integrated approach for estimating GHG emissions at the metropolitan level. Overall, this approach allowed us to form consistent production-based GHG estimates for the 100 most populated metropolitan areas in the United States for the years 2002 and 2011. During this time period, the overall GHG emissions for these metropolitan areas decreased by roughly 18%. The largest decreases in emissions were typically driven by decreases in industrial activity, and the largest increases in emissions were typically driven by increases in electricity production and population. We also compared the iv emissions estimates from the integrated approach to those reported by the cities in their climate action plans. Overall, the integrated approach generally provides comparable estimates to those reported by the cities. However, this comparison also highlighted some of the uncertainty that can emerge due to scope and boundary choices made while developing an emissions inventory. Given the uncertainty associated with scope and boundary choices described above, and an increasing push by practitioners to expand their analysis to the regional/mega-regional level (rather than the city-limits), we next sought to gain a better understanding of how scope and boundary decisions impact emission estimates and GHG reduction targets in metropolitan areas. We first identified two categories of under-reported emissions from GHG inventories: 1) “under-reported activities” (industrial processes and transportation between urban and suburban areas), and 2) “under-reported geographies” (emissions within a metropolitan statistical area but outside of the central city/urban core). Using the integrated data from the previous analysis, we found that, on average, under-reported activities account for an additional 24% of emissions and under-reported geographies represent 55% of total metropolitan GHG emissions. Up to this point, our analysis focused entirely on recent (2011) and past (2002) emissions. However, given the forward looking nature of GHG reduction targets, it is also important to look at how different factors might impact metropolitan GHG emissions and policies in the future. For this component of the analysis, we investigated the implications that projected climatic temperature change, population changes, and the EPA’s Clean Power Plan would have on electricity-sector emissions at the metropolitan level. Using regional temperature and electricity demand data, we were able to model strong quadratic relationships between average daily temperature and total daily electricity load. We then applied future temperature projections from climate models to these quadratic relationships to see how electricity demand may change in the v future as a result of climate change. Overall, we found that climate change will likely lead to small-to-modest increases in metropolitan electricity sector GHG emissions. Depending on location and climate model, the change in emissions was found to be between -4 and 22% by the year 2030.We also found that changes in population and policy (the EPA’s Clean Power Plan) are at least as impactful (if not more impactful) on changes to metropolitan electricity sector GHG emissions by the year 2030. Overall, the analysis and results from this thesis provide insights into the importance of current and future drivers of metropolitan GHG emissions and help inform decision-making related to GHG mitigation. The integrated approach developed in the first component of our analysis could serve as a less “resource intensive” way for communities to regularly form an initial assessment of their emission profile, compare themselves to their peers, and prioritize their resource and planning efforts. The second component of our analysis reveals that as GHG inventory methods and policies continue to expand in scope and scale, the addition of previously “under-reported” emission sources will require policy makers to re-think how they develop and implement their GHG reduction plans. For example, decision-makers may need to modify the annual reduction rates they target or adjust the time horizon under which they implement their plans. Our analysis also provides a framework for expanding emissions inventories beyond the scale of the city limits. The third component of our analysis shows that the consideration of factors such as climatic temperature change, population change, and policy change should help decision-makers form a more complete understanding of their emission profile in the future and help them decide how best to prioritize their mitigation strategies.</p

The implications of scope and boundary choice on the establishment and success of metropolitan greenhouse gas reduction targets in the United States

In recent years, cities across the United States have devoted considerable attention and resources to developing greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories and climate action plans (CAPs). Using integrated metropolitan-level GHG estimates from publicly available national datasets, we explore the implications of inventory scope and boundary choices for 41 metropolitan areas across the United States. We quantify emissions from ‘under-reported’ activities (i.e. emissions from industrial processes and from transportation between urban and suburban areas) and ‘under-reported’ geographies (i.e. emissions from all activities occurring within the metropolitan area, but outside the city limits), and find that, in most cases, these ‘under-reported’ emissions constitute a considerable portion of total metropolitan emissions. Given the important role local CAPs continue to play in national-level GHG reduction efforts, there appears to be much to gain from continuing to expand the scope and boundaries of local-level GHG accounting and reduction actions. This analysis helps illustrate why transitions toward policies at the regional (as opposed to the city level) may be warranted, as well as highlights some key issues that may arise as local-level GHG policies continue to evolve and expand. For example, if local decision-makers choose to expand the scope and/or scale of their policies, GHG reduction plans may warrant substantial alterations to baseline emission levels, targeted annual emission reduction rates, overall emission target levels, or the number of years needed to achieve a desired emission reduction. Ultimately, the manner in which these policies evolve will determine their overall contribution to national and international climate mitigation efforts

Understanding Urban Flood Resilience in the Anthropocene: A Social-Ecological-Technological Systems (SETS) Learning Framework

Urban flooding is a major concern in many cities around the world. Together with continuous urbanization, extreme weather events are likely to increase the magnitude and frequency of flood hazards and exposure in populated regions. This article examines the changing pathways of flood risk management (FRM) in Portland, Oregon; Seoul, South Korea; and Tokyo, Japan, which have different histories of land development and flood severity. We used city governance documents to identify how FRM strategies have changed in the study cities. Using a combined framework of social learning with an integrated social–ecological–technological systems (SETS) lens, we show what components of SETS have been emphasized and how FRM strategies have diversified over time. In response to historical flood events, these cities built hard infrastructure such as levees to reduce flood risks. The recent paradigm shift in urban FRM, such as the adoption of socioecological elements in SETS, including floodplain restoration, green infrastructure, and public education, is a response to making cities more resilient or transformative to the anticipated future extreme floods. The pathways that cities have taken and the main emphasis across SETS elements differ by city, however, suggesting that opportunities exist for learning from each city’s experience collectively to tackle global flooding issues