In a recent Swiss Re's ranking of the world's most risky cities in terms of natural disasters, the urban region of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) is ranked 3rd, behind Manilla and Tokyo-Yokohama. PRD is China's economic powerhouse and is home to over 42 m people living across the region's major cities of Guangzhou, Foshan, Dongguan, Shenzhen HK, and Macau. The greatest threats for the PRD are deemed to be river floods, storm surges and high speed winds, the likelihood and intensity of which have been increasing due to climate change. While the Randstad is mentioned in the report as an urban area with high exposure, particularly to storm surge flooding, the actual risk is deemed relatively lower due to well developed flood risk management policy: "The Amsterdam-Rotterdam conurbation in the Netherlands is entirely located within a zone of highest risk and holds a top spot in the storm surge rankings, with 1.8 million people potentially affected. Most sections of these cities are even situated below sea level. However, it is important to point out that these areas are protected extremely well by massive storm surge defences, so the chance of catastrophic damage is substantially lower than in other lesser protected areas." Nonetheless, considering economic impacts (measured in terms of value of working days lost due to catastrophic events), Rotterdam-Amsterdam conurbation ranks fourth most exposed in the world... right behind the PRD on the 3rd position (see the graph above). When considerand the table below). Full report is available here. For a quick summary with some striking images click here.
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A presentation of the research project, prepared for the purpose of a seminar at TU Delft, is available for download here. It outlines the rationale for the study, reviews the main findings from the literature on governance of climate change in cities and urban regions, and presents the design for this comparative research. The study focuses on two urban regions sharing a high degree of exposure to climate change impacts, but operating within radically different administrative and institutional settings: the Randstad in the Netherlands and the Hong Kong - Pearl River Delta region in China. Hello and welcome, I set up this website and blog to document my on-going research project focused on the governance of climate change policies in urban regions in the Dutch Randstad region and the Hong-Kong Pearl River Delta in China. The blog will serve as a tool for disseminating the forthcoming big and small findings from the study, bringing into spotlight the interesting facts about how climate change policies work on the ground and what challenges they present. It should be of interests to people working on or simply interested in this topic and hopefully will provide a forum for discussion and exchange of ideas. That said, I will strive to keep things accessible and not very academic, which will entail sharing some fun facts, quirks and visual material from the regions that I study (and beyond). By all means do get in touch with me if you wish to discuss some of the issues presented here or engage in research collaboration. So much for the introduction. I hope you will enjoy the blog. Stay tuned! Marcin Email me at: [email protected] |
AuthorMarcin Dąbrowski, Researcher at TU Delft Categories |