{"id":3504273,"date":"2024-10-24T10:48:07","date_gmt":"2024-10-24T10:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3504273"},"modified":"2024-10-24T10:48:07","modified_gmt":"2024-10-24T10:48:07","slug":"coming-soon-to-a-country-near-you-the-not-so-subtle-shift-to-adaptation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2024-10-24\/coming-soon-to-a-country-near-you-the-not-so-subtle-shift-to-adaptation\/","title":{"rendered":"Coming soon to a country near you: The not-so-subtle shift to adaptation?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometime back,\u00a0Bloomberg Green<\/em>\u00a0posted an article about\u00a0Singapore spending $170 million to build climate defenses for a luxury store mall<\/a>. Located in \u201ca natural depression,\u201d the area was once home to nutmeg plantations and pepper farms, and like all the Elm Streets in America where elm trees no longer reside, it is dystopicly named \u201cOrchard Road.\u201d As it is low-lying, it\u2019s subject to flooding, and considering its economic value, the Singaporean government built a huge underground concrete storage tank and diversion canal to prevent flooding (which being a valley on a low-lying island will only become more of an issue).<\/p>\n

On the same day,\u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>\u00a0published an article about how \u2018climate cash\u2019 is pivoting to adaptation \u201cas mitigation efforts fall short.\u201d1<\/sup>\u00a0The article argues that more resources are being spent on adaptation, citing\u00a0a report on climate adaptation finance<\/a>, though digging deeper, relatively speaking, while adaptation finance is growing, it is growing significantly more slowly than climate mitigation finance.<\/p>\n

But attention to adaptation and resilience is definitely growing.\u00a0A new taxonomy for investors<\/a>\u00a0defines what a resilience investment is to help investors put money into resilience investments. And\u00a0another new report<\/a>\u00a0assesses the profitability of investing in climate hazard mitigation for real estate portfolios\u2014finding that there is a growing demand for adaptation solutions ($29 billion\/year through 2050) and that resilience measures could reduce risks by $45 billion total by 2050.2<\/sup><\/p>\n

In other words, the shift to adaptation is coming. And when it comes it will be Earth-shaking\u2014where collectively, those with resources start to give up the struggle to stop climate change, and instead focus primarily on protecting their own proverbial asses. Fortunately, we\u2019re not quite there yet. In fact, returning to the report\u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0mischaracterized, mitigation finance is growing far faster than adaptation finance,\u00a0reaching $1.3 trillion annually in 2021-2022, double the $653 billion averaged in 2019-2020.<\/a>\u00a0Adaptation finance, on the other hand, grew to $63 billion, a 28% increase year-on-year, but because mitigation finance grew much more, adaptation finance dropped from 7% to 5% of the total.
\n<\/a><\/p>\n

Which looks more resilient to you, Orchard Road in 1900 or 2012?\u00a0(Images from\u00a0G. R. Lambert & Company<\/a>\u00a0and from\u00a0Erwin Soo<\/a>\u00a0via Wikipedia)<\/em><\/p>\n

As the world turns\u2026 away from mitigation<\/h3>\n

But there could be a point when that shift comes, when financiers and companies (and even governments, cities, and individuals) recognize that systems they\u2019re trying to prop up aren\u2019t salvageable and shift focus to preserving their interests. A good way to describe this comes from a chintzy sci-fi TV series I\u2019ve been watching with my son. The show,\u00a0The 100<\/em>, follows the last human survivors after a global nuclear war. These last survivors are the descendants of those who were inhabiting humanity\u2019s 12 space stations at the time of the war. Instead of fighting (which seems improbable) they all banded together, literally to convert their stations, Voltron-style, into the \u201cArk\u201d (a not so subtle reference at that).<\/p>\n

But as the Ark starts to break down (faster than projected), one faction hijacks the last remaining \u201cexodus ship\u201d and launches their group to Earth (heavily damaging the Ark in the process and in a twist, all dying in the landing). Anyway, no need to recap all the other silliness of the show, the bigger point is that shifting from mitigation to adaptation is kind of like stealing the last exodus ship. You feel good about it as you\u2019re flying away, but ultimately, if you don\u2019t work together, the odds of survival drop dramatically (whether that\u2019s because of reduced capacity and resources or aggression of those deemed expendable).<\/p>\n

Too harsh? We\u2019re rapidly approaching the end game. We\u2019re still burning massive amounts of fossil fuels, forests are failing to absorb carbon,\u00a0global plastic production is increasing<\/a>, and increasing numbers of climate tipping points are already locked in. The obvious course of action is to enact emergency procedures, actually kind of like in the first episodes of\u00a0The 100<\/em>, where resources are carefully guarded and doled out. But instead, here on Earth, those with resources do what they deem best, whether that\u2019s developing rockets to colonize Mars or creating flood protections for a luxury mall in a low-lying area on a low-lying island.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The ark, a tiny closed system where every decision factors into a life or death calculus (and thus is treated as such).\u00a0(Image from\u00a0The 100 Wiki<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

The irony, as the article on Singapore\u2019s adaptation investments describes, is that this financially and ecologically expensive flood control system, built in 2018, has never been fully used since it was completed. That doesn\u2019t mean it won\u2019t be one day (possibly saving millions of dollars\u2019 worth of high-end luxury goods from being ruined), but that\u2019s $170 million dollars that could have been used elsewhere\u2014like planting forests, or covering roofs with gardens, or even better, a coordinated marketing campaign to get Singaporeans to consume less (in an ideal rather than capitalistic world perhaps).<\/p>\n

That said, investment in climate resilience and disaster preparedness can save a lot of money. One study by the\u00a0U.S. Chamber of Commerce<\/a>\u00a0found that these investments save $13 in economic impact, damage and clean up costs for every $1 spent. This seems like a good deal, especially if that money is being drawn not from mitigation efforts but from grey growth or, say, taxes drawn from excessive wealth or social ills.<\/p>\n

The What and How of Resilience<\/h3>\n

Ultimately, the question is two-fold: 1) What are we trying to make more resilient? Luxury shopping malls or local hospitals? And 2) How we go about it? Building networks of neighborhood parks that serve a dual role as flood control\u00a0or<\/em>\u00a0giant underground concrete storage tanks that offer no benefits except every 5-50 years when there\u2019s a flood?<\/p>\n

We\u2019re going to have to start making more and more difficult choices with the limited resources we have. When cathedrals like Notre Dame burn down, do we spend\u00a0$760 million<\/a>\u00a0to rebuild them, or do we accept that these will become beautiful ruins, like the Roman Colosseum, and use those millions instead to mitigate climate change\u2014particularly in ways that slow down growth and consumption (shifting to car-free city centers, reducing workweeks, encouraging smaller families, facilitating production of local food and backyard gardens, and a thousand other ways).3<\/sup><\/p>\n

Sadly, we\u2019ll probably fail to do that until we get a warning that our Ark has only a few days of air left and then we\u2019ll try to rally heroically, like the space station dwellers in\u00a0The 100<\/em>\u00a0did. They unhitched the space stations and launched them all to Earth, hoping against hope that at least one or two survived impact. And yes, some might make it (depending how badly we disrupt the Gaian systems we know and depend on) but the living is certainly not going to be luxurious after that.4<\/sup><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ruins can be beautiful, soulful reminders of paths not taken.\u00a0(Notre Dame ruin in a green urban future created by\u00a0Microsoft\u2019s Image Creator<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

Endnotes<\/h3>\n

1) Also coming out the next day,\u00a0The Wall Street Journal<\/a><\/em>\u00a0shared a video on how the efforts to build a new capital in Indonesia, Nusantara, is failing (the government is moving it in part because the current one, Jakarta, is sinking, which climate change is accelerating). That\u2019s $33 billion partly driven by a need to adapt to changing ecological realities.<\/p>\n

2) Which honestly isn\u2019t all that impressive when aggregated costs of adaptation solutions total $726 billion. I imagine a further refinement of when\/where to invest in these solutions is essential to making the math work.<\/p>\n

3) If you want more ideas,\u00a0here are 530 different policy proposals<\/a>\u00a0to facilitate degrowth!<\/p>\n

4) In a bit of irony, the space station dwellers turned out not to be the only remaining humans so their survival ultimately is moot (other than to them, of course). (And yes, for the sci-fi realists, in the real world, their musculoskeletal systems could have never handled return to Earth\u2019s gravity, having been born in orbit, but once again this is solved using the fantastical sci-fi device of \u201cartificial gravity.\u201d)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ultimately, the question is two-fold: 1) What are we trying to make more resilient? Luxury shopping malls or local hospitals? And 2) How we go about it? Building networks of neighborhood parks that serve a dual role as flood control\u00a0or\u00a0giant underground concrete storage tanks that offer no benefits except every 5-50 years when there\u2019s a flood?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128238,"featured_media":3504277,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79718,79720,213535],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3504273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment","category-society","category-society-featured"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3504273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128238"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3504273"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3504273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3504279,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3504273\/revisions\/3504279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3504277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3504273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3504273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3504273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}