The Context For Building Resilience Through Sustainable Change Of Use Adaptation
As the 21st century progresses, we are evolving our collective thinking and responses to the challenges of living with a changing climate, increasing global population and changing demographics, mass urbanisation, issues of inequality and instability, issues of food security and increasing scarcity of resources, as well as an increased need for sustainability in the built environment to name but a few (UN 2015; RICS, 2015) Climate change is held to be one of the greatest challenges of our time. The World Bank Group Report (2015) 'Building Regulation for Resilience: Managing Risks for Safer Cities' noted that in the last two decades natural disasters have claimed 1,300,000 lives, have affected 4.4 billion people that is over half the global population, and have resulted in US$2 trillion of economic losses. They noted that high income countries with advanced building code systems experienced 47% of disasters but only 7% of the fatalities and therefore a prima facie case exists for rigorous regulation (The World Bank Group, 2015) Significantly, it also called for a shift from managing disasters to reducing the underlying risks. Increases in global temperature, sea level rise, ocean acidification and other climate change impacts are seriously affecting coastal areas and low lying coastal countries. These are examples of chronic stresses and are defined in this chapter. In summary, the survival of many societies, and of the planet's biological support systems, are at risk. As a response, in December 2015, the UN published the report, 'Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development' stating that: