1.
INTRODUCTION:
Capacity building in resilient
communities in land management knowledge, disaster risk awareness, adaptation,
climate change mitigation and early warning, is proposed as a response to the limited
technical, institutional and financial capacities for climate change management
articulated to disaster risk management by the CTGRD derived from the fact that
there are municipalities highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change,
which has impacts on inter-institutional coordination, formulation,
implementation and monitoring of policies, programs and projects for risk
reduction and adaptation to climate change. This problem is expressed in 4 main
causes:
1. Poor articulation of climate
change and risk management agendas at the territorial level in Colombia.
2. Lack of clear knowledge on the
part of territorial risk management coordinators on climate change and climate
variability adaptation and mitigation issues.
3. Lack of clarity on the roles of
the territorial risk management councils in the regional climate change nodes.
4. Low capacities of the CTGRD to
incorporate climate change and variability criteria in the Municipal Disaster Risk Management
Plans.
Local authorities,
universities and other institutions are seeking strategies to increase the
capacity for adaptation and resilience to the impacts of extreme climate
phenomena, such as floods, droughts, landslides due to rain, among others, The
main impacts generated in recent years are associated with climate change
scenarios and the La Niña phenomenon, which in the country were known as
"the 2010-2011 winter wave", which hit the department of Norte de
Santander hard (Becher, 2012), where human and economic losses were recorded,
leading to a setback in regional development. These impacts reveal great
difficulties at the regional and local level in dealing with emergencies,
difficulties in accessing hydroclimatic information, which is key for climate
risk zoning and the generation of early warnings, as well as other necessary
inputs to support decision-making and planning processes, land use planning,
risk management and adaptation to climate change (Alzate, Rojas and Mosquera,
2015).
2. METHODOLOGY:
For the generation of
this SATC structure as a measure of adaptation to climate change from the
bottom-up approach, a study of the state of the art of SATC in Colombia and at
the international level with its different approaches is carried out, where its
strengths, weaknesses and aspects to be improved are analyzed, which function
as determinants for the structuring of this model. It is complemented with the
lessons learned from the two phases of implementation of this SATC, where
community participation, scientific capacity building, governance and
sustainability are key aspects for the implementation and execution of an SATC.
3. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND:
CONTEXTUALIZATION OF EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS
Climate early warning
systems (SATC) as a strategy to reduce losses and save lives. Throughout the
last decades, there has been growing interest in implementing different
strategies to reduce the impacts of climate variability and climate change,
related to inadequate anthropic dynamics, which increase exposure to disasters
and vulnerability to the occurrence of an extreme weather event, "the
exposure and vulnerability of people and communities are different depending on
inequalities in levels of wealth and education, disability and health status,
as well as gender, age, social class and other social and cultural
characteristics" (2012, IPCC, p. 6), the annual losses generated by this
type of phenomena vary from billions of dollars to more than 200 billion
dollars, according to the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, which only considers economic aspects and does not monetize the loss of
human lives, the damage to ecosystems and the significant impact on cultural
heritage.
According to ISDR,
climate early warning systems (SATC) are defined as the "set of capacities
necessary to generate and disseminate timely and effective warning information
that allows threatened people, communities and organizations to prepare and act
appropriately and with sufficient time to reduce the possibility of damage or
loss", are considered as a strategy to reduce the impacts of extreme
climate events and as a measure of adaptation to climate change, since they
contribute to reduce losses and save lives, from the scenarios of risk
awareness, risk reduction, prevention and preparedness, where risk is understood
as "the combination of the probability of an event occurring and its
negative consequences" (UNISDR, 2009).
In Colombia there is
Law 1523, which defines risk management as "a social process oriented to
the formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies,
strategies, plans, programs, regulations, instruments, measures and permanent
actions for the knowledge and reduction of risk and for disaster management,
with the explicit purpose of contributing to safety, welfare, quality of life
of people and sustainable development" (Congress of Colombia, 2012, p.1).
It establishes that risk management is the responsibility of all Colombians,
including authorities and inhabitants.
Disaster risk
management in Colombia is based on three processes: risk awareness, risk
reduction and disaster management. Risk knowledge is the process that
prioritizes the identification, characterization and prioritization of risk
scenarios present in the territory, the study and evaluation of risk, hazard
monitoring and risk communication.
Risk reduction refers
to interventions aimed at reducing present and future risk conditions in the
territory, risk mitigation and prevention, with the objective of reducing the
threat, the exposed elements, so that losses are minimal with the occurrence of
a hazardous event, within this process is the prospective intervention and
financial protection.
Disaster management
is the process of emergency response preparedness, post-disaster recovery, and
the execution of emergency response, rehabilitation, and recovery.
Early warning systems
are located as a planning instrument that articulates the processes of disaster
risk management. See figure 1, since, from its different processes, it promotes
knowledge of the territory and its risk scenarios, establishes measures to
reduce the impacts of a possible occurrence of a hazardous event and
establishes measures for prevention and action in the event of an emergency.
Figure 1:
Contributions of SATC to disaster risk management. Source: Authors
The climatological
early warning system of Norte de Santander, developed by the University of
Pamplona, proposes a structure that allows the articulation between the
different processes of disaster risk management and increases resilience in the
territories, from the linking of the actors to its execution.
The development of
early warning systems in the international context. Since 1960, work has been
done on the development of SATC, as they contribute to reduce economic and
human losses, currently they are instruments that have taken great relevance,
as evidence of this, some international agreements related to climate change,
sustainable development and disaster risk management, which include SATC and
link them in their global goals, is the case of the Sendai Framework for
Disaster Reduction 2015-2030, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and
the Paris Agreement. See figure 2.
Figure 2:
International Agreements where SATC are considered. Source: Authors
Due to the different
experiences that have been developed, the SATC are in constant evolution and
can have different structures and approaches, they are a focus of study for
universities and territorial entities, interested in protecting and preparing
their community, before the occurrence of an extreme weather event, since they
can be implemented as a measure of adaptation to climate change and can be
focused on different risk scenarios of natural origin such as floods, droughts,
torrential floods, landslides due to rain, frost.
An early warning
system can be defined as the set of tools, control devices, management
capabilities and technological instruments that key institutions identify to
disseminate information in a timely manner to communities exposed to a risk,
and whose result are mitigation measures aimed at reducing the effects of
natural disasters and economic and life losses, as well as injuries (Dominguez,
Lozano, 2014, p, 322). (Dominguez, Lozano, 2014, p, 322).
The SATC are a
flexible and adaptable instrument; therefore, their structure depends on the
level of complexity required. Below are some of the subsystems that make up an SATC,
as a result of the different experiences that have been carried out at national
and international level. See figure 3. It shows the evolution of early warning
systems, the first systems were simpler and unidirectional and the most recent
ones have an integral and multi-hazard character, where the participation of
the actors is key and processes of risk knowledge, monitoring and warning,
dissemination and communication and response capacity are carried out, for the
Multi-hazard SATC it links the preparation, response and feedback of the
system, so that it adapts to the needs of the territory, where the co-responsibility
of all the actors is of vital importance.
Figure 3: Evolution
of the SATC and its elements. Source: Authors
Climate early warning
systems as a tool for linking land-use planning, disaster risk management and
climate change management.
The SATC can
currently be considered as planning instruments that articulate land use
planning, risk management and climate change management, see Figure 4, since
they link processes of knowledge of the territory, in its vulnerability and
risk factors, which are determinant for the planning of the territories, from
their current challenges and prospectively prepare for the future, where
possible climate change scenarios and the impacts that can be generated are
considered, all this information generated from the SATC, complements the
studies of the POT, PIGCC, environmental studies, and others. "Climate
variability, coupled with climate change (long periods of time), trigger
impacts of greater frequency, magnitude and intensity of events associated with
hydrometeorological and hydroclimatic phenomena that must be addressed in the
short term" (2018, Climate Change Group DGOAT, p.19).
Figure 4: Land use
planning, risk management and climate change management. Source: Authors
In Colombia, due to
inadequate planning and land management processes, a large part of the
population is at risk due to climate variability and climate change.
Colombian legislation
has sought to develop laws that allow the articulation of different processes
such as disaster risk management through law 1523 of 2012, which adopts the
national policy on disaster risk management and establishes the National Risk
Management System (SNGRD), law 1931 of 2018 in which the national policy on
climate change is adopted, law 1454 of 2011 Organic law on territorial planning
(LOOT), law 388 of 1997 on territorial planning, where the purpose is "to
promote the increase of the capacity for decentralization, planning, management
and administration of their own interests for the entities and instances of
territorial integration, it will promote the transfer of competences and
decision-making power to the closest territorial entities." (Congress of
Colombia, 2011, p, 13). The present laws seek to ensure the well-being of the
inhabitants from "a preventive vision towards all types of threats that
affect social integrity and compromise the sustainability of ecological
biodiversity" (Calderón, Frey, 2017, p.242) under a perspective of risk
governance.
Territorial entities
must make decisions on urban and rural territories, considering their growth
and development, taking as guidelines the different existing threats from
natural and anthropic phenomena and additionally from the prospective phenomena
that can be associated with climate change, where the trends shown by studies
are an increase in the intensity and occurrence of extreme weather events,
therefore, the territories must implement strategies for risk mitigation and
adaptation to climate change, including economic growth and reduction of
inequalities, in order to increase resilience to disasters.
Within the
aforementioned laws, the articulation between the National Disaster Risk
Management System and the municipalities, with their public and private
entities and the civil society, at different scales from scenarios of autonomy
and complementarity, that seek to join efforts to strengthen the knowledge of
risk, risk reduction and disaster management, This is reflected in the image of
cities and territories, where associative thinking is used, since disasters can
occur in specific places, but the effects and impacts are never local.
Therefore, it is of vital importance to articulate disaster risk management
with the planning of safe territories and sustainable territorial environmental
management.
To achieve this
alignment between territorial planning, disaster risk management and climate
change management, strategic projects are formulated in alliance with the
different local, regional and national entities, with the objective of turning
them into planning instruments, with information systems and financing
mechanisms that complement and strengthen the actions carried out by the
territorial entities and link other strategic actors, such as universities,
private enterprise and the productive sector, based on the principles of
governance and co-responsibility. These projects should focus on social
construction, where threatening phenomena and risk are studied from the
perspective of complexity and uncertainty, where new strategies are generated
to address these phenomena, based on the characteristics of the territory,
related to exposed elements and types of social vulnerability, considering
conditions of poverty, inequality, corruption, and other variables, relevant
for the generation of contextualized responses that enhance resilience to
extreme climate events. The articulation between these three processes is a
strategy for the territories to know their hazards and vulnerabilities, adapt
to the effects of a changing climate, be prepared for the possible occurrence
of a hazardous event and implement strategies in their development model for a
sustainable development.
4. RESULTS:
Climatological early
warning system from the bottom up. Based on the experience of the
climatological early warning system of Norte de Santander, Colombia, which has
been developed in two phases, in the years 2012 - 2015 and 2017 - 2020, the
following structure is proposed, which seeks to be a strategy for adaptation to
climate change and mitigation of impacts from events related to hydrometeorological
conditions, where risk governance and coordination and participation among the
different key actors of the territory in terms of risk are strengthened.
For the
implementation of the SATC, the intervention area is organized by basins, for the
department of Norte de Santander, six basins were proposed: Pamplonita River,
El Zulia River, Táchira River, Chitagá River, Algodonal River and Tibú River.
The intervention area is composed of 29 municipalities and works under the
associative model, considering the basins as regions, where collective
strategies are generated for emergency preparedness and attention.
Bottom-up
climatological early warning system
Based on the
experience of the climatological early warning system of Norte de Santander, Colombia,
which has been developed in two phases, in the years 2012 - 2015 and 2017 -
2020, the following structure is proposed, which seeks to be a strategy for
adaptation to climate change and mitigation of impacts from events related to
hydrometeorological conditions, where risk governance and coordination and
participation among the different key actors of the territory in terms of risk
are strengthened.
For the
implementation of the SATC, the intervention area is organized by basins, for
the department of Norte de Santander, six basins were proposed: Pamplonita
River, El Zulia River, Táchira River, Chitagá River, Algodonal River and Tibú
River. The intervention area is composed of 29 municipalities and works under
the associative model, considering the basins as regions, where collective
strategies are generated for emergency preparedness and attention. Principios
estratégicos de un SATC.
For the proper
implementation of this SATC, with a bottom-up approach, it is important the
representation of all actors present in the territory, educational, productive,
rural and urban community sectors, the administration from the local, regional
and national scales. Working in coordination with the departmental councils for
disaster risk management - CDGRD, municipal councils for disaster risk
management - CMGRD, community action boards, universities and researchers,
environmentalists and other actors will guarantee the use of the information
generated from the system. See Figure 5.
Figure 5: Strategic
principles of a SATC. Source: Authors
The strategic
principles of the SATC are active community participation, for decision making
and actions, co-responsibility where all actors are committed to teamwork,
collaborative learning and knowledge management, to revitalize the role of the
community in the knowledge of its territory, from the different cultural and
inherited practices that guide processes such as agriculture, governance, to
make decisions and establish responsibilities in the installation of the
monitoring, preparedness and response network, self-organization, so that the
community establishes actions proposed on a voluntary basis, complementary to
those carried out by the work team, for example, manual monitoring systems or
strategies for disseminating information and alerts developed autonomously,
conscious action to rethink inadequate cultural practices regarding
environmental management and disaster risk management, empowerment to recognize
the community's potential for building resilient territories and the role of
first responder when an eventuality occurs, reflection, valuing life to avoid
risk situations, mainly in territorial planning, and resilience to have the
capacity to adapt and respond to hazardous events.
5.
CONCLUSIONS:
Capacity
building in resilient communities in territorial management knowledge, disaster
risk awareness, adaptation, climate change mitigation and early warning, is
proposed as a response to the guidelines for the structuring of territorial
plans for disaster risk management and focuses the orientation of the PMGRD, as
the main instrument for the harmonization of these regulations, from the
scenarios of climate change, its adaptation and climate action, from the
identification and characterization of its different risk scenarios, with a
prospective vision of risk management and climate change management, collective
and in articulation with the different key actors of the municipality in order
to consolidate resilient territories adapted to climate change.
Alert
systems function as a strategy to strengthen resilience in communities,
adaptation to climate change and mitigation of impacts. To be effective, the
different territorial actors must be articulated, where risk conditions can be
understood, monitored and evaluated. and the importance of monitoring, for the
generation of alerts from prevention and co-responsibility. The full
participation of the actors strengthens governance and sustainability,
strategic for territorial planning where all information related to risk
management is decisive for decision-making and its prospective.
The generation
of synergies from the articulation of the different key actors present in the
territory, such as territorial entities, universities, CAR, community leaders,
from the strengthening of the municipalities' own capacities, is the key to the
incorporation of Risk Reduction of Disasters and Adaptation to Climate Change,
where territorial planning and development from a local and regional vision
focus on climate resilience and strengthening territorial adaptive capacity.
6.
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