Guest editorial

Citation

Amen, M. and Harris, R. (2009), "Guest editorial", Management of Environmental Quality, Vol. 20 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/meq.2009.08320daa.001

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Management of Environmental Quality: An International Journal, Volume 20, Issue 4

About the Guest Editors

Mark AmenAcademic Director of the Patel Center for Global Solutions and a member of the faculty in the Department of Government and International Affairs at the University of South Florida (USF). He received his PhD in Political Science from the Universite de Geneve, Institut universitaire de hautes etudes internationales and has been at USF since 1982. He has been principal investigator for more than $8 million in federal funding from the US Department of Education to support research and education relations to globalization. Amen is the Deputy Editor of Globalizations (Taylor & Francis) and his recent publications include Cultures of Globalization: Coherence, Hybridity, and Contestation, Routledge Press, 2008 (edited with K. Archer, M. Bosman, and E. Schmidt); Relocating Global Cities: From the Center to the Margins, Rowman & Littlefield, 2006 (edited with K. Archer and M. Bosman); and “The urgent need for global action to combat climate change,” Globalizations, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 49-53, March 2008 (with M. Martin Bosman and Barry K. Gills).

Rebecca HarrisAssistant Academic Director of the Patel Center for Global Solutions at the University of South Florida (USF). She served as the Managing Chair of the Coastal Cities Summit, hosted by the International Ocean Institute-USA and the City of St Petersburg, which took place 17-20 November, 2008 in St Pete Beach, FL. She received her PhD in Economics from The George Washington University and her BA in Economics from Georgetown University. Dr Harris is the Book Review Editor for Globalizations (Taylor & Francis) and she edited Globalization and Sustainable Development: Issues and Applications (Patel Center, 2005), based on two symposia held at the USF.

Introduction

Coastal cities are now home to over 40 percent of the world’s population. As coastal city populations continue to grow, the impacts of both human-induced and natural disasters become all the more pressing. As the planners of the first Coastal Cities Summit: Values and Vulnerabilities recognized, the first responders to any urban calamity are its city leaders; thus, this Summit was designed to answer to the specific needs of those at the frontlines of coastal cities. With attendees from local governments, non-governmental organizations, academics and the private sector, the Coastal Cities Summit addressed a number of challenges faced by coastal cities and gave participants an opportunity to consider the effectiveness of various attempts to meet these challenges. The papers in this issue document how complex are the challenges for coastal cities throughout the world and how innovative researchers and practitioners can be in attempting to meet these challenges with sustainable solutions.

Increased global opportunities and threats in the twentieth century led to a demographic transformation around the world with an increase in migration from rural to urban areas, both within and between countries. As a result, for the first time, starting in 2008, over half of the world’s population is estimated to live in urban areas (www.prb.org). Economic opportunity and standard of living are often the motives for such migration, in tandem with the decline of prospects in rural areas. For migrants making an international move, cities offer a greater chance of acceptance and employment than other parts of the new host country. The chances that a migrant chooses a coastal city are quite likely; 35 of the largest cities in the developed world are either coastal or along a river bank, while 18 of Asia’s 20 largest cities are coastal, on river bank or in a delta, according to UN-Habitat. UN-Habitat maps (www.unhabitat.org) also show nearly 20 African cities of 1 million or more people at risk from sea-level rise, with similar statistics from Latin America and the Caribbean (including the mega-cities of Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, each with over 10 million inhabitants).

Historically, cities have sprung up along coastlines as global exploration, imperialism and international trade grew. While coastal cities migrants worldwide have shared some of the “push” factors from rural areas and “pull” factors to the cities, these experiences differ depending on if the locations are in developed or developing countries. In the US, for example, movement toward the southeastern coastal cities has been partly for the economic opportunities presented there, but also out of a simple desire for better weather and the luxury of coastal living. On the other hand, in many poorer countries, movement to urban areas is often an economic necessity, with (often unrealistic) hopes of climbing out of poverty.

Challenges

Many coastal cities share the same challenges, regardless of location, though many are particular to the developing world, where, unfortunately, the capacity to deal with such problems is much more limited. While some of these challenges are shared by inland cities, the fact that they occur along coastlines makes them all the more complex. Global climate change offers one such example, as noted in Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) released by the United National Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2007. While obviously impacting all cities (and for that matter, all rural areas), the interaction of climate change with coastal urban areas has particular challenges:

… [T]he effects of climate change will be felt everywhere, with heat waves and hurricanes increasing in strength, hundreds of millions, particularly in Africa (and Asia), will face severe water shortages, and global food production will decrease; residents of many of the world’s vulnerable coastal cities will be susceptible to serious levels of flooding, as global sea levels continue to rise (fed in part by melting polar ice sheets and global deglaciation trends); … both mitigation and adaptation are necessary together to reduce these risks (Amen et al., 2008, p. 50).

A 2007 OECD report(www.oecd.org/dataoecd/59/36/39729575.pdf) suggests that by 2070, 150 million people living in just the world’s major port cities will face risks caused by flooding induced by sea level rise. Kolkata alone will have up to 14 million people exposed to the risks of sea level rise. UN-Habitat estimates that there are 3,351 cities of all sizes situated in low-lying coastal zones that would be threatened by sea level rise. Global climate change will also threaten urban water supplies, lead to an increase in urban heat islands, and lead to an increase in extreme weather events.

Rapid urbanization, in developing and developed countries alike, puts stresses on potable water systems. In coastal cities, demand for water leads to over-pumping of groundwater sources, which can cause land subsidence and salinization of water sources. Similarly, inadequate wastewater treatment systems and solid waste and sanitation systems can pollute coastlines and near shore waters. Urbanization also results in loss of habitat as urban areas expand outward (often of the very resources that attracted new populations to the area), increases pressure on transportation and education systems, and increases unemployment, crime, and slum areas. These problems invite civil unrest in urban areas facing resource scarcity (e.g. water) or fragile political situations. Port cities have a particular set of challenges related to security. They also must respond to and attempt to reconcile the tensions among competing interests, one example of which is between developers and those who depend on the ocean for their livelihoods (e.g. fishermen).

Solutions

In order to face these challenges, coastal city leaders must first have solid information upon which to inform their decision-making. Scientists today offer increasingly sophisticated methods for predicting the physical impacts of climate change and sea level rise, hurricane occurrence, and storm surge and flooding. This information can be integrated into economic models that put a value on those impacts and their secondary impacts on the rest of society. Given solid information, city leaders should rely on a set of “best practices” for policymaking, beginning with the need to respond quickly to the challenges listed above. Governments also need to communicate this urgency with their constituents through public awareness campaigns, which can include messages of where and how to live sustainably. Governments should also offer incentives so that their residents protect themselves from coastal dangers (e.g. hurricane-proofing homes) and minimize their own ecological footprints (e.g. using water efficiently). As in any question of a public good, stewardship of coastal cities will require buy-in from all affected sectors, including civil society, private companies, and multiple levels of government.

Policymakers face a natural tension between mitigating hazards and adapting to them. Proponents of mitigation try to reduce the causes of those hazards (e.g. reducing greenhouse gas emissions that cause global climate change) whereas those who advocate adaptation try to reduce the impacts (e.g. reinforcing seawalls in the face of increased storm surges). However, in today’s world, mitigation and adaptation must work in concert; clearly, we are already behind in terms of mitigating global climate change and therefore must adapt some of our activities in reaction, while at the same time, we must still try to curb our greenhouse gas emissions so we do not make climate change even more drastic. For coastal cities, mitigation efforts include finding alternative sources of energy, possibly including ocean energy; designing eco-friendly activities, such as sustainable tourism and sustainable fisheries; and investing in rural areas to decrease the tide of migrants to cities. Adaptation efforts include beach renourishment and shoreline hardening; desalinating ocean water for drinking water; and strict regulations on buildings in vulnerable areas.

Moving forward

Some still claim that changes in the natural environment, whether they are related to global warming or natural disasters like tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, and forest fires, are part of a long-term ecosystem cycle change that goes on independent of human causation. Yet – and here we mention only one example of environmental degradation – there is mounting evidence, compiled over the last twenty years by the IPCC and others, that fossil fuel uses by factories, cars, and power plants have caused a dramatic increase in carbon dioxide emissions and led to the greenhouse effect. The ensuing rise in temperature has meant that tropical zones are moving north, glaciers are melting and sea/ocean levels are rising.

The carbon dioxide emissions evidence by itself ought to be sufficient to set off the “alarm bells” for those coastal city managers. Michael Orbach (2008) of the Nichol School of the Environment at Duke University did just such bell ringing during his keynote presentation at the Summit when he noted that now is past the time to begin the defense of all coastal cities – a defense that must include plans for dealing with inundated and new infrastructures and natural areas such as estuarine habitats that accommodate new coastlines. Yet the public and the policy communities in coastal cities do not demonstrate a sense of urgency about the need to meet the challenges now. Therefore, this issue begins with Ronald Baird’s “Coastal Urbanization: the Challenge of Management Lag” to underscore that the public and the policy communities “under-appreciate” the impacts increasing urbanization is and will continue to have on the natural environment. Baird finds that the expected growth in urban population by another 2.1 billion people in the next two decades will result in a “dramatic increase in human induced stressors to coastal ecosystems”. Negative impacts are occurring on a daily basis and at a scale that far exceeds actual population growth rates; yet public policy seems ill-prepared for and, even worse, disinterested in the need to either mitigate or adapt to the environmental impacts of the rising percentage of that population that lives in coastal cities.

Commitment alone is not sufficient. Some responses, however unintended, can do more harm than good. Russell Jones and Elizabeth Strange use an inundation model to specify the impacts of particular kinds of responses to sea level rise. In “An analytical tool for evaluating the impacts of sea level rise response strategies,” they show the negative effects on marsh-dependent species (i.e. finfish and shrimp) and on bird species (i.e. songbirds and dabbling ducks) when property owners and municipal leaders construct seawalls and similar structures in response to sea level rise. These results demonstrate the importance of undertaking studies that tease out the implications of various human responses for the natural environment. Some responses can be cost-ineffective and/or bring about negative and irreversible impacts on coastal habitats and species.

How can we know which policy options or business solutions to an environmental problem should be implemented because they do more good than harm? As we mentioned earlier, evidence must be the basis for effective decision-making about and management of coastal city problems. And that evidence must be rooted in local conditions. Humans and their ecosystems constitute complex webs of relationships whose patterns vary considerably from community to coastal community. Solutions must be tweaked to accommodate the ways in which these global problems appear in particular cities. While the IPCC 2007 report convincingly predicts that sea levels will continue to rise throughout the current century, the implications of this for local policy can often times be unclear. Hence, local studies that concern specific effects of sea level rise on various coastal areas throughout the world are critical preconditions for public policies to be acceptable and effective. David Anning, Dale Dominey-Howes, and Geoff Withycombe exemplify good research design in their proposed study of Sydney, “Valuing climate change impacts on sydney beaches to inform coastal management decisions: a research outline.” This project, the data-collection portion of which is now underway, illustrates how to solve one quite complicated aspect of the response to sea level rise: economic valuation (e.g. related to recreation and tourism) of natural resources like the beaches and reserves scattered along Sydney’s estuaries and ocean coastline. The study will also provide local government with a range of cost-effective options it can consider in deciding how to adapt and preserve these resources as sea levels continue to rise.

While the study by Anning et al. wrestles with putting an economic value on non-marketed goods, Mary and Richard Snow demonstrate how Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are used to identify physical effects of sea level rise. Their research, presented in “Modeling, monitoring and mitigating sea level rise,” gives case study evidence from one urban community on the Atlantic coast of Florida that helps both local authorities and citizens to understand how high tides and storm surges affect coastal communities that lie below five feet.

In “Coastal adaptation and economic tipping points,” Travis Franck uses a multisectoral, dynamic feedback model to identify the effectiveness of various strategies to adapt in response to environmental challenges like sea level rise and tropical storms. Franck is specifically interested in identifying how various adaptation strategies such as levee construction affect how residents perceive environmental risk and then change their behavior accordingly. He finds that levee construction may create “a false sense of safety” and encourage allow economic growth along coasts. This growth may be irreversibly destroyed if a devastating storm overpowers these levees. Franck’s model attempts to account for the circumstances in which such destruction occurs in order to inform policymakers’ decisions regarding coastal risk and adaptation.

In his presentation to the Summit, Filipe Decorte (2008), Coordinator of Disaster Management Programmes for UN-Habitat, described the “surge of informal settlements” throughout many parts of the developing world that have made the poor even more vulnerable to the increasing number of natural disasters (www.coastalcities.org/agenda.html). Current settlement patterns in the developing world can be traced to colonial relationships, the vestiges of which continue to influence human behavior. Three notable trends inherited from the colonial experience continue make populations increasingly vulnerable to natural disasters: the concentration of populations in coastal cities; weak political institutions; and dual-economies where the majority of the population continues to suffer from a subsistence lifestyle. Amani Ishemo describes just such an instance of this in his paper on the “Vulnerability of Coastal Urban Settlements in Jamaica.” He claims that “[n]atural disasters have increased in number, scale and intensity due to the increased level of settlement vulnerability.” As Ishemo notes, Jamaica’s coastal population is rapidly expanding but the capacity of government to reduce this vulnerability is not likely, given both the weak economic base – a “colonial legacy” – and widespread poverty throughout the country.

We conclude this special issue with Joanna Dyl’s analysis of how human development exacerbated the seismic activity in San Francisco, thereby contributing to the 1906 earthquake. In “Lessons from history: coastal cities and natural disaster”, she describes how the coast was transformed by building homes and businesses on mud flats, shoreline swamps, and cove waters. Dyl uses this historical disaster as a case study from which to draw out lessons for today, including that cities and the natural environment are mutually constituted and that, most importantly, “coastal environments need to be understood as naturally dynamic”, with disaster sometimes an inherent force within this dynamic.

In sum, these papers demonstrate there is much work to be done to secure the future of coastal cities throughout the world. We know that sizeable numbers of the public as well as of the policy and research communities are well on the way to appreciating and attempting to understand the critical circumstances in which far too many coastal cities now find themselves. Yet, as these papers confirm, coastal cities have a long way to go in mitigating further ecosystem damage and in adapting to current ecosystem conditions. As Dyl’s work affirms, we can learn much from the historical record; yet one challenge is to now take the time to do so – and with the purpose and resolve to discover how coastal communities of today and tomorrow can find their proper place within the ecosystem on which they are inevitably dependent.

Mark Amen, Rebecca HarrisPatel Center for Global Solutions, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA