【外交政策 20121102】面对环境，适应还是死亡

满仓

【中文标题】面对环境，适应还是死亡
【原文标题】Adapt or Die
【登载媒体】外交政策
【原文作者】JAMES TRAUB
【原文链接】http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/11/02/adapt_or_die


忘掉美国“山顶之城”的美誉吧——它的旁边就是海洋，世界上大部分最伟大的城市都濒临海洋。几个世纪以来，水代表战略优势，比如获取食物和贸易。但是，正如Frank Jacobs在《外交政策》撰文所称，不断上升的海平面和逐渐消失的海岸线意味着，曾经的优势变成了烦恼。世界上10座大城市会很快变成海底世界吗？

孟买，280万人受灾

孟买位于印度西海岸，濒临阿拉伯海。政府间气候变化委员会在今年发布的一份报告称，这座城市正在面临洪水、暴风和海平面上升的威胁。2005年的大洪水让它饱受蹂躏，24小时里3英尺的降水量导致1000人丧生。上图，2007年，印度教徒把象头印度神伽内什抬入阿拉伯海做浸礼。

上海，240万人受灾

上海——中文名称的意思就是“海上面”——位于长江三角洲的低洼地带。研究人士表示，这座城市极易受到气候变化的影响，原因不仅仅在于其地理位置，还有人为的因素：这座大城市有2300万人口，其排水系统亟待改造，由于缺少法规约束，裸露地带修建了过多的建筑物。与此同时，上升的海平面不断侵蚀这座城市下三角洲的土壤。上图，人们在外滩拍照，乌云在黄浦江上方汇集。

迈阿密，200万人受灾

迈阿密和其它佛罗里达东北部城市，是最容易遭到环境变化打击的美国城市。迈阿密的平均海拔只比高潮时的海平面高6英尺，科学家预测，2100年海平面将会上升5英尺。最先被威胁到的是这座城市的发电厂、机场、污水处理厂、监狱和医院。上图，桑迪飓风来袭，一个女人走过被大风吹袭的棕榈树。

亚历山大港，130万人受灾

亚历山大港是地中海的战略要地，以曾经将其建为都城的亚历山大大帝命名。它目前依然是埃及的第二大城市和工业中心，其港口吞吐量占埃及对外贸易的五分之四。但是据预测，地中海的海平面在本世纪将会上升1到3英尺，这座古老的埃及城市面临这巨大的危险。上图，2002年7月，埃及北部沿海城市亚历山大港的阿尔马西亚广场景色。

东京，110万人受灾

东京位于东京湾旁边三条大河的冲击平原上，但是，3500万东京人所担心的事情还不仅仅是海平面的上升。这座城市117个气象台发现，强降雨导致的洪水可能性越来越高。上图，跨越东京港、连接东京和台场的彩虹桥。

曼谷，90万人受灾

泰国首都坐落在湄南河上，这座曾经被称作“东方威尼斯”的城市，几乎全部建立在沼泽上，专家曾警告地面在缓慢下沉。去年，曼谷的居民曾被洪水围困，有人认为这是未来灾难的预兆。上图，2006年，泰国皇家游船在湄南河上巡游，庆祝泰国国王普密蓬•阿杜德继位60周年。

孟加拉，达卡，85万人受灾

孟加拉首都达卡的海拔最高处仅超过海平面13米，它坐落在4条易发洪水的河流和喜马拉雅山脚之间。研究人员担心海平面上升和山峰融雪所造成的双重影响。上图，2012年9月，孟加拉船夫在达卡的布里甘加河等待乘客。河流是数千孟加拉人的主要交通途径。

象牙海岸，阿比让，52万人受灾

阿比让是象牙海岸的前首都，目前依然是这个国家的经济中心。它位于几内亚湾，不断上升的海平面已经开始侵蚀房屋和其它基础设施。上图，2006年的阿比让海岸。

雅加达，53万人受灾

雅加达不但濒海，城市中还被13条河流纵横贯穿而过，几乎每年的雨季都会让这座城市受灾。印度尼西亚的首都在2007年遭遇了几个世纪以来最严重的洪水灾害，整个城市70％的面积被水淹没，45万人被迫移居到高地，造成将近7亿美元的损失。首都几天陷入瘫痪，让领导人开始思考气候变化怎么会让每年的洪水变得越来越难以预测。上图，2010年2月18日，雅加达上空阴云密布。

拉各斯，36万人受灾

拉各斯是西非重要的生产基地和港口城市。但是在有2100万人口居住的城市地带，由于缺乏基础设施建设和足够的排水系统，加上没有规划的住宅建筑，让这里成为最容易遭受气候变化影响的地区。最容易受灾的是居住在拉各斯城市贫民窟中的居民，那里目前就是洪水频发，一次洪水有时需要几天才会消退。上图，2011年9月，人们在Makoko棚户区划船出行。


我算是幸运的了，我住在曼哈顿东部地区，星期天这里没有停电。但是我的很多朋友没那么幸运，我写这篇文章的时候，我太太的外甥和我们的养女都在我家睡觉。飓风所造成的损失超过了所有人的预计，纽约已经有38人死亡，其中大部分是流浪汉。尽管如此，对于一座生命力顽强的西方大城市来说，纽约很快会回复它的面貌。洛克菲勒基金会的一位气候专家Cristina Rumbaitis Del Rio说：“如果这样的灾害发生在加尔各答或者达卡，那里的人们居住在劣质的房屋中，没有像纽约一样完善的基础设施来进行预防，那将会是什么情景。”

毋庸赘言，前几年，凶猛的洪水蹂躏了马尼拉和曼谷；2005年，缅甸的暴风雨导致1000人丧生。当然，沿海城市一直以来容易遭受洪水和暴风的袭击，但是气候变化所导致的海平面上升和更强力暴风的肆虐，让城市显得更加脆弱。人们蜂拥到城市生活，暴露在危险之下的人数会更多。在世界上海拔高度低于10米的城市中，生活着着4亿人口，其中大部分都在亚洲。海平面如果上升38厘米，预计受灾人口会增加五分之一。美国地理调查学会预测，到2100年，海平面将会上升61厘米到1.9米。这幅图像难道还不够生动吗？

长远的解决方案当然是减少二氧化碳的排放量，设法让气候变化的曲线开始向下移动。但即使有办法开始采取措施，全球变暖的积累效应会让我们已经看到的那些灾害——无论是在乡村、森林还是城市中——在未来几十年还会更严重地出现。这就是为什么气候科学家和政策倡议者越来越把“适应”作为不可避免的全球变暖效应的解决方案。

所谓适应，包括一些大型的基础设施项目，比如纽约正在考虑的飓风门，以及无数的早期预报和疏散系统变化、建筑物设计、城市规划、湿地开发等等。这些项目耗资甚巨，但总是便宜过什么都不做所要付出的代价。世界银行在2010年的报告中估算，从现在到2050年，世界为了应对平均温度上升2摄氏度的成本大约在700亿美元到1000亿美元之间。

这笔钱大约相当于目前对发展中国家援助的总额，捐献国愿意筹集如此巨大一笔款项的可能性，仅仅略高于采取极端行动减少全球碳排放的可能性。但是这种选择的前景更加光明。在2009年那次并不成功的哥本哈根环境大会中，捐献国承诺在未来三年里，每年出资100亿美元，用来解决“适应”（尤其是易受气候灾害侵袭的国家）和“缓解”（降低排放量）的问题。同时定下目标，到2020年，每年的出资额将达到1000亿美元。实际上，大部分承诺已经被履行了，包括三年出资额为51亿美元的美国。然而到目前为止，这笔钱几乎没有被使用，明显的原因是被委托支配这笔钱的国际金融机构行动太慢。

适应，从字面上理解，就是一个本地化的行为。在受自然灾害影响的地区，的确有无数的测试项目、研究和实际行动。据世界银行的预测，世界上40％的飓风灾害都会降临在孟加拉国。从60年代它就开始采取一些适应性降低灾难的措施，包括修建堤岸和避难所、植树、建立早期预报系统。洛克菲勒基金会亚洲城市气候变化网络资助了10个城市的适应项目，大多是中等规模的城市，比如印度西部的苏拉特和越南的岘港。这些项目通过与市政府机构和地方性组织的合作，来设计小型高风险应对机制，比如洪水灾害模型或者建立公共医疗机制，以控制疟疾和其它昆虫传播疾病的肆虐范围。但这些项目并没有大范围铺开。例如在孟加拉国，由于缺少更积极的适应措施，自然灾害已经消耗了0.5％到1％的国民生产总值，未来每次强烈的飓风灾害都会带来类似的损失。

谁会来支付这些费用？容易受灾的人口中三分之一都分布在中国和印度，这两个国家越来越有能力独立抗灾，他们可以承担起很大一部分适应成本。当然在他们看来，全球变暖的罪魁祸首是西方，所以西方应该为此付出代价。那么我们呢？在卡特琳娜飓风出现之前，西方人一直认为大洪水是只有第三世界国家才会面临的问题。但是这种心态更加印证了全球变暖的趋势，正如哥伦比亚Lamont-Doherty地球研究所的气候科学家John Mutter所说：“地球变暖的一个标志是热带地区不断扩大。”以前发生在纬度30度以内的自然灾害，现在已经扩展到40度，那里是西方商业和制造中心的所在地。纽约到2030年的感觉，就像1970年的马尼拉。适应气候变化将成为我们生活中的一部分，它不得不如此。但是，西方是否更愿意或者更不愿意出资来拯救这部分脆弱的世界，则是另一个问题了。

当然，如果你只是头痛医头脚痛医脚，治疗的代价会越来越大、越来越没有希望。就像一家非盈利咨询机构的气候变化负责人Dean Bialek所说：“如果全球的碳排放量在2020年前还没有下降的趋势，那么世界所有的应对措施都不起作用。美国的领导是全球统一合作的必要条件，尤其对于中国来说。”没错，中国，和所有其它新兴国家一样，其迅速的经济发展在全球碳排放中占据的比例越来越大。它必须在可以在持续发展的条件下大幅削减碳排放比例，但是如果美国不能采取相同的措施，别指望它会这么做。

从这个意义上来说，气候变化就像防止核武器扩散一样。巴拉克•奥巴马总统非常了解，其它国家不会同意限制核武器，除非华盛顿自己先解除武装——减少武器库中核弹头的数量。在政治层面允许的范围内，奥巴马其实已经这样做了。他之所以在气候变化问题上毫无建树，是因为在政治上无法这么做，但是这反过来造成一个全球性的问题愈加恶化。最近的民意调查显示，美国人还是希望华盛顿在气候变化问题上挑起重担，但也同时警惕地关注解决这个问题有可能引起的税收政策变化。桑迪或许把民意继续向前推进了一步。米特•罗姆尼根本不承认气候变化是人为的原因，如果他在下周二赢得大选，他不会为此付出任何努力。如果奥巴马成功连任，他没有别的选择，只能在这个棘手的问题上投入大量政治资本。但是，这难道不是他第二个任期的目标吗？



原文：

Forget America's shining "city on a hill" --it's by the ocean where most of the world's greatest cities lie. For centuries, water has meant strategic advantages, like access to food and trade. But as Frank Jacobs writes in Foreign Policy, rising sea levels and disappearing coastlines mean that in many places what was once an advantage has become a liability. Could these 10 major cities soon vanish beneath rising tides?

Mumbai, 2.8 million inhabitants exposed

Mumbai sits on the western coast of India, on the edge of the Arabian Sea. A report this year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change noted that the city was facing increased risks from floods, storms, and rising seas. The city suffered massive flooding in 2005 when nearly three feet of rain fell over 24 hours, killing over 1,000 people. Above, Hindu devotees carry an idol of the elephant-headed Hindu God Lord Ganesha into the Arabian Sea for immersion in 2007.

Shanghai, 2.4 million inhabitants exposed

Shanghai -- the name in Chinese means "above the sea" -- is a low-lying city in the Yangtze River Delta. Researchers warn it is particularly vulnerable to climate change due to both its geography, and because of human factors: with upwards of 23 million people in the metro area, the city's drainage system needs improvement and lack of regulation has encouraged excessive construction in exposed areas. In the meantime, rising sea levels continue to wear away at the delta soil on which the city sits. Above, people take photos along the Bund as storm clouds gather over the Huangpu River in Shanghai.

Miami, 2 million inhabitants exposed

Miami and other southeastern cities in Florida are among the most vulnerable to climate change in the United States. The average elevation in Miami is just six feet above high tide; scientists predict sea levels could rise as much as five feet by 2100. At greatest risk are the city's power plants, airports, waste disposal sites, prisons, and hospitals. Above, a woman walks along the ocean as blustery winds blow through the palm trees with the approach of Hurricane Sandy.

Alexandria, 1.3 million exposed

Alexandria is strategically located on the Mediterranean Sea and is named after Alexander the Great, who made the city his capital. It's still Egypt's second-largest city, an industrial center, and its port handles four-fifths of Egypt's trade. But with the Mediterranean expected to rise between 1 foot to three feet over the course of this century, this ancient Egyptian city is now looking dangerously exposed. Above, a view of Alexandria's al-Manshiya Square on Egypt's northern coastline in July 2002.

Tokyo, 1.1 million exposed

Tokyo is located on a floodplain of three large rivers, and sits next to Tokyo Bay. But the 35 million people who live in the Tokyo metropolitan area have more to fear than rising sea levels; a study from 117 weather stations around the city showed that there's been a recent increase in the kind of highly localized, intense rainfall that can also lead to flooding. Above, the Rainbow Bridge connects Tokyo and Odaiba over the port of Tokyo.

Bangkok, 900,000 exposed

The Thai capital sits on the Chao Praya river. Nearly the entire city, once called "The Venice of the East" is built on swampland, and experts have warned that it is slowly sinking. Bangkok residents were besieged by flooding last year and some see it as a sign of what may come. Above, the Thai Royal Barge procession cruises down the Chao Praya river to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Thailand King Bhumibol Adulyadej's accession to the throne in 2006.

Dhaka, Bangladesh, 850,000 exposed

Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is only 13 meters above sea level at its highest point. It sits between four flood-prone rivers and at the foot of the Himalayas. Researchers are concerned both about the impact of rising sea levels and also increasing snowmelt with higher average temperatures. Above, Bangladeshi boat men wait for passengers on the Buriganga river in Dhaka in September 2012. Thousands of Dhaka residents use the river to commute.

Abidjan, Ivory Coast, 520,000 exposed

Abidjan is the former capital of the Ivory Coast, and is still the country's economic capital. It sits, however, on the Gulf of Guinea, and rising sea levels have been steadily encroaching on houses and other infrastructure. Above, a view of Abidjan's coast in 2006.

Jakarta, 500,000 exposed

Jakarta sits near the sea, and is criss-crossed by 13 rivers; it experiences annual flooding almost every rainy season. But the Indonesian capital was hit by its worst flood in centuries in 2007. The water covered more than 70 percent of the city, sent 450,000 residents fleeing to high ground and were estimated to have caused nearly $700 million in damage. The Indonesian capital was paralyzed for days, prompting leaders to consider how climate change has made the annual floods even more treacherous. Above, heavy clouds hang over Jakarta on Feb. 18, 2010.

Lagos, 360,000 exposed

Lagos is one of West Africa's chief manufacturing and port cities. But teeming with more than 21 million people in the metro area, a lack of infrastructure, inadequate drainage, and uncontrolled buildup of settlements means that it is also among the places most vulnerable to climate change. Those most at risk are the people living in Lagos's poor urban slums, which already flood regularly, sometimes for days at a time. Above, people navigate through the waterways of the Makoko slum in Lagos, in September 2011.

I'm one of the lucky ones. I live on the Upper East Side in Manhattan and I haven't lost a minute of power to Sandy. Many of my friends have, of course; as I write this, my wife's nephew, and our god-daughter, are asleep in our apartment. The storm has upended vastly more lives than anyone expected -- the death toll in New York City is up to 38, while most of Hoboken, just across the Hudson, remains underwater. Still, New York will feel like New York again quite soon, for a great Western capital is an inherently resilient place. "Can you imagine," asks Cristina Rumbaitis Del Rio, a climate change expert at the Rockefeller Foundation, "something like this happening in Calcutta or Dhaka, where people live in substandard housing and there isn't the communications infrastructure to lead to the preparedness we saw in New York City?"

It doesn't take too much imagination. In the last few years, vast floods have ravaged Manila and Bangkok; in 2005, storm waters killed close to 1,000 people in Mumbai. Coastal cities, of course, have always been subject to floods and storm surges, but climate change has increased that vulnerability owing to rising sea levels and the increasing violence of storms. And the number of people exposed to those risks has grown rapidly as people have flocked to cities. Over 400 million people now live in urban areas situated 10 meters or less above sea level, most of them in Asia. A sea-level rise of 38 centimeters has been estimated to increase by a factor of five the number of people affected by such flooding. The U.S. Geological Survey has projected that oceans will rise by between 60 centimeters and 1.9 meters by 2100. Is that a graphic enough picture?

The long-term answer to the problem, of course, is to bend the curve of climate change downward by reducing the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere. But even should this somehow comes to pass, the cumulative effects of global warming ensure that the kind of damage we have begun to see -- in farms and forests as well as in cities -- will grow in the coming decades. This is why climate scientists and policy advocates have increasingly focused on adaptation as the solution to the inevitable effects of global warming.

Adaptation involves both big infrastructure projects, like the kind of storm gates now being considered for New York City, and myriad changes in early-warning and evacuation systems, building design, urban planning, wetlands development, and the like. It's not cheap, though it's much cheaper than doing nothing. In a 2010 report, the World Bank estimated that the cost of adapting to a world 2 degrees centigrade warmer than the historic baseline would be $70-$100 billion a year between now and 2050.

The likelihood that donor countries will mobilize such a vast sum, which is roughly equal to the total amount now spent on development aid, is only slightly greater than the likelihood of drastic action to reduce global emissions. But the auguries are a little bit better. At the otherwise unsuccessful 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen, donors pledged to spend $10 billion a year over the ensuing three years on a combination of adaptation, especially in vulnerable countries, and "mitigation" -- reducing emissions -- while building towards a goal of spending $100 billion a year by 2020. Most of those pledges have in fact been committed, including by the United States, whose share of the three-year total comes to $5.1 billion. So far, however, very little of that money has been disbursed, apparently because the international financial institutions which hold it in trust have been slow to move.

Adaptation, by its nature, is a localized activity, and there are innumerable pilot projects and studies and actual programs going on in affected areas. Bangladesh, which according to the World Bank study is on the receiving end of 40 percent of the world's storm surges,  has been adapting to calamity since the 1960s by building coastal embankments and shelters, planting trees, and establishing early-warning systems. The Rockefeller Foundation's Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network funds programs in 10 cities, mostly medium-sized places like Surat, in western India, or Da Nang, in Vietnam. The program works with municipal leaders and local organizations to devise small-scale, high-impact measures such as modeling flood zones or building public-health campaigns to reduce the incidence of malaria and other insect-borne diseases. But it's all very modest. In Bangladesh, for example, natural disasters already absorb 0.5 to 1 percent of gross domestic product; absent more ambitious adaptation measures, that may well be the cost of each of the more severe cyclones expected in the future.

Who's going to pay for that? China and India, which together have almost a third of the affected coastal population, are increasingly self-reliant, and should be expected to make serious contributions towards the cost of adaptation -- though their current position has been that the West has caused global warming, so the West should pay for the consequences. What about us? Until Hurricane Katrina, citizens in the West could look on epic flooding as just another awful problem besetting the Third World. But that's a pre-global warming mentality. As John Mutter, a climate scientist at Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Institute, puts it, "one way to think about a world getting warmer is that the tropics are just bigger." Natural disasters once largely confined to 30 degrees from the equator are now creeping towards the forties, where the West's great centers of commerce and creation lie. New York in 2030 may feel like Manila in 1970. Climate-change adaptation will become part of our lives because it will have to. Whether that will make the West more or less likely to finance this adaptation and mitigation in more vulnerable parts of the world is another question.

Of course, if you keep treating the symptoms rather than the disease, the treatment will only get more expensive, and more desperate. As Dean Bialek, director for climate change at the non-profit advisory group Independent Diplomat, puts it, "All the adaptation in the world will fall way short if we don't peak global emissions before 2020, and U.S. leadership is the sine qua non to a more concerted global effort, particularly in China." That is, China, as well as the other emerging nations whose rapidly expanding economies account for a growing fraction of emissions, must agree to sharply reduce the rate of emissions even while continuing to grow -- and they will not do so unless the United States agrees to adopt equivalent measures.

In this respect, climate change is a lot like nuclear nonproliferation. President Barack Obama understood very clearly that other states would not agree to restrain nuclear proliferation unless and until Washington accepted its own end of the bargain -- reducing the stockpile of nuclear weapons. Within the limits of what is politically impossible, Obama has done just that. He has made virtually no progress on climate change because it hasn't been politically possible to do so; but this, in turn, ensures that the global problem will only get worse. Still, recent polls have found that Americans do want the Washington to take a leadership position on climate change, though are leery of the kind of tax policies which might be required to address the problem. Sandy may move the needle of public opinion a little further. Should he win next Tuesday, Mitt Romney, who cannot admit to even believing that humans cause climate change, is unlikely to do anything about the problem. If Obama is re-elected, he will have no choice but to lavish a great deal of political capital on this intractable subject. But isn't that what a second term is for?

虎踞龙蟠

上海未来的确堪忧，到处都是平的，随着全球气候变暖，超级大海潮发生的可能性会增大