{"id":1655,"date":"2012-07-18T13:47:39","date_gmt":"2012-07-18T20:47:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.obwb.ca\/blog\/?p=1655"},"modified":"2019-03-11T12:09:27","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T19:09:27","slug":"getting-beyond-inertia-and-disaster-driven-policy-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/obwb.ca\/blog\/2012\/07\/getting-beyond-inertia-and-disaster-driven-policy-response\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting beyond inertia and disaster-driven policy response"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThis is your time and it feels normal to you, but really there is no normal.\u00a0 There\u2019s only change and resistance to it and then more change.<\/em>\u201c \u2013\u00a0 Meryl Streep<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been writing about change lately \u2013 change in climate and population<\/a>. But it will take even more change to adapt to new conditions.\u00a0 The challenge is knowing where we are vulnerable and how to respond, so we can protect the things we love. \u00a0But how do we get through the inertia to action?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Summer rains on Kootenay Lake – photo taken a few days before and a few kilometres north of the Johnson’s Landing slide. Courtesy of Brynne Herbison.<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s as true for individuals as whole communities.\u00a0 People tend to trust their odds for most things \u2013 but suddenly, without warning, the ground can shift beneath us.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been deeply unsettled by news of the mudslide in Johnson\u2019s Landing last week \u2013 a place I\u2019ve visited often. \u00a0A tragedy is the worst kind of catalyst for change.<\/p>\n

After a month with twice the record rainfall, Gar Creek<\/a> unleashed a debris flow down the mountain.\u00a0 At 10:30 Thursday morning, three houses sat surrounded by meadows and forest. By 11:30, they had been swept away by a wall of dirt, rock and twisted trees.<\/p>\n

Four people lost their lives, and all of BC was shaken.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Fry Creek, a much larger stream – just south of Johnson’s Landing. Photo from kayakwest.com<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s now a high priority to get the geotechnical experts out there. \u00a0What triggered it?<\/a> How can we prevent it from happening somewhere else?\u00a0 There are countless creeks in British Columbia.<\/p>\n

And what was the role of climate change? It\u2019s almost an academic question in this context. One of the biggest challenges with a shifting climate is that there are no direct links to specific events. There have always been freak floods and catastrophic landslides.<\/p>\n

More than anything, tracking climate change is a process of counting anomalies \u2013 estimating probabilities, estimating risk.\u00a0 How often has this weather happened in the past? How often is it happening now?<\/p>\n

A tragic debris flow through Johnson\u2019s Landing becomes an entry on the ledger of extreme weather disasters, along with the floods last week in Japan and the scorching drought of the corn-belt. More and more, planners have to rely on cumulative statistics to give some direction, to help communities reassess their odds in changing times, and regain stability.<\/p>\n

But it is one thing to have a sea of statistical information, and another to know what to do with it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Coverage on the Insurance Bureau of Canada’s push for climate risk assessments. Click on the picture to watch the video in a new window.<\/p><\/div>\n

I felt a\u00a0rush of hope at a recent talk by Robert Tremblay, of the Insurance Bureau of Canada. They have\u00a0an elegant new approach<\/a> for\u00a0\u00a0assessing\u00a0the climate\u00a0risks\u00a0of flooding storm drains and sewer backups in urban areas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It sounds mundane, but has a huge impact. Only yesterday they had to evacuate a medical clinic in Nelson after a heavy rain backed up the pipes.<\/p>\n

This new\u00a0method\u00a0won\u2019t help rural communities like Johnson\u2019s Landing, but it can save other homes for other families.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Data from a global reinsurance company, Munich Re, showing the increase of extreme weather events. Click on the picture to make it bigger. Image courtesy of Robert Tremblay of the Insurance Bureau of Canada<\/p><\/div>\n

For decades, insurance companies have been collecting information about floods, fire and wind, and where the damages are. They see the effects of climate change very clearly \u2013 globally, extreme floods tripled between 1980 and 2010. Wind events doubled.<\/p>\n

Now they are making GIS output from their risk assessment tool freely available to urban planners \u2013 pushing to get these kind of analyses into the mainstream, and trying to stem the rising tide of damage from failing infrastructure.\u00a0 It\u2019s their homes and businesses, too.<\/p>\n

Instead of rough estimates, planners can use the municipal risk assessment tool<\/a> to map where the worst\u00a0infrastructure failures\u00a0have happened in the past, and overlay climate projections for increased intensity, duration, and frequency of rainfall.\u00a0 They can show \u2013 ahead of time \u2013 where the risks are.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

This is an example of a risk map from the Insurance Bureau of Canada’s municipal risk assessment tool. Image courtesy of Robert Tremblay of the IBC.<\/p><\/div>\n

It\u2019s a simple and powerful approach, with implications that reach far beyond flooded basements\u00a0in urban areas. In the future it can be expanded to look at many more weather impacts.<\/p>\n

But most importantly, I think it can help us make sense of climate change at the level of the basic social fabric \u2013 our homes and neighbourhoods \u2013 and for the first time, make it a normal part of planning.<\/p>\n

This tool is a huge important step forward if we want to move beyond the extremes of inertia and disaster-driven policy response.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Summertime homestead on Kootenay Lake – photo by Rachel Ross<\/p><\/div>\n

Of course there will always be catastrophes. \u00a0I grieve for the Johnson\u2019s Landing community, and for everything that has been lost.<\/p>\n

Likely the slide was a combination of terrible circumstances, and the heavy rain contributed only a part \u2013 but if we can have a standard process for understanding climate risks in cities, I have hope for rural areas, too.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not so much that we lack ways to expose where we are vulnerable, we just haven\u2019t brought them into common practice.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Valentine and Rachel Webber from The Province, July 17, 2012<\/p><\/div>\n

I can accept that we will have more extreme weather, but I want to see progress in how we respond and adapt. \u00a0I want to know the risks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

The following is a video clip\u00a0about the mudslide, courtesy of\u00a0Shaw Media.
\n<\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThis is your time and it feels normal to you, but really there is no normal.\u00a0 There\u2019s only change and resistance to it and then more change.\u201c \u2013\u00a0 Meryl Streep I\u2019ve been writing about change lately \u2013 change in climate … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,27,6,3,36],"tags":[60,72,84],"class_list":["post-1655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climatechange","category-governance-2","category-okwater","category-updates","category-watershed-management-2","tag-climate-adaptation","tag-water-risk-assessment","tag-water-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/obwb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/obwb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/obwb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/obwb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/obwb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1655"}],"version-history":[{"count":57,"href":"https:\/\/obwb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2132,"href":"https:\/\/obwb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655\/revisions\/2132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/obwb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/obwb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/obwb.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}