Integrating disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation into the built environment

Recent disasters across the world have highlighted the fragility of the built environment to a range of natural hazards, including those that may be influenced by climate change. Moreover the rapid pace of urbanisation has increased concerns about the resilience of cities; with contemporary discussions considering how physical/protective interventions can be integrated into the built environment or, indeed, what types of interventions are most effective. Too often Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaption (CCA) have been treated as separate issues. Despite a shift to more pro-active and pre-emptive approaches to managing disaster risk, DRR appears to have been overly influenced by more reactive emergency management practices. At the same time, CCA activities have typically fallen within the realm of environmental sciences. As a result there appears to be critical disconnects between policies for CCA and DRR; often centered in different departments with little or no coordination. Moreover, there is a lack of integration of these policies within building regulations; the scope of which is largely limited to rigid restrictions in height and volume and specifications of materials and technology. Most often these building regulations are focused on the mitigation of a single hazard such as earthquakes, floods or cyclones. This opinion paper will highlight the lack of integration between DRR and CCA in built environment related policies and regulations, and demonstrate how policy and regulations can be used to make DRR including CCA inputs from key built environment stakeholders more proactive and thus more effective.