and leave the informal settlements exposed to rising physical hazards or harsh evictions. Moreover, if adaptation programmes generate conflict between the residents of informal settlements and their governments, the local collective action that is likely to be critical to local adaptation efforts could be undermined (Adger, 2003). Indeed, unless the urban land issues that exclude low-income households from formal housing are addressed, it is difficult to see how equitable adaptation efforts can be mounted in coastal cities. The urban land question is, in turn, closely linked to how urbanization and urban population growth are handled.
Water-short cities Climate change is expected to alter precipitation patterns and increase the aridity of many of the world’s drylands. From the perspective of climate adaptation, the question of whether dryland populations should be concentrated in urban areas is quite different from that of whether urban centres should be concentrated in drylands. All other things being equal, it is preferable if urban populations are not located in drylands where they may be exposed to water shortages and be forced to compete for scarce water supplies. On the other hand, there are various water-related reasons why it may make sense for rural dryland populations to move to local urban centres, particularly when population densities are high and agriculture is causing environmental degradation. Especially where there is a risk of desertification, it may also make sense for a government to encourage urban development rather than agricultural intensification in drylands (Portnov and Safriel, 2004). In China, there are large areas where urbanization is being promoted as a response to dryland degradation. The situation in Ordos, a municipality in Inner Mongolia with a population of about 1.6 million, provides an extreme example of some of the issues involved. This water-scarce and energy-rich city-region is urbanizing extremely rapidly, spurred on by both the booming energy-based economy and ambitious efforts to protect rural ecosystems which involve substantial government subsidies for many of those who move from rural to urban locations in the drylands. The rural population in Ordos declined from 935,000 in 2000 to about 500,000 at the end of 2009, with commensurate increases in the urban population (Han and McGranahan, 2011). This governmentpromoted “ecological migration” may indeed reduce pressures on rural environments. However, from a narrow environmental perspective, it would probably make more sense to allow urban investment and rural-urban migration to flow to alternative locations, away from these fragile drylands. This would nevertheless raise very serious political concerns, as it would entail not only pushing local farmers and herders, including many ethnic Mongolians, out of the rural areas, but out of their homelands as well. Most drylands are far less arid than Ordos, and outside of China government-led “ecological urbanization” is rare. All drylands are characterized by low rainfall relative to evaporation, however, which constrains agriculture and biological productivity generally (Safriel et al., 2005) and can make it difficult to secure sufficient water for domestic purposes. Overall, drylands cover 40 per cent of the world’s land area and, in 2000, contained about a third of the world’s urban population and also about a third of its rural population (McGranahan et al., 2005). More recent estimates for the same year suggest Fai r A n d E ffe ct i ve R e s po n s e s to U rban i zat i o n A n d C li m at e Ch a nge : Tap pi ng Sy n e rgi e s an d Avo i d i ng E xc lus i o nary P o li c i e s
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