Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

Climate change adaptation strategies and disaster risk reduction

in cities: connections, contentions, and synergies
William Solecki1, Robin Leichenko2 and Karen OBrien3
Abstract

Introduction

This paper reviews how the fields of disaster risk reduction

(DRR) and climate change adaptation (CCA) have contributed
to the understanding of how cities are responding to climate
change risks and hazards. A primary objective of the discussion
is to highlight the connections, tensions, and areas for crossfertilization between the two fields as defined within the recent
literature. The paper focuses on three sites of overlap that
include: (1) event likelihood: hazards, risks and uncertainty; (2)
impact parameters: exposure, vulnerability, and equity; and (3)
societal responses: adaptive capacity and resilience. Focusing
on cities in both developing and developed countries, the
authors assert that that the convergence and interplay between
the two fields has already had impacts on both areas of study.
The linkages between DRR and CCA strategies have started to
change how researchers and practitioners conceive and
approach the analysis and management of urban climate risk
and associated impacts and response activities. The prospect
for additional synergy is defined as strong.

Growing attention to the threat posed by climate change

within cities has led to increasing contact and interaction
between the fields of climate change adaptation (CCA) and
disaster risk reduction (DRR). These connections have, in
turn, fostered debates about the relative position of both
fields, and discussions about areas of overlap and synergy
[1,2,3,4,5,6,710,11,1223]. This paper examines
the connections and linkages between CCA and DRR
within the specific literature on climate change and cities.

Addresses
1
CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities, Hunter College, 695 Park
Avenue, New York, NY 10065, United States
2
Department of Geography, Rutgers University, 54 Joyce Kilmer Ave.,
Piscataway, NJ 08854, United States
3
Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo,
P.O. Box 1096, Blindern, 0317 Oslo, Norway
Corresponding author: Solecki, William (wsolecki@hunter.cuny.edu)

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2011, 3:135141

This review comes from a themed issue on Human Settlements
and Industrial Systems
Edited by Patricia Romero Lankao and David Dodman
Received 15 November 2010; Accepted 14 March 2011
Available online 16th April 2011
1877-3435/$ see front matter
# 2011 Published by Elsevier B.V.
DOI 10.1016/j.cosust.2011.03.001

The authors recognize the ongoing, critical debates that have

emerged regarding the relative role and perspective of both fields of
study disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. The
authors have formal training and professional work in both areas;
although in all cases the majority of their recent work has been within
the context of global environmental change, generally, and climate
change adaptation, specifically. It is from this position that the current
paper emerges.

www.sciencedirect.com

While there is considerable potential for synergy between

CCA and DRR, there are also many areas of contention that
emerge, including issues of territoriality between the disaster risk community, which has a long history of addressing
hazards and vulnerability, and the relatively new adaptation
community, which is concerned with vulnerability to
changes in hydrometeorological hazards and the context
in which these hazards occur. Points of contention are
related to differing interpretations of terminology, varying
institutional and governance responsibilities within cities,
and contextual differences within and among cities.
Rather than attempting to provide a comprehensive review
of either CCA or DRR, or cover all of the areas of connection and contention, the paper focuses on areas of overlap
between the two fields that have emerged with respect to
one of their common ambitions responding to the challenges of climate change in cities. These three areas of
overlap include: firstly, event likelihood: hazards, risks, and
uncertainty; secondly, impact parameters: exposure,
vulnerability, and equity; and thirdly, societal responses:
adaptive capacity and resilience. At the policy level within
cities, these three dimensions are linked to the need to
identify, assess, and respond to climatic risks of all types.

Cities and climate change: the context for

connection between CCA and DRR
Broadly defined, disaster risk reduction and climate change
adaptation are connected through a common goal: reducing
the impacts of extreme events and increasing urban resilience to disasters, particularly among vulnerable urban
populations. This section briefly examines how the underlying context for this connection between CCA and DRR
has emerged and developed in cities, and what new insights
on the topic can be gleaned from the recent literature.
Under climate change, the presence and interplay between more frequent extreme events and gradual shifts
are seen as part of an increasingly variable and dynamic
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2011, 3:135141

136 Human Settlements and Industrial Systems

earth system that is characterized by nonlinearity and

nonstationarity. Consequently, normal understandings
of hazards and extreme conditions may no longer be
reliable indicators for assessing current or future risk
[24]. Nonetheless, climate-related extreme events are
still typically regarded as shifts within the bounds of
current system variability, and urban adaptations to climate change are often conceptualized within existing
management cycles and planning activities. Adaptation
planning agendas in many cities are often driven by or
respond to national or international nongovernmental
organizations whose authority and legitimacy at the local
level are highly variable and/or limited [25]. If a formal
climate change adaptation agenda exists in a city, it is
often situated within environmental departments or ministries [26,27]. Strategies are often linked to specific urban
sectors, such as water supply and sanitation, public health,
energy, and transportation [28,29].
Disaster risk reductions trajectory toward the issue of
climate change and cities has come from a different
direction. In many cities, climate change impacts are
likely to be experienced through changes in climate
variability and extreme events that can interact with
existing vulnerabilities to result in disasters such as urban
flooding, landslides, and droughts. Consequently, city
governments responses to climate risk are often de facto
linked to hazard mitigation and disaster preparedness
strategies. The notion of disaster risk reduction has
developed out of longer term efforts to provide emergency disaster response and recovery services for
impacted populations and economies [30,31]. Disaster
risk reduction response to climate change includes several
phases, such as disaster risk assessment and preparedness
planning; disaster management including response, relief,
and recovery; and structural and nonstructural hazard
mitigation activities [3235]. In many cases, formalized
DRR planning and management in a city emerged after
the occurrence of a major catastrophe, and where the
potential for coherent large-scale governmental and/or
NGO response efforts was possible [36,37].
Over the past several decades it has become clear that
disasters seldom represent one-time events to be dealt with
through humanitarian responses and economic reconstruction [34,37,38]. As a result, the dominant paradigm has
shifted toward addressing the root causes of vulnerability to
disasters, either through structural or through nonstructural
adaptations [3941]. This paradigm focuses on risk assessment, vulnerability to multiple stressors, livelihoods and
well-being, institutional capacity building, risk mitigation
investments, catastrophe risk financing, as well as emergency preparedness [31,34,4245]. Recognition within
both the CCA and DRR communities of the importance
of combining multiple types of knowledge (e.g. expert
scientific knowledge and traditional or local knowledge)
has also led to renewed attention to the role of family and
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2011, 3:135141

community ties, social capital and networks, and community-based resource management in efforts to reduce
vulnerability [46,47].

Connections, contentions, and synergies

Strategies for both CCA and DRR rely on an analysis of
the underlying causes of exposure and vulnerability; both
seek to integrate these findings into planning, management, and action. Corresponding to the need to identify,
assess, and respond to climatic risks of all types, we focus
the review on three key areas of connection, contention,
and potential synergy between CCA and DRR. The first
relates to event likelihood, the second to impact
parameters, and the third to societal responses. Factors
that shape the interactions within each area include
convergent and divergent use of terminology, differing
institutional mandates of city agencies and organizations,
and varying contexts and character of different cities,
including location in a developed or developing country,
slower growth (e.g. London and New York), rapidly
developing (e.g. Mumbai and Shanghai), and rapidly
expanding population (e.g. Karachi and Lagos).
Risks, hazards, and uncertainty

Climate change affects the risks, hazards, and uncertainty

surrounding extreme events vulnerability and exposure
[48,49]. Climate change manifests as shifting temperatures and precipitation patterns, which can potentially
alter the probability of occurrence of extreme events [35].
In many cases, climate change may increase the risk of
hazards, particularly those that impact cities most frequently including flooding (both inland/street and
coastal) and heat waves [5052]. Warming temperatures
and melting glaciers are very likely to result in increased
sea-level rise, which enhances the likelihood of flooding
in coastal regions and of storm surge/wave damage and
shoreline erosion a particularly significant effect considering that urban populations and assets are becoming
ever-more concentrated in coastal cities. Changes in rainfall can lead to increased flooding or water shortages, and
some cities may experience both. Changing patterns of
tropical storms (especially cyclones) can potentially lead
to stronger storm surges, higher winds, and more intense
rainfall [53], affecting coastal populations and coastal
infrastructure not designed for these impacts. In short,
climate change has heightened the uncertainty surrounding the frequency and intensity of climate risk and
hazards within a locale, with a clear understanding that
past climate conditions are less and less useful as a guide
for future conditions [27,28,54]. The net effect of climate
change, however, is likely to increase the suite of hazards
present in any particular urban area.
With the transformation of existing hazards and the
emergence of new hazards, this changing risk profile
influences how disaster reduction strategies are conceived and executed [55]. Disaster preparedness planwww.sciencedirect.com

Climate change adaptation strategies and disaster risk reduction in cities Solecki, Leichenko and OBrien 137

ning is still predicated on understanding the hazard and

risk potential within the locale through analysis of
historical hazard events and ongoing socio-economic
and biogeophysical trends for example, increased
urbanization and changing flood risk, or population
expansion into more water-scarce or drought-prone
areas [56]. This suggests a need to review existing
and planned disaster risk reduction strategies, and to
develop greater flexibility in response to changing risk
profiles with an increased focus on enhancing resilience
and reducing vulnerability. In other words, current
disaster response strategies may need to be reexamined and modified in light of the possibility that
more frequent climate-related extreme events may
increasingly pose threats to life and property and be
associated with greater numbers of displaced people,
homelessness, and property damage [24,57,58]. As
such, climate change enhances the need for ongoing
reassessment of disaster planning assumptions in cities,
because of the potential for the change of the environmental baselines (e.g. coastal evacuation plans may
need to be re-evaluated because of heightened storm
surge and flooding potential) [28,59].
Exposure, vulnerability, and equity

Climate change in cities, in conjunction with other processes

and transformations associated with economic globalization,
international migration, and increased urbanization, influences population and asset exposure and vulnerability. This,
in turn, has significant equity implications that can further
exacerbate social vulnerability [37,60,61,62]. This cascade
of effects has a variety of implications for CCA and DRR, and
the connections between the two.
For example, under conditions of climate change more
disasters may occur over greater stretches of territory and
time [21,61]. This suggests that structural and nonstructural hazard mitigation policies connected to both DRR
and CCA may need to be scaled up to take into account
overlapping and in some cases competing disasters.
Climate change models and scenarios can provide new
information for the disaster risk reduction community on
changing exposures and vulnerabilities [62], which may
need to be integrated with longer term adaptation strategies. At the same time, in recent years, research on
climate variability and change has been making use of
risk probability statements [63,64], presenting further
opportunities for communication and cross-fertilization
between CCA and DRR communities.
Nonstructural mitigation approaches, such as resettlement projects that move people and infrastructure out
of highly vulnerable floodplains or coastal zones, may be
necessary on a much larger scale under conditions of
climate change. Such approaches require the insights
and expertise from both the CCA and DRR communities.
The DRR community brings a long history of lessons
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learned and well-developed tools to this issue, including

probabilistic risk modeling, risk and vulnerability mapping [65], and response and recovery planning. The DRR
community has established guidelines for international
collaboration, such as the Hyogo Framework for Action
20052015 (HFA), which was agreed to by 168 governments at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in
January 2005 with the intended outcome of substantial
loss reduction from disasters over the next 10 years.
Critical components of the HFA include the development of common protocols for data gathering and reporting, and for assessment [66,67]. Links between the CCA
and DRR communities could be strengthened through
the specification of common approaches to risk assessment methods, and development of common understandings of definitions and terms (e.g. the use of the term
mitigation differs between the communities).
The vulnerability of large-scale infrastructure projects
and/or capital improvement projects also needs to be
assessed in light of changing risk profiles [68]. Disaster
risk reduction projects that are currently considered to
be too costly or ambitious might become feasible and
necessary as climate change adaptation projects, justified by the possibility of more frequent disasters and
greater losses per event. This may require the development of new tools for assessing the relative distribution of
risks and benefits over time, comparative measures of
equity, and indices of distributional effects. Contributions from both the CCA and DRR communities would
be needed to develop effective tools and metrics that
capture both spatial and temporal aspects of equity and
distributional effects [6971].
Adaptive capacity and resilience

Another arena for linking DRR and CCA strategies is

through responses that enhance adaptive capacity and
resilience. Disaster risk reduction and climate change
adaptation both support capacity building among potentially impacted individuals and institutions [12,22,23].
Conditions of climate change and increased climate variability can affect the success of disaster risk reduction
strategies, manifested as the ability of city residents and
institutions to respond to perturbations [63,72,73]. For
example, climate change can raise the profile and importance of disaster risk reduction efforts [74] and connect
them to new and emerging public policy and development policy discourses, which are garnering increased
attention among city governments and local NGOs [75].
These linkages, while not privileging CCA above DRR,
can help foster increased adaptive capacity and resilience
of populations at risk, and of the institutions and agencies
working to respond to the challenges of climate change
and disaster risk reduction.
In a similar manner, the administrative position of DRR
within city governments can provide response capacity
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2011, 3:135141

138 Human Settlements and Industrial Systems

advantages for those interested in fostering higher visibility for CCA strategies. Formal disaster risk reduction
agendas have been built up over the past decades in the
emergency response and public safety departments in
many cities. This presence has helped the climate change
adaptation agenda to evolve from its current, often-constrained situation in environmental departments [76].
Furthermore, planning for DRR often already has welldeveloped platforms and coordination mechanisms at
multiple scales of governance (national, state/province,
regional, and local). Climate change adaptation can
potentially be linked to these as the strategies and mechanisms to implement them are developed [77,78]. As
such, disaster risk reduction provides one of the main
entry points to CCA for both decision-makers and the
general public. Making localities more resilience in the
face of current as well as future climate risk are aspirations
relevant to all urban-focused stakeholder groups.
Simultaneously, climate change heightens awareness and
concerns for more intense and frequent climate-related
perturbations, and demand for policies that facilitate
adaptive response learning systems [79,80]. These connections can encourage governments to recognize the
importance of disaster risk reduction at times other than
during and immediately after a disaster event, and to
focus on adaptive capacity in the context of changing risk
and hazard levels. As these concerns are raised, so is the
focus on flexible disaster risk reduction strategies and
planning. Initiatives designed to enhance resilience are
presented as one of the best no regrets actions that can
be taken in the short term to reduce disaster vulnerability both from current threats and from those now
emerging from climate change [81,82,83] and for
longer term disaster risk reduction, particularly nonstructural hazard mitigation strategies. Examples of actions
that take in both CCA and DRR include resettlement
away from low-lying coastal sites (which will be affected
by sea-level rise, increased storm surge, and possible
inundation), and strategies focused on particularly vulnerable populations, such as the poor, recent migrants, and
women [75,8486]. Many of these actions often community-based also have incorporated ecosystem principles to enhance opportunities for sustainability, as well
as disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation
[1,26,87]. For example, in several urban contexts
coastal vulnerability reduction and resilience planning
are incorporating soft ecosystem-based strategies
of coastal protection and restoration efforts involving
tidal wetlands, mangroves stands, or other habitats
[1,26,87].

Building on connections and embracing

diversity
While many cities are actively engaging in climate change
adaptation (e.g. Durban, London, Miami, Mexico City,
New York, Quito, and Seattle) [26,88,89], the response
Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability 2011, 3:135141

to the emerging scientific assessments of climate change

impacts within cities remains largely diffuse and uneven,
often driven by a single agency and/or a concerned official
without defined legislative mandates, typically acting
without significant financial or human resources needed
to implement action plans. Better recognition of the
linkages and distinctions between CCA strategies and
DRR can promote more structured and coordinated planning and communication as well as potential synergies as
cities prepare for climate change.
The blending of initially diverse policy and research
arenas is not without precedent within the field of disaster
risk reduction. During the 1980s, the previously disparate
streams of natural hazards and technological hazards
(including hazardous chemical releases and exposures)
effectively came together in an all-hazard approach to
management in many cities. Lessons learned from this
experience could contribute to an understanding of how
to better coordinate the relative strengths and contributions of CCA and DRR to the everyday, on-the-ground
challenge of responding to climate change in cities.
The ongoing interaction between the two communities
also reveals a number of commonalities in terms of both
research needs and barriers to effective action. Important
to both are information and data deficiencies, administrative and governance constraints, funding limitations, as
well as a need to define basic metrics of progress for
example, measures of increased resilience and adaptive
capacity and decreased vulnerability [90]. Ultimately, the
types of interactions, contact points, and discourses
among researchers and practitioners particularly how
they conceive and approach the management of urban
climate risks and associated impacts are likely to influence the success of climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction strategies, with implications for the
security and well-being of urban populations.

Acknowledgements
The authors thank Lesley Patrick for research assistance. They also thank the
journal editors and the reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

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