Protect People’s Lives, Property, and Welfare through Flexible Adaptation Planning
On July 23, 2018, Kumagaya City in Saitama Prefecture marked a temperature of 41.1ºC, the record-setting heat for the first time in the last five years. In September 2008, the prefecture published “Urgent Report: The Impacts of Global Warming on Saitama Prefecture,” and in March 2009, it enacted a prefectural bylaw on promotional activities to tackle global warming and developed a plan for prefectural global warming countermeasures called “Stop Global Warming: Saitama’s Navigation 2050.” It had been promoting prefecture-wide climate change adaptation activities more than five years prior to the formulation of Japan’s national adaptation plan in 2015. We interviewed with Kentaro Kobayashi, Group Manager of the Global Warming Strategy Division at Saitama Prefecture’s Department of Environment, who is in charge of the implementation of the plan; Tomohide Shimada, Associate Director of the Research Promotion Office at CESS; and Masayuki Hara, a researcher in charge of Global Warming Mitigation and Adaptation Group at CESS.
Recognized the Impacts of Climate Change Before Any Other Prefecture
What prompted Saitama Prefecture to start adaptation measures ahead of other prefectures?
Kobayashi: It was when a report “Global Warming: Impacts on Japan” was published by a project named S-4: Comprehensive Project of Climate Change Impacts funded by the Ministry of the Environment in May 2008. The report was shocking because it revealed that global warming causes not only melting ice sheets and sea level rises, but also affects our daily lives. The report was featured in newspapers, on TV, and in other media, which made Saitama Prefecture very aware of the local effects of climate change. In September of the same year, the Center for Environmental Science in Saitama (CESS), a prefectural institution, launched a project team and published “Urgent Report: The Impacts of Global Warming on Saitama Prefecture.” In the wake of this report, Saitama Prefecture enacted “Bylaw Concerning Promotion of Global Warming Countermeasures” at the end of FY2008, demonstrating its commitment to climate change adaptation. The bylaw defines that response measures to climate change include adaptation as well as mitigation by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and state that the prefecture shall implement adaptation measures. In the same period, the prefecture further demonstrated its commitment by developing “Stop Global Warming: Saitama’s Navigation 2050,” in which there is a chapter on adaptation measures. I believe that Saitama was the first prefecture in Japan to have such a movement.
Saitama took adaptation into its policy with amazing speed once they found the necessity. How did you develop the framework within the policy to promote adaptation actions?
Kobayashi: In February 2012, we set up a new working group on adaptation under the existing Global Warming Countermeasures Promotion Committee that promotes climate change mitigation. The director of the committee serves as the chairperson of the working group, and it consists of 16 director-level members from the Departments of Planning and Finance, Crisis Management and Disaster Prevention, Environment, Public Health and Medical Services, Agriculture and Forestry, Land Development, and City Development, as well as Public Enterprise Bureau. The working group started seeking out potential adaptation measures in policies handled by each division. Meanwhile, we invited external experts to hold a lecture for officials in charge. The purpose of this lecture was to disseminate the knowledge of adaptation because adaptation was hardly recognized at that time. While the Department of Environment led the initiative, we found issues raised by some departments.
You’re saying that the effort didn’t work well. What kinds of issues did you find?
Kobayashi: In the process of sorting out the existing measures and policies from the perspective of adaptation to climate change, we identified three types of issues. The first issue was our lack of understanding about adaptation. At that time, the idea of adaptation was not familiar as it is now. Also, the lecture for officials in charge was sufficient enough to disseminate the knowledge to every part in our entire organization. The second one was uncertainties in projected impacts. Municipal policies directly affect citizens’ everyday lives, and there are many urgent issues to be dealt with. Reflecting such conditions, some departments claimed that developing adaptation measures was difficult because the measures need to take the uncertainties into consideration. The third issue was that the jurisdiction of adaptation measures was unclear. While climate change mitigation has been mainly led by the Department of Environment, it is difficult to define the jurisdiction of adaptation measures as Departments of Agriculture and Forestry, Land Development, Public Health and Medical Services, and Public Enterprise Bureau are involved in.
Toward Mainstreaming Adaptation
How did you address the first issue and facilitate the understanding of adaptation?
Kobayashi: We introduced two approaches for adaptation actions in Stop Global Warming: Saitama Navigation 2050 (Updated Version). The first is to integrate and systematize policies of our prefecture. By mainstreaming the perspectives on adaptation, policy plans in sectors would be developed so as to take it into consideration. This approach takes time, but there has been steady progress. For instance, the word “adaptation” appeared in an announcement made by River Control Division, saying “Water control is important as a means of climate change adaptation.”
How do you promote adaptation measures in the prefectural government?
Kobayashi: We are proactively sharing information through regular meetings of the adaptation working group and through internal mailing lists. We also participate in national projects and work with experts with support of CESS in order to promote adaptation policies in the prefecture. Also, in March 2018, we held a meeting with sub-prefectures and came to an agreement on future cooperation in preparation for the enforcement of Climate Change Adaptation. Communication with citizens, businesses, and related groups is currently facilitated by each relevant division through projects such as “Cool City Oasis”, and we expect national projects and A-PLAT will lead such actions.
How do you deal with the second issue, uncertainties in projected impacts?
Hara: It’s undeniable that uncertainties are associated with projections and that it is impossible to eliminate these uncertainties from projections of both climate change and its impacts. However, thanks to the efforts of researchers around the world, the uncertainties are getting smaller compared to the past. It’s important for us to take in this kind of latest information quickly.
Shimada: Nobody knows precisely how future climate change might affect us. But that doesn’t mean we should just wait and see. We need to use the current research findings to examine future impacts. Because there is some variation in these findings, it’s important that, alongside existing measures, we consider multiple actions according to the levels of impacts so that we can prepare. We have incorporated this idea into a PDCA cycle. The Global Warming Strategy Division and CESS provide information related to monitoring and impact assessment to relevant divisions. Based on this information, each division prepares multiple adaptation measures in advance and gradually implements the measures with consideration for the monitoring results of climate change impacts. The progress of each project is tracked by the Global Warming Strategy Division. We call this mechanism “promotion of adaptation with flexibility.”
Promotion of Adaptation with Flexibility
Promotion of Adaptation with Flexibility Advanced Efforts toward the Introduction of Adaptation in Agriculture
How have you dealt with the third issue, the jurisdiction of adaptation?
Kobayashi: We find it difficult to decide which division should take control in promoting adaptation measures. This is because climate change poses a wide range of impacts and each countermeasure has already been implemented by the individual divisions. For example, imagine how you would examine an adaptation measure to enhance water control in response to increased precipitation due to climate change in the future. Infrastructure-based improvement of control facilities for rivers, sewers, and discharge control facilities for rainwater has been conducted by Department of Land Development, Public Sewage Works Bureau and Department of City Development. On the other hand, soft measures, such as land use planning, emergency preparedness, and information provision, also involve many departments, including Department of Environment and Department of Crisis Management and Disaster Prevention. Therefore, we sorted out the existing policies within the prefectural level from the viewpoint of adaptation, in an attempt to see the whole picture of prefecture-wide adaptation measures, which helped us clarify the jurisdiction.
The difficulty of adaptation comes from the fact that many departments are involved, as is reflected in the water control measures. How did you achieve cooperation between departments?
Kobayashi: We developed a strategy where we would examine adaptation in the agriculture field, which had already shown evidence of climate change impacts so that we could utilize this experience for different fields. We found that some Saitama products were affected by climate change, the most seriously damaged of which was its most renowned variety of rice, sai no kagayaki. The quality of the rice had deteriorated due to high temperatures in 2010 and 2012. It was so bad that we decided not to sell it, and instead served it in the prefectural building cafeteria. This drew a considerable amount of attention to the impacts of climate change. I think other prefectures consider the impacts on agriculture to be an urgent issue, because agriculture is the most vulnerable to global warming (climate change) impacts. After deciding to implement adaptation measures, we held the Study Group of Global Warming Adaptation Measures in Agriculture to discuss adaptation with four members including CESS and Rice Field Research Institute in Agricultural Research Center, as well as Saitama Prefecture’s Production Promotion Division and Global Warming Strategy Division. In this discussion, we had support from researchers who were involved in the national project S-8.
What were the findings of the Study Group of Global Warming Adaptation Measures in Agriculture?
Kobayashi: Focusing on rice and wheat, we assessed how these products would be affected by projected temperatures in the short term (2-3 years from now), medium term (20-30 years from now) and long term (50 years or later) and how we could deal with these impacts. The projection indicated that, depending on the conditions, future temperatures in Saitama will increase to the levels that are currently observed in Kochi or Kagoshima prefectures. Then, we analyzed the potential impacts of the projected temperature rise on these products and examined countermeasures for the impacts. We also assessed the potential phenomena and impact projections that might find four specific sectors: health, water disasters, water resources, and ecosystems. The results of the work is reported in “Stop Global Warming: Saitama Navigation 2050 (revised version)”, along with the adaptation policies in the sectors.
In March 2016, we developed a plan named, Climate Change Adaptation - The Direction of Our Policies,” which is virtually the local adaptation plan. This plan added more concrete descriptions to what we had discussed for adaptation when we revised the previous “Stop Global Warming”, by referring the national adaptation plan. We were able to achieve all of this quickly because we had established a successful mechanism that enables to share information through the adaptation working group.
To Protect the Prefecture from Future Climate Change Impacts
What is the most important thing when the environment-related departments implement adaptation measures?
Kobayashi: I’m trying to develop for each division a viewpoint that will allow them to think naturally about climate change impacts in their policies making and make opportunities to mainstream adaptation. It is important that, rather than starting something new, the Department of Environment pays attention to existing measures implemented in the policies of the prefecture and identify those that can be considered as adaptation, and share those ideas with related officials. I try to avoid using the word “adaptation” because it can lead to the misunderstanding that adaptation is a new task. Instead, I try to communicate with each department, giving ideas of possible countermeasures for future impacts. But when it comes to highly specialized information, administrative officers can understand only so much. In order for Saitama Prefecture to collect, organize, and provide information on climate change impacts and highly specialized scientific knowledge of adaptation, the CESS’s help is necessary for us. We are sharing information with the CESS by phone or in person almost every day. I think that this kind of close cooperation is the key to reflecting the information in the actual implementation of measures.
Hara: At the CESS, we are collecting a variety scientific knowledge and the latest information on the status of climate change impacts and adaptation from universities and institutions inside and outside Japan so that we can provide and explain such information to the staff in the Global Warming Strategy Division. The CESS has also accumulated information on climate change countermeasures and other environmental measures because many CESS researchers have been working for the institute for a long time. We have the responsibility to share the information we have accumulated with staff in the Global Warming Strategy Division.
Saitama Prefecture is a leading prefecture in adaptation. How do you think about adaptation as you work to support the prefecture?
Kobayashi: Although I didn’t know about adaptation myself until I came to the Global Warming Strategy Division three years ago, I found the idea very easy to understand. It’s been almost 10 years since the bylaw was enacted. During this period, the former officials who have been involved in adaptation are now playing important roles in the other departments, and I think this helps facilitate the gradual spread of understanding of adaptation within the agency. Saitama Prefecture is a great place to live, with the highest number of sunny days and the lowest number of sediment disasters in Japan. Having said that, we need to be fully aware that future climate change may still affect us. Climate change adaptation is a long-term problem. Although short-term personnel reshuffling is common in the prefectural administration, I think continuity is important for the administration and that we should never abandon the ongoing efforts due to such a reshuffle. I hope to enhance the cooperation between departments in the prefecture, the CESS, and the surrounding prefectures to continue our efforts to prepare for future climate change.
(Published on September 5, 2018)