For a long time the Rockefeller Foundation had understood that changes in agriculture fostered moves away from the land in many poorer countries. Even in Asia, where most people still live in rural communities, the migration to cities had been rapidly accelerating. In 2010, for the first time, more people around the world were living in urban than in rural areas.
A farmer works on his plot of land, part of an urban farming project run by the Chiang Rai municipality, on Nov 1 last year.
Appreciating the seriousness of these basic realities has led the foundation to commit to several major initiatives, each receiving detailed study and planning. Three of these initiatives, rolled out in the last few years, owe much to the foundation’s legacy in Thailand. They are the “Climate Change Resilience Initiative”, the “Transforming Health Systems Initiative” (THS), and the “Disease Surveillance Networks Initiative” (DSN). Each represents a more “systems-oriented” approach than was the case with previous efforts, which centred on programmes, projects, and themes.
The “Climate Change Resilience Initiative” is based on the important insight that furthering development in the 21st century requires an ability of the poorer populations in both urban and rural areas to cope with the consequences of climate change. The foundation’s initiative draws attention to the looming effects of climate change in an effort to mobilise capacities and action by governments, NGOs, other foundations, and public and private donors. The climate change initiative focuses on Asia, Africa, and policymakers in the US. Its goal is to devise strategies for action in cities and rural areas, which can become models to be replicated in places outside of Asia and Africa.
Climate change manifests itself in many interconnected ways. Average increases in temperatures over the last 15 years are obvious to both scientists and average citizens. Rising temperatures result in a rise in sea levels; more numerous and more powerful storms, resulting in higher levels of precipitation; reduced biodiversity; and persistent loss of arctic ice as well as glaciers. These climate events contribute to — if they do not cause outright — increasing salinity in fresh water, coastal erosion, and flooding. Rising temperatures and rainfall also increase the threats from dengue fever and malaria, and from spawning environments conducive to other diseases.
A woman checks a community evacuation plan in Hat Yai on Oct 22 last year.
To manage the climate change initiative in urban areas of Asia and Southeast Asia, the foundation supports the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN), designed to cope jointly with three of the developing world’s most difficult problems: poverty, urbanisation, and climate change. As foundation president Judith Rodin observed in discussing ACCCRN: “Since it may be too late to stop the global warming that’s already occurred, we also must figure out how to survive it. ... There is far less attention paid to adaptation, what needs to be done to help people and environments cope with what’s already occurred and with what’s coming.”
The foundation committed US$59 million in 2008 to a seven-year programme. Ten cities of varying characteristics in India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam were selected to be part of the first phase of the initiative, with the hope that they would become models for a much larger set of cities. Two of these pioneering cities are in Thailand. Chiang Rai is relatively small with a growing tourist trade and strong continuing ties to its rural surroundings. Deforestation and poor drainage have made periodic flooding a serious problem that has been aggravated by climate change and poor urban planning. Hat Yai is larger and much more urban than Chiang Rai. As a destination for tourists and a centre for manufacturing and service industries related to fisheries and agriculture, Hat Yai faces problems of flooding and, in addition, landslides.
ACCCRN planners selected different urban contexts to examine how cities cope with problems produced by climate change. Collectively, assembling the different experiences of the participating cities will widen the understanding of how they might cope with not only current but future consequences of climate change. Each city goes through a process of intensive capacity development, research and multi-stakeholder dialogue to generate a locally-owned Climate Resilience Strategy.
With this strategy in hand, civic projects are prioritised. In some cases, the foundation complements local resources. In Thailand, many of these projects focus on flood management, ecosystem restoration and land-use planning. The work is carried forward by city governments, research centres and NGOs. Ultimately, the plan is sequenced over four phases. In its final phase the ACCCRN network will have produced hands-on methods applicable across hundreds of other rapidly growing cities in Asia. The pioneering efforts in Chiang Rai and Hat Yai are intended to catalyse a national effort in Thailand in the years ahead.
The four countries involved in the network — India, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam — represent many different languages, ethnicities, and religious groups. Government organisations, as well as political and interest (stakeholder) groups, operate differently at the national, regional, and local levels in each country. Flexibility was a key element in designing an operational framework for ACCCRN, because the 10 participating cities have different experiences with poverty, urbanisation, and climate change.
They also have different levels of expertise to cope with these problems. Despite elements of diversity, the partners in the programme are responsible for integrating local experience and knowledge with global science about climate change. Local experts and key city stakeholders have to be deeply involved in applying the larger understanding of global warming and its consequences, and in the practical matters that affect the everyday lives of urban residents. In sum, ACCCRN organisers planned the network to involve as many local representatives as possible not only with their counterparts in other cities, but also with national and international experts in climate science, disaster risk assessment and abatement.
Networking among the partners was not the only long-term objective. Horizontal sharing of experience and expertise is essential for developing practical means of predicting, reducing, and coping with the consequences of climate change. In the end, however, what has been learned through ACCCRN will also be shared “vertically”. The long-term goal is to create national and international models for adapting poor urban populations to climate change, to bring about resilience in the face of serious future environmental challenges.
Climate change poses challenges for farmers and city dwellers in northern Thailand.
