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3
Coping with Seasonal-to-Interannual Climatic Variation
The effects of climatic variations on any social system result
from the combination of experienced weather-related conditions and
the ways that the social system anticipates and responds to these
conditions. Throughout human history, societies have expected
seasonal changes similar to the local historical averages and a
certain amount of variation around these averages, but, despite
their efforts to forecast these variations, they have not typically
counted on much skill in predicting them. Thus, they have organized
themselves to expect climatic surprises and to deal with their
impacts after the fact. The newly developing scientific skill in
climate forecasting may fundamentally change the ways social
systems cope with climatic variation by reducing the magnitude or
frequency of surprise and by providing more time to prepare for
climatic events. The results are likely to be beneficial overall;
however, there may be different effects on different social systems
and on different individuals and organizations operating within
those systems.
To understand the effects of climate forecasts on human
well-being and their potential to benefit people, it is therefore
important to begin by examining how social systems currently cope
with climate variability. Such coping involves both activities
undertaken in anticipation of climatic uncertainty, sometimes
called ex ante or risk management strategies, and responses to
experienced climatic events on the part of individuals and
organizations, sometimes called ex post or crisis response
strategies. The net result of these coping strategies may or may
not be an improvement in outcomes for the society or for specific
segments of it. A
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variety of insurance mechanisms create net social benefits by
spreading risk over a risk-averse population, and many public
investments in infrastructure, public health, and hazard management
programs effectively reduce climate-related damages. However, some
individual or community-level risk-management or crisis response
activities can have adverse impacts on other parties, so that the
actions do not necessarily improve overall societal well-being.
There have been many studies of the ways particular social
systems cope with particular kinds of climatic variations, but
there is as yet no general theory of such coping. This chapter
begins to develop a framework for analyzing coping systems by
distinguishing between ex ante and ex post strategies, identifying
some subtypes within these, and distinguishing among the actions of
individuals and of public and private organizations, the behavior
of markets or informal exchange relationships, and the roles of
legal and other institutions. The chapter examines available
knowledge about coping systems for climate variability in order to
characterize the state of knowledge; identify ways in which coping
strategies may shape the impacts climatic variations have on the
people and groups that use them; and define gaps in knowledge that,
if filled, could help increase the usefulness of climate
forecasting for humanity.
We first examine human coping mechanisms in several
weather-dependent. sectors of human activity, including agriculture
and water management. We then briefly discuss some systems of human
activity that have a primary function of coping with climate
variability, such as insurance and emergency preparedness. The
chapter shows the wide variety of coping strategies and identifies
some of the factors that determine the coping strategies available
to particular actors and that shape the outcomes they experience
from climate variations. These factors include the availability of
insurance and insurance-like systems for making up for losses,
integration into global markets, the cognitive and economic
resources available to actors engaged in an affected activity, and
the ways in which these resources are distributed.
Coping in Weather-Sensitive
Sectors
Human activities are sometimes affected directly by climatic
events, such as when great floods destroy lives and property. Many
of the important effects of climatic events are indirect, however,
operating through biophysical processes on which human welfare
depends. Examples include the effects of climate on crop
production, fisheries, forests, water resources, and the ecology of
pests and diseases. This section illustrates the variety of systems
that humanity has developed to cope with the
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effects of climate variability on weather-dependent sectors of
human life and indicates the general state of knowledge about
them.
Agriculture
Agriculture, including both plant cultivation and livestock
production, is a sector that is heavily dependent on the amount and
timing of rainfall, which in many areas of the world are highly
variable. For example, the dry rangelands of Africa, which receive
less than 600mm of rain per year, experience some of the greatest
climatic variability on the continent. El Niño/Southern
Oscillation (ENSO) events have caused droughts in southern Africa
with a frequency of three to six years since the 1950s (Trenberth
and Shea, 1987; Scoones, 1992). In the semiarid tropical zone of
India, cultivation must wait for the onset of monsoon rains because
of the hardness of the soil, and the timing of the monsoon onset is
highly variable. Some agricultural systems are also highly
sensitive to climate parameters other than rainfall, such as the
occurrence of killing frosts, the length of the growing season, and
the number of growing degree-days.
In all areas of the world and at all levels of economic
development, human cultures inhabiting variable environments have
developed strategies and behaviors designed specifically to
ameliorate the effects of climatic variability on their subsistence
(Galvin, 1992; Halstead and O'Shea, 1989). Indeed, in a variety of
cultures and environments that exist under the stress of high
climatic variability, primary cultural characteristics such as
social relations, land tenure systems, institutions, laws, and land
use practices are organized as coping mechanisms for dealing with
climatic variability (Minc and Smith, 1989; Legge, 1989; Blaikie
and Brookfield, 1987; Halstead and O'Shea, 1989; Fratkin et al.,
1994).
The methods by which individuals directly engaged in
agricultural production cope with climatic variability can be
classified according to whether these strategies and behaviors
affect production (the sensitivity of agricultural output and
incomes to climatic events) or consumption (the ability of
agriculturists to acquire food and other goods and services in
spite of climate-related fluctuations in their agricultural
production). Coping mechanisms can also be classified by the timing
of the actions relative to the occurrence of the climate event.
Actions taken prior to the realization of a particular climate
event, such as the onset of the monsoon or unusually heavy rainfall
(ex ante or risk management actions), are based on expectations of
the likelihood of bad or good events, which are in turn based on
primarily historical experience. Activities that take place after
the event has occurred (ex post) attempt to ameliorate or exploit
what has already occurred.
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Table 3-1 provides a diagram of this four-way classification of
the various coping strategies employed by individuals and
production units engaged in agricultural production and lists a
number of coping strategies of each type that are employed across
different societies of the world. The specific array of strategies
observed in particular parts of the world will differ, but in all
societies some strategies appearing in each quadrant of the table
are used.
An important feature of coping systems is that the strategies in
the four quadrants are interdependent. For example, if farmers
could alter their crop mix or inputs without cost to take advantage
of climatic events after they occur, they would have less need to
engage in production practices that reduce the sensitivity of their
incomes to climatic variability. Similarly, if farmers' incomes
were perfectly insured against reductions due to adverse climate
outcomes, they would need to engage less in other ex ante coping
strategies that reduce the risk of income loss, and they would have
less need to accumulate assets as a buffer against income loss.
Another important feature of agricultural coping evident in the
table is that many of the ex ante coping strategies that reduce
sensitivity to climatic variations are undertaken mainly to reduce
the risk of extreme negative events. For example, buying insurance
involves continually paying a small cost to reduce this risk; crop
diversification and other hedging
TABLE 3-1 Strategies for Coping with Climatic
Variations in Agriculture
Temporal Relationship to Resolution of
Uncertainty
Consumption Versus Production
Ex Ante (Based on expectation)
Ex Post (Based on event realization)
Consumption: reduce impact of fluctuations in
output on access to consumer goods and services
Accumulate assets
Buy or sell assets
Purchase crop or weather insurance
Receive or provide transfers
Make a sharecropping contract
Seek nonagricultural employment
Arrange to share with family, community
Cash insurance check
Diversify income sources
Accept government disaster payments
Production: reduce adverse impact of climate event
on agricultural output and profits; exploit opportunities
Diversify crops, livestock
Reduce or intensify inputs
Select climatically robust seeds, animals
Change crops
Invest or disinvest in irrigation, fertilizer,
etc.
Move production
Irrigate fields
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strategies involve forgoing potential advantage from positive
climatic events to reduce the risk of disaster.
For most areas of the world, ex post strategies have limited
value or are very costly. For example, U.S. citrus growers
occasionally use grove heaters or, more frequently, spray trees
with water to avoid the consequences of frost (Miller, 1988).
African herders who experience adverse climate outcomes respond by
migration, even making extraordinary movements under severe drought
stress, including leaving the pastoral system until the
perturbation passes (Coughenour et al., 1985; Ellis et al., 1987;
Galvin, 1992).
Many of the ex ante production techniques listed in the table
are common across many societies around the world. An example is
hedging strategies to spread the risk of extremely negative
climatic events. African pastoralists spatially separate their
herds, and Indian farmers use diversified seed types and farm on
multiple plots. Similarly, in the Great Plains of the United
States, many farmers incorporate drought-resistant but low-profit
grain sorghum with their drought-susceptible but highprofit
corn-soybean rotations in anticipation of the adverse consequences
of drought for their incomes. And both U.S. and African farm
households are characterized by diversified occupational
portfolios, with family members engaged in both agricultural and
nonagricultural activities. The worldwide pervasiveness of such ex
ante hedging strategies for both production and consumption
suggests that the cost-effectiveness of ex post strategies is
limited in most societies and that insurance—an alternative ex
ante strategy—is either incomplete or more costly than the
other ex ante strategies.
The size and distribution of the impacts of climatic variability
depend strongly on the array of coping strategies available to and
employed by agricultural producers. These in turn vary according to
agroclimatic conditions and the structure of markets and other
institutions. Groups facing the same climatic variability are more
or less vulnerable to extreme negative climatic events depending on
their ability to make use of particular coping strategies and
methods. For example, low-income farmers in developing countries,
who comprise a large proportion of the world population, are less
able than their wealthier neighbors to accumulate assets while
meeting minimum subsistence requirements; such poor farmers are
thus less able to maintain their consumption by drawing from their
savings levels when they experience particularly low levels of
rainfall (Rosenzweig and Wolpin, 1993). Since many of these
countries lack developed insurance markets, an inability to
accumulate assets in anticipation of bad years makes poor farmers
especially vulnerable. Because of their great vulnerability, the
poor in less developed countries may benefit
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most from improved climate forecasts, provided that they can
gain access to resources needed to respond appropriately to
forecast information.
By contrast, producers who have accumulated wealth or are
well-insured may benefit little from skillful climate forecasts in
an extremely bad crop year because their climatic risks are already
covered. In the United States, for example, federally subsidized
crop insurance to cover climatic risk has been available to U.S.
farmers in its present from roughly since 1948 (Easterling, 1996).
Moreover, U.S. agricultural history is marked by instances in which
the federal government has provided insurance-like income support
to farmers suffering income losses from extreme climatic events. In
this case, the cost of unfavorable climatic conditions may be
shared widely among taxpayers and the benefits of improved
forecasts in bad years may flow mainly to the national treasury as
avoided costs. In good years, however, farmers may be able to use
skillful forecasts to increase their output. (Subsidized insurance
and income-support programs may alter farmers' coping strategies by
encouraging them to gamble with high-vulnerability crops, because
they gain the benefits while the treasury takes the risks.)
The agricultural sector in low-income countries does not often
benefit from government assistance in the form of insurance or
insurance-like coping strategies, although governmentally organized
drought relief is not uncommon—for example, during the
1990-1991 drought in Zimbabwe (Magadza, 1994). Poor countries
usually cannot afford to invest much in the institutions for
societal buffering against climatic variation. Little institutional
buffering occurs in the form of ex ante preparations, such as
appropriate subsidies, insurance, and infrastructure for delivering
relief, or even ex post relief such as loans or food shipments.
Notwithstanding or perhaps because of government neglect, people in
developing countries have perfected very sophisticated
nongovernmental insurance-like coping strategies that accompany
traditional ex ante production diversification. These strategies
must be taken into account in assessing the value of improved
climate forecasts.
Formal and informal nongovernmental social institutions such as
obligatory sharing within groups and community self-help
organizations are important local buffers. In the African livestock
sector, herding families in the areas with more favorable local
climate conditions adhere to social obligations to provide
assistance to those in less favored areas. Many pastoral societies
generate a strong sense of social interdependence, establish
obligations to help and support less fortunate friends and
relatives during times of need, and develop strong norms of
reciprocity. These insurance-like institutions have been extremely
effective over time (Coughenour et al., 1985; Ellis et al., 1987;
Galvin, 1992). In the semiarid tropics of India, where sedentary
agriculture is practiced and weather
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shocks can affect many villages over a wide region, cultural
traditions provide a similar type of informal insurance that
results in the transfer of resources from households in villages
with more favorable climate outcomes to those in villages,
sometimes a great distance away, with less favorable outcomes. The
tradition of exogamous marriage is helpful here, as financial aid
can come to households who have had adverse weather outcomes from
the households in which married daughters reside, which may be
located in distant villages (Rosenzweig and Stark, 1989).
The effects of climatic variation also depend on agricultural
producers' access to and use of hedging strategies. For example,
although farmers worldwide diversify their crops, some countries
have more sophisticated systems than others for fine-tuning that
diversification (e.g., agricultural universities and hybrid seed
industries that produce and advise on the use of diverse seeds).
Farmers in some countries have ready access to commodities futures
markets that allow them to lock in prices for some of their crop in
advance of climatic variations. However, not all farmers with
access to this strategy use it—some prefer to hedge by varying
production practices or developing sources of nonfarm income
(Weber, 1997). Irrigation, a hedging strategy in some regions, is
available mainly to producers in areas in which public or
collective investments have been made in the necessary
infrastructure and effective institutions exist to maintain and
manage the system.
The interdependence among the different methods for coping with
climatic variability and the scope for engaging in them must be
taken into account in evaluating the effects of climatic variation
and the potential gains from improved climate forecasting. In
addition, the combinations of individual and cultural coping
strategies, developed over centuries and often serving populations
well, can be fragile with respect to changes in environment and
society. For example, the exploitation of resources over wide
geographical areas that is a central coping strategy of pastoral
societies in Africa has been constrained by population growth,
which has encroached on the land used by pastoralists. This has
increased their vulnerability to climatic fluctuations.
Improved climate forecasts may have complex effects on
agricultural societies, extending beyond agricultural production.
For example, an increased scope for taking ex ante production
actions (e.g., diversification of income sources) may reduce the
need for other ex ante measures on the production and consumption
sides (e.g., crop insurance, norms of reciprocity). To the extent
that the provision of informal insurance and consumption
maintenance is a strong component of the organization of social
relations in many societies, there may be important ramifications
for social relations in these societies from introducing better
forecasting skill. Some of the social consequences of improvements
in forecast skill can be
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anticipated, but others are not evident. For example, on one
hand, increased forecast skill may increase demand for seeds that
are more sensitive to rainfall or temperature, thus raising average
incomes and increasing savings and consumption. On the other hand,
the reduction in the costs of adverse climate events because of
improved forecasts reduces the need for savings. It will be a
challenge to estimate the aggregate and distributed effects of
improved climate forecasts and their effects on traditional coping
strategies, and then to design forecast information so that people
benefit from the forecasts.
Fishery Management
A critically important difference between fisheries and
agriculture or herding is the fact that the fish stocks themselves
are usually not privately owned. Rather, commercial and sport
fisheries are almost always publicly managed common-pool resources.
In a few cases, commercial harvesters have devised private methods
of policing their own harvest rates (e.g., Acheson, 1988) and
access to some sport fisheries is effectively limited by private
property owners. In the more general case, public regulation of the
fishery arises to control the tendency for competing harvesters to
overfish. Overfishing in an economic sense involves devoting too
much effort to fishing, so that the value of the harvest, net of
harvesting cost, is not maximized (Gordon, 1954; Cheung, 1970).
Economic overfishing often results in biological overfishing as
well, sometimes leading to catastrophic collapses of commercial
fish stocks. This inherent tension between the private incentives
of the harvesters and efficient management of the fishery means
that harvesters' coping strategies and their desired responses to
climatic opportunities may not result in a socially beneficial
outcome.
The traditional goals of fishery management have been to
constrain both biological and economic overfishing. Most fishery
management schemes have emphasized biological conservation,
although economic goals have received considerable attention in
recent decades. Achieving these goals often has proved to be quite
difficult. In contrast to simple theoretical models, real fish
populations fluctuate, sometimes radically, for reasons unrelated
to harvesting. Climatic variations often play a role in these
natural fluctuations, although the role is more immediate and
apparent for some fish populations (e.g., Peruvian anchovies) than
for others. In addition, the effects of climatic variations on
fisheries are usually difficult to observe. Except for anadromous
fish stocks, marine fish populations remain hidden from view, so
that the size of breeding stocks must be inferred largely from
harvest information. When fishery managers have only a very
uncertain picture of abundance, their estimates of
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optimal harvest rates are subject to considerable error. In such
circumstances, a conservative approach to setting allowable
harvests would reduce the risk of biological overharvesting, and
thus jeopardy to future harvests. Conservative fishery managers,
however, frequently encounter intense pressure from elements of the
harvesting community who may expect to gain more from an immediate
increase in allowable harvest than from an uncertain investment in
the size of the breeding stock.
The economic objective of fishery management—to increase
economic rent by reducing harvesting costs relative to the value of
the harvest—perhaps has been more difficult to achieve than
the biological objectives. Fishery managers have found that, when
regulations limit effort along one dimension (e.g., days open to
fishing), competition reappears along other dimensions (e.g., more
boats or larger, faster boats).
Although it is a challenging task to achieve efficient
management of a fishery that is confined to a single jurisdiction,
further complications emerge when the targeted fish population
migrates across international boundaries or straddles the boundary
between a national jurisdiction and the international commons of
the open ocean. In the case of a coastal fish population that
migrates across international boundaries, harvesting in each
jurisdiction affects the availability of fish in the other
jurisdiction. If these nations harvest the shared stock
competitively, they will tend to squander its potential value.
Recognizing that possibility, they may attempt to work out a
cooperative division of the harvest, but maintaining cooperation is
particularly difficult when there are large natural variations in
the size, location, or migratory patterns of the fish
population.
Uncertainty regarding the magnitude and sources of variations in
fish stocks is often a stumbling block to cooperative harvest
management. For example, when the availability of fish declines, it
may not be immediately apparent if the cause was excessive
harvesting by the neighboring nation or a natural fluctuation in
abundance. In addition, the parties may have different information
or beliefs about how the stock is changing and they may have a
strategic interest in concealing that information from one another,
or in promoting a particular interest-laden interpretation of the
biological facts.
In such circumstances, it is possible that improved information
on the links between climatic variations and fish populations could
reduce uncertainty and allow the parties to forge a common view as
to their best joint harvesting policy. If so, the likelihood of
breakdowns in cooperation and associated economic losses might
diminish. The extent to which improved seasonal-to-interannual
climate forecasts can contribute to improved fishery management is
likely to depend on the nature of the management institutions and
on the clarity of the links between climate and changes in the fish
population.
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Forests and Other Ecosystems
El Niño can have major effects on forests and other
ecosystems, as seen from recent experience and from
paleoenvironmental data, including analyses of pollen, coral, and
tree ring records around the world. For example, tree ring records
in the U.S. Southwest show the correlation of the width of tree
rings with precipitation and with the dry and wet years associated
with El Niño. The dates of fires can also be reconstructed
through tree ring analyses. In the U.S. Southwest, forest fires
often occur when wet winters associated with El Niño and the
buildup of vegetation are followed by dry periods associated with
La Niña (Swetnam and Betancourt, 1990, 1992).
The 1982-1983 and 1997-1998 El Niño events clearly showed
the effects of climatic variations on forest conditions in
Austral-Asia and Latin America. In 1982-1983, more than 400,000
hectares of forest burned in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, and
wildfires also devastated parts of Australia and southern Brazil.
In 1997-1998, fires destroyed forests in Indonesia, the
Philippines, Mexico, and Brazil. The World Wildlife Fund estimated
the area burned in Indonesia at 6 million hectares, and in Brazil,
about 5 million hectares of forest burned in the state of
Roraima.
In addition to the obvious damage to the forestry industries of
these regions, the impacts on biodiversity are serious. In
Indonesia, the fires threatened several species, including
endangered orangutans. In Mexico, the Chimalapas nature reserve,
one of the regions with the highest biodiversity in North America,
was severely damaged by fires in 1998. Costa Rica is concerned
about the long-term effects of drought on biodiversity and
ecotourism. Although natural vegetation is often adapted to
climatic variability (Nicholls et al., 1991), human activity has
sometimes increased the vulnerability of biodiversity to
drought-induced fires. Policies of fire suppression to protect
timber resources, homes, and tourist sites have led to the buildup
of fuel and to more serious fires in the long run.
Agricultural encroachment on forests, especially through
clearing by burning, has significantly increased the risk of forest
fires. Forest managers have attempted to respond to climate
variability by trying to obtain a better understanding of natural
fire history and using historical knowledge and climate predictions
to decide when to reduce fuel buildup through controlled burns.
Governments have attempted to impose fire bans, including laws
against the traditional slash-and-burn clearing of agricultural
lands, and have invested extra resources in their firefighting
services in dry years.
Marine ecosystems are heavily influenced by climatic
variability, as noted in the discussion of fisheries above. Many of
the species that feed on fish fluctuate with fish and marine
phytoplankton populations in an El
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Niño year. For example, in Chile and Peru, thousands of
seabirds died during the 1982-1983 El Niño, and the valued
ecosystem of Ecuador's Galapagos Islands was disrupted (Ribic et
al., 1992; Trillmich and Limberger, 1985). In California, the
warmer coastal waters of El Niño years reduce the fish
populations that support seals and other marine mammals, resulting
in die-off and reproductive failures (Shane, 1994). Coral reefs are
also vulnerable. They experience bleaching under warm water stress
and can have high mortality rates in El Niño years (Glynn,
1984). Some species, however, such as shrimp and scallops, flourish
in the warmer waters of these years. Managing fluctuations in
marine mammal and bird populations is difficult, especially when
conservation might involve cutting back on commercial fisheries.
Groups have attempted to rescue a few mammals and provide emergency
food supplies to birds.
Many riparian and grassland ecosystems are also highly sensitive
to climatic variability. Coping systems affecting livestock
production on grassland ecosystems are discussed in an earlier
section. However, there is significant climate-related variability
in the populations of less-managed species in riparian and
grassland systems, including breeding birds and amphibians in
marshes and wetlands and grassland wildlife populations ranging
from rodents to grazers to large carnivores. Severe droughts in
southern Africa, for example, are often associated with large-scale
mortality of wildlife.
Water Supply and Flood Management
Climate-driven variability in supply is a fundamental
characteristic of surface water resources. Various water management
entities around the world have planned their infrastructure and
operating procedures in response to expected variations in
hydrologic conditions. In the United States, these entities range
from individual irrigators and domestic water users who control
their own water supply systems to federal agencies that oversee the
operation of complex multiunit, multiple-purpose water storage,
control, and delivery systems. Institutional contexts, which differ
markedly between the arid western and humid eastern states, shape
the efforts of water users and the large variety of public water
managers to cope with variable streamflows. Similarly, other
countries have developed institutions and infrastructure for water
control and allocation that are the product of particular physical,
climatic, and social circumstances. Such arrangements include
small-scale traditional irrigation systems that are often managed
according to complex allocation rules designed specifically to cope
with the effects of variable water supplies, as well as large-scale
modern irrigation projects, typically managed by agents of the
central government.
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on which local rodents feed became more abundant. The result,
when combined with the drop in predators, was a tenfold increase in
rats and mice (Levins et al., 1993; Epstein, 1994) and the
emergence of a "new" disease—called hantavirus pulmonary
syndrome—stemming from a virus and transmitted through rodent
droppings.
The effects of climatic variations on ecosystems have been shown
to be related to outbreaks of malaria (Bouma et al., 1994a, 1994b;
Hales et al., 1996), dengue fever, and other mosquito-borne
diseases (Loevinsohn; 1994), which spread when appropriate rainfall
conditions or higher daytime minimum temperatures favor mosquito
breeding and survival. Climate variations, by altering functional
relationships within the marine food web (Roemmich and McGowan;
1995), may increase the risks to humans from paralytic, diarrheal,
neurologic, and amnesic shellfish poisoning (Epstein et al., 1993b)
and cholera (Colwell, 1996). It is at least suggestive that domoic
acid poisonings, resulting from diatom blooms that produce toxins
in seafood, appeared in Canada in the El Niño year of 1987
(Todd, 1989; Todd and Holmes, 1993), and related phenomena occurred
in California, Argentina, and Scandinavia in the El Niño
year of 1992 (Ludlohm and Skov, 1993; Carreto and Benevides, 1993).
The cold phase of ENSO can also create conditions, such as intense
rains and flooding following prolonged drought, that are optimal
for breeding insect vectors of dengue fever and Venezuelan equine
encephalitis and for rodent transmission of leptospirosis (Epstein
et al., 1995). Many such associations have been documented, and
where the ENSO signal is closely correlated with weather patterns,
predictive models of conditions conducive to disease outbreaks may
be useful. The "ENSO Experiment" begun in spring 1997 by the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Office of Global
Programs coordinates scientific work by health researchers,
ecologists, and meteorologists examining the relationships between
ENSO and a variety of infectious diseases and marine ecological
disturbances.
Human coping with disease has primarily involved year-round
precautions such as individual maintenance of good nutrition, food
refrigeration, and collective programs of sewage treatment, water
chlorination, testing for red tide and fecal coliform bacteria, air
quality testing and alerts, mass vaccination, and the like. Some
coping activities also involve seasonal routines, such as the use
of mosquito netting and insect repellents and alerts for heat waves
and extreme cold. Public health systems do, however, also respond
to forecasts of disease outbreaks, for example, with annual
programs to develop and disseminate vaccinations against the
influenza strains considered most likely to infect a population in
a given winter. Thus, public health is a potential beneficiary of
improved climate forecasting.
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Other Weather-Sensitive Sectors
Many other classes of human activity are affected by climatic
events and have developed coping strategies. An important example
is the sensitivity of households and firms to weather- and
climate-induced emergency conditions such as floods, hurricanes,
and drought-induced wildfires. A large body of research on disaster
preparedness and response has produced a number of syntheses, new
theoretical approaches, and major advances in applying what is
known. This research gives a good picture of the levels of
preparedness (ex ante coping) typically found among households
(Drabek, 1986; Mileti and O'Brien, 1992; Mulilis and Duval, 1995)
and organizations (Wenger, 1986; Gillespie and Streeter, 1987;
Lindell and Meier, 1994) in the United States and the nature of
post-disaster (ex post) response efforts, both for households
(Perry and Mushkatel, 1986; Phillips, 1992; Tierney, 1993; Morrow
and Enarson, 1995) and organizations (Drabek, 1986; Drabek and
Dynes, 1994; Wenger et al., 1989). We discuss community-level
preparedness and response, in the context of institutions for
coping, in the next section.
Households, even those that are trying to prepare for disasters,
in fact do very little. Household preparedness (Turner et al.,
1986; Palm et al., 1990; Mileti and Darlington, 1995; Russell et
al., 1995), and that of organizations as well (Mileti et al., 1993;
Drabek, 1995; Perry and Lindell, 1996), is constrained by the low
salience of hazards, the competition of preparedness with more
pressing concerns, and inadequate resources. Households whose
members belong to nonminority groups do more to prepare than other
households (e.g., Perry and Greene, 1982; Perry, 1987), but the
reasons for this remain unknown.
Post-disaster response among households and organizations is
shaped by a variety of social, social-psychological, and cognitive
processes, including prior disaster experience and the existence of
government mandates. Research in the United States consistently
shows that social solidarity remains strong even in the most trying
of circumstances, and few situations occur that completely break
down social bonds and eliminate the feeling of responsibility
people have for one another. This is true at both individual (Dynes
et al., 1990; O'Brien and Mileti, 1992) and organizational levels
(Wenger at al., 1989; Tierney, 1993) and helps account for the
prevalence of volunteerism, self-reliance, and the emergence of
social groups after disasters. Thus, strong efforts at response are
often mounted even where there is a low level of preparedness.
Various industries are sensitive to climatic variations. For
example, in the energy industry, suppliers of natural gas and
electricity are affected by changes in their seasonal demand
profiles—a cold winter or hot summer will increase demand for
energy, which companies may be able to
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supply with greater reliability and at lower cost if they can
accurately forecast demand. Suppliers of hydroelectric power are
also sensitive to streamflow at their dam sites, and distributors
of electric power are sensitive to severe storms that may bring
down power lines.
Local gas distribution companies that are sensitive to demand in
extreme weather conditions cope, regulations permitting, by
charging weather-normalized rates to dampen fluctuations in revenue
across warm and cold winters. They also hedge by using multiple
suppliers, storing gas in summer for use in winter, and keeping
enough gas on hand for a winter that is 10 percent colder than
average. Gas distributors commonly also use 7-day forecasts of
weather and heating degree-days for planning, but they have not
typically used the weather service's 3-month forecasts (Changnon et
al., 1995, Golnaraghi, 1997). Electricity distribution companies
use 10-day weather forecasts, mainly to anticipate major storms,
and hydroelectric power producers forecast water inflow to
reservoirs (Golnaraghi, 1997).
There has been little systematic study of coping in other
climate-sensitive industries, such as construction. However, it is
reasonable to presume each such sector uses a variety of coping
strategies, both ex ante and ex post, developed out of past
experience with unpredicted climatic variations.
Institutions For Coping With Climate
Variability
Societies cope with climatic variability on a level beyond the
affected individuals, organizations, and sectors by developing
institutions that help those actors cope better. This section
discusses a few of the important institutions that perform this
function.
Disaster Insurance and
Reinsurance
An important part of the coping system in many countries is the
system of property and casualty insurance. Insurers offer financial
compensation to subscribers who suffer from extreme climatic events
such as floods, droughts, and hurricanes, thus reducing the risks
that face actors who are insured.
Insurers can buffer the effects of climate variation in several
ways. One is through their primary function of spreading risks over
a large pool of subscribers. They can also influence subscribers to
take other actions to reduce their own sensitivity, for example, by
offering lower premiums for hurricane coverage of homes that meet
standards of stormworthiness or that are located in municipalities
that adopt and enforce building codes that reduce hurricane
risk.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
climatic events
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Insurance firms are themselves vulnerable to climate variations
through extreme events that cause simultaneous covered losses for a
large proportion of their subscribers. To cope with this risk, some
insurers purchase reinsurance from other companies or government
agencies. Reinsurers are also vulnerable to climatic events that
affect a large portion of their subscribers. A special case in the
United States is the federal government, which issues millions of
policies under the National Flood Insurance Program, advertises to
issue more, and acts as its own reinsurer, thus spreading the risk
of major floods among taxpayers in general.
In the United States, there has been sharply increased attention
to the vulnerability of the insurance and reinsurance industries
since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, which caused $16 billion in insured
property losses—more than twice the losses of the worst case
the industry expected (Changnon et al., 1997). An immediate result
was restrictions on coverage that made insurance a less reliable
coping strategy for potential subscribers. Since 1992, the property
insurance industry has responded by creating the Institute for
Business and Home Safety, which is concerned with improving
building codes and conducts research on improved building materials
and techniques, and by beginning to support basic science,
establishing a Risk Prediction Initiative at the Bermuda Biological
Station (Golnaraghi, 1997; also on the internet at <http://www.bbsr.edu/agcihome/rpi/rpihome.html>).
In addition, several firms in the financial industry are offering
products for managing and transfering the financial risks of
catastrophic exposure. Insurance firms have also asked regulatory
authorities for permission to base rates on expectations of future
loss rather than only on historical experience. Some insurers have
hired climate scientists on their staffs, and many employ
risk-modeling companies that, among other things, interpret climate
forecast information in terms of its implications for the risk
profile of particular insurance companies (Golnaraghi, 1997). These
innovations may increase the reliability of commercial insurance as
a coping strategy for other sectors.
Emergency Preparedness and
Response
Many societies help affected sectors cope with climatic
variations by creating general systems of emergency preparedness
and response. These include national weather services, which
forecast storms and other significant weather-related events
(including, recently, climatic variations), thus enabling better ex
ante responses. Other national or regional organizations in some
countries perform a similar function by providing fire danger and
flood warnings. Local emergency response organizations that provide
fire, rescue, and emergency medical services are also part of the
emergency preparedness and response system. These organizations
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prepare and then respond ex post to climatic and other
emergencies regardless of the cause or the sectors of a community
that are affected. Regional and national governments may also
provide emergency response services, such as fighting forest fires
and maintaining order in communities devastated by floods or
hurricanes. Governments sometimes offer disaster relief payments or
subsidized loans for reconstruction after disasters. And in
addition, nongovernmental organizations such as the Red Cross stand
ready to aid in ex post response.
A large body of research has examined systems of emergency
preparedness and response and developed general knowledge about how
they function and the conditions under which they function most
effectively. Although the situation is improving, studies in the
United States show that, with notable exceptions, disaster
preparedness at the local level is usually not well maintained,
that emergency planners tend to have low prestige, and that
relatively few resources are allocated to disaster preparedness and
response (Rossi et al., 1982; Labadie, 1984; Gillespie, 1991). The
research record provides little information on the status of state-
and national-level preparedness. The adequacy of local response
varies based on the degree of pre-event preparedness in place
(Mileti and Sorenson, 1990).
A great deal is known about the factors that influence organized
and effective community response to disaster. Effective response
results from preparedness within a variety of organizations and by
networks of organizations. Preparedness within an organization is
enhanced if the organization is not surprised by events. Thus,
organizations are more likely to perform well the work required in
an emergency if the individual or role responsible for each task is
well specified; if the definition of the emergency work domain is
clearly set forth for all divisions and actors; if authority to
perform the required work is clearly marked; if priorities among
tasks and work have been clearly established; and if roles, tasks,
authority, domains, and priorities are well understood by
organizational actors and legitimated in advance of the emergency
rather than negotiated during a disaster. These conditions may be
achieved through training or because emergency work matches
nonemergency work. Effectiveness is also enhanced if communication
channels between divisions are open, clear, and frequently used,
allowing efficient sharing of critical information that appears
during an emergency (Mileti and Sorenson, 1990).
Disaster preparedness and response also require the effective
operation of networks of organizations. Such networks respond best
if they are well integrated before a disaster occurs and if they
maintain sufficient flexibility to respond to surprise. Network
integration means that the roles and tasks of each member
organization, authority for relations between organizations, and
priorities for tasks and work between organiza-
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tions are defined in advance; that linkages between member
organizations are well understood; and that adequate resources are
available to support interorganizational linkages. Networks
function better if there is consensus on the tasks expected of each
member; if each member has adequate resources to do the expected
work; if the cost to each member for membership is low; and if the
leaders of member organizations need not fear loss of
organizational autonomy as a result of participating in the
network. Effective networks tend to include boundary personnel
(people who have the job of interacting with other organizations),
individuals who belong to several organizations in the network,
interorganizational boards and committees, and a
superorganizational board. Ideally, interorganizational
interactions are frequent and reciprocal rather than one-way, and
communication patterns are clear, open, and broad as to content. In
addition, networks are more likely to be effective if they are
composed of smaller numbers of organizations that are compatible in
terms of goals, function, and scope and if they have been initiated
by their member organizations rather than created by outside
request or legislative mandate (Mileti and Sorenson, 1987).
Market Mechanisms
Market institutions have not been much studied as coping
mechanisms for climatic variability, but this is one of the
functions they serve. Two examples illustrate. One is the emergence
of global markets for grains and other foods. These markets reduce
the dependence of human populations on food grown nearby and
therefore their dependence on local climatic conditions. They also
allow producers to benefit from climatically induced food shortages
elsewhere by supplying food to those areas. These effects, however,
are contingent on the ability of producers and consumers to
participate in the global markets. For consumers, this means having
money to purchase food at market prices and access to distribution
networks; for producers, it means the ability to ship their
products. Thus, markets alone do not insulate the poor from the
effects of climatic variation nor secure benefits for producers in
remote areas. Nevertheless, to the extent that global food markets
function well, they spread the risks and benefits of climatic
variability worldwide.
A second example of how markets help cope with climatic
variation is the functioning of commodities futures markets. These
markets allow producers and distributors of food and other
weather-sensitive commodities to hedge against climatically induced
variations in production by guaranteeing themselves the price or
availability of a known quantity of the commodity at a later date.
As with food markets, futures markets do not benefit everyone
equally. To benefit from the potential to hedge, an
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actor must have a sophisticated knowledge of how the markets
work and must have a large enough interest—or an association
with others who together have a large enough interest—to make
the minimum transactions the market allows.
Findings
This chapter shows that both the effects of climatic events on
human populations and activities and the potential usefulness of
climate forecast information are shaped by sets of coping
strategies that have been developed over long periods of time and
that are in constant development and change. Specifically:
1.
People have developed a wide variety of strategies for coping
with climate variability. Some coping strategies are quite
specific to a type of human activity and to the geographic and
cultural context of the affected people. Thus, to anticipate the
potential impacts of a climatic event on a particular agricultural
population, for example, requires understanding of the coping
mechanisms available to that population. Drought of a particular
severity may not have the same effect on agricultural populations
in different countries.
Although there is no well established typology of coping
strategies, the distinction between ex ante and ex post types of
coping provides a good starting point. Climate forecasts have the
potential to improve outcomes for people engaged in
weather-sensitive activities both by allowing them to take more
effective ex ante actions and by reducing the need for ex post
strategies.
It is analytically useful to distinguish major types of ex ante
and ex post coping strategies. One type of ex ante strategy
consists of technological interventions that reduce danger and
increase opportunities associated with climate-related events. A
good example is the management of seasonal and interannual
variations in streamflow and water supply by systems of dams,
reservoirs, and crop irrigation. Having these systems in place
prevents flooding in times of high water flow and allows for crop
production, fresh water supply, hydroelectric power, and aquatic
recreation in dry periods. Construction of firebreaks and use of
low-till and no-till farm equipment similarly increase resilience
to climate variations.
Another type of ex ante strategy consists of hedging against
climate risk—taking multiple actions so that one action
provides benefits to partially cover losses that arise if other
actions yield poor results. Farmers do this by separating their
herds, diversifying crop varieties and species, diversifying
income, and buying and selling futures contracts. Electric
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utility companies may hedge by diversifying their power sources,
particularly if one of their major sources is hydroelectric.
Related to hedging are strategies of risk sharing among many
actors: insurance is the most prominent example in market
economies. Insurance is a hedging strategy from the standpoint of
the purchaser because it provides compensation in case the
purchaser's other actions fail disastrously. From the society's
standpoint, however, what insurance does is to spread the risk
among a large number of actors at a small cost to each. In most
societies, social norms of helping fellow villagers or extended
family members in need perform the same risk-sharing functions as
insurance.
Preparation and maintenance of emergency response systems
(emergency preparedness) is a fourth ex ante strategy for coping
with climate variability. For example, municipalities purchase and
maintain snowremoval and firefighting equipment, prepare evacuation
plans for hurricanes, and train their personnel in emergency
management techniques in order to minimize the costs of whatever
extreme negative weather conditions may arise. The owners of citrus
groves may stockpile grove heaters to use in case of light frost,
and the operators of dams leave room in reservoirs to prevent
flooding in case of high rates of runoff. These strategies reduce
the effects of extreme negative climatic events by ensuring that ex
post responses will be more effective.
Improving the systems that deliver climate forecast information
is yet another important ex ante strategy. This strategy includes
investments in improving climate prediction skill and efforts to
make forecast information more decision relevant, deliver it
through channels decision makers use, and present it in ways they
understand clearly. Many of the scientific priorities suggested in
this volume are valuable because they enhance this coping
strategy.
A variety of ex post strategies exists for coping with climate
change. For catastrophic events, these are the emergency response
activities (e.g., disaster assistance, sharing with the needy by
offering personal assistance or contributing to charities). This
typology of ex ante and ex post strategies is certainly incomplete,
and other distinctions may also have great value, as illustrated
below.
2.
The various coping strategies are interdependent. This
point is made above in the discussion of agriculture, but it is
also more general. In water management, for example, building
flood-control dams and levees decreases the incentive for
communities to adopt restrictive floodplain zoning and for
households to buy flood insurance; it will decrease damage from
moderate seasonal increases in streamflow that would have caused
flooding without the preparations, but it might increase the damage
from extreme floods. Similarly, in public health, a good
warning
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system for infectious disease outbreaks might increase the use
of resources for timely vaccination programs and decrease the costs
of emergency medical care. Thus, factors that make one coping
strategy more attractive are likely to affect the use of a range of
other strategies. However, such interdependencies have not been the
subject of systematic study.
3.
The consequences of climatic events for actors in
weather-sensitive sectors and the usefulness to them of particular
types of forecast information depend on the coping strategies they
use, which are often culturally, regionally, and sectorally
specific. Therefore, the consequences of climate variability,
climate sensitivity, vulnerability, and the usefulness of forecasts
cannot be adequately assessed in the absence of a basic
understanding of the coping mechanisms being used. Other things
being equal, people who have a coping strategy available to them
are likely to be less vulnerable to extreme climatic variations and
better off in the face of nonextreme variations than people who do
not. In addition, the particular strategies they use affect their
outcomes. For example, those who buy insurance or hedge against
disasters are better off after a disaster than those who do
not—but they are relatively worse off if the disaster does not
materialize or if post-disaster relief programs compensate the
uninsured as fully as those who paid for insurance. Those who
invest in technologies like levees or storm-resistant construction
may also be better off, although their outcomes depend on the cost
and effectiveness of their investments given experienced climatic
events.
Forecast information is likely to have different import
depending on the coping strategies used. Insurance and hedging
strategies may require characteristic lead times, so that forecasts
can help those using the strategies only if lead time is
sufficient. Those who rely on technology for protection may care
little about climate forecasts, except forecasts of events that
might overwhelm their protections. We discuss these issues further
in Chapter 4.
4.
Coping strategies are not equally available to all affected
actors, and the availability of robust coping strategies is likely
to be a function of wealth. Some strategies (e.g.,
diversification of income) are available to virtually any actor in
a weather-sensitive sector, but many important ones are not.
Certain strategies require or benefit from an institutional
infrastructure (e.g., an insurance market, an agricultural
extension system, global food markets). Others require major public
expenditures (e.g., flood-control dams, disaster relief programs,
subsidized disaster insurance). These tend to be more available in
wealthy countries and, within these, to sectors and regions that
have built the necessary institutions and infrastructure or secured
the required public funds. Other strategies (e.g., informal income
support) benefit from the presence of tightly knit communities with
strong bonds of obligation, which are more likely to be found
in
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traditional cultures and in regions closely bound to the land
for subsistence. Some strategies may be substitutes for others
(e.g., formal insurance markets and government disaster programs
may substitute for informal systems of obligation). It is likely
that the coping strategies developed in the wealthy countries and
available to wealthy actors are generally more robust, and this
possibility is an important research hypothesis. There is no doubt,
however, that the strategies are different in different countries
and for different sets of actors. What they are, and the relative
costs of using them, can be known only by observation.
In addition to these large-scale and institutional factors that
affect the availability of coping strategies, attributes of the
affected individuals and groups also determine the strategies they
use and, as a result, their vulnerability and sensitivity to
climate variations. An obvious factor is access to financial
resources. Money is associated with better outcomes because it
facilitates preparedness, makes possible individual investments to
insure against disaster, and cushions the impact of extreme
climatic events. It also provides access for individuals who have
it to coping strategies that operate through markets, such as
hazard insurance, global food distribution, and trading in
commodities futures. Education can also be helpful, especially for
actors in sectors where it may take specialized training to use
certain coping strategies effectively. An example may be the
ability of farmers to use the commodities futures market to hedge
against extreme weather. In addition, people are better off when
disasters strike if they are part of well-functioning social
networks with clear expectations of behavior and good communication
links. In sum, the coping strategies people use, and consequently
their sensitivity to climatic variation and the usefulness of
climate forecasts, are likely to depend on a variety of
institutional and individual factors.
5.
Not every actor uses every available coping strategy.
Even when everyone engaged in a weather-sensitive activity has
access in principle to a characteristic set of coping strategies,
they do not all use the same ones. Certain strategies are available
only to actors who use particular technologies. For instance,
irrigated agriculture allows some protections against drought that
are not available for dryland farming. Sometimes the selection of
coping strategies seems to be simply a matter of habit or personal
preference. For example, as noted above, different farmers in the
same region adopt different hedging strategies, though all the
strategies are available to all of them. What makes a climate
forecast useful to any particular actor is likely to depend on the
coping strategies that actor uses; it is therefore likely to be
important to match the information provided in forecasts as much as
possible to the coping strategies used by the forecast's
recipients.
6.
Sensitivities and vulnerabilities to climatic variation
change over time
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because of social, political, economic, and technological
changes in or affecting coping systems and changes in individuals'
abilities to use these systems. The adequacy of estimates of the
consequences of future climatic events therefore depends on
realistic assessments of these changes in social systems. For
example, the expansion of global markets into new regions decreases
vulnerability to local droughts for people in those regions who
have sufficient resources to buy food in those markets; it may,
however, have an opposite effect for low-income people in the same
region if it undermines preexisting social norms for sharing with
the poor. A new flood-control dam reduces vulnerability to seasonal
floods below the dam, and an educational program may get more
people to purchase flood insurance.
The effectiveness of coping systems may also change over time.
The aftermath of Hurricane Andrew illustrates the phenomenon. In
the decades before the hurricane, during which there were few major
hurricanes in Florida, major population increases were occurring
there, and little attention was being paid to reducing
vulnerability through stormresistant building construction
techniques. As a result, the disaster insurance industry was not
fully prepared, and there were serious disruptions in the cost and
availability of coverage for some time afterward. In addition, the
building stock in the region was much less hurricane resistant than
it might have been.
These changes affect climate sensitivity and the potential value
of forecasts. Therefore, efforts to anticipate the effects of
climatic events or provide useful forecast information should take
into account the possibility that, by the time a climatic event
occurs, the target sectors may be in a considerably different
situation in terms of vulnerability and of the coping possibilities
available than when estimates of climate sensitivity were made.
7.
Successful coping with climatic variations sometimes depends
on nonclimatic information. For example, farmers consider crop
prices and price forecasts when making planting decisions to hedge
against climatic events. Fishers consider information on fish
stocks as well as climate forecasts in deciding how intensively to
fish. Households and firms consider the price and coverage offered
by disaster insurance providers. Such considerations may be obvious
to the decision makers, but they may need to be brought to the
attention of climate analysts.