Insurance for all by 2047 is a grand vision. However, to get there all barriers must go from now to then. While aspiring to increase the insurance penetration – thereby shrink the protection gap – we are witnessing growing uninsurability in even the world’s largest insurance market.

Historically the US is the world’s biggest polluter. The rising frequency and severity of windstorms, wildfires, flooding, droughts, sea-level rise are significantly caused or amplified by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, pollution and bio-diversity loss. Much of this is an outcome of “mother nature pushing back father greed” to borrow from journalist Thomas Friedman.

Climate Impacts Tracker reminds how “Asia is home to some of the world’s most climate exposed populations. It is also the region facing the largest gap between climate finance required and climate finance delivered. This imbalance determines who is protected and who is left to absorb the consequences.”

Let’s look at this case study. A recent publication – Coastal resilience, (mal)adaptation, and justice in Chennai in Journal of Academics Stand Against Poverty – by Ramakrishnan, R. and Kashwan, P is an eye-opener. They explain how the “rehabilitation” of thousands of people from Chennai to peri-urban coastal Chennai constitutes a form of maladaptation and undermines Chennai’s long-term resilience to floods.

The Metropolitan Area of this fourth largest city in India covers 1,189 sq. km and contributes approx. US$100 billion to the national GDP. Its projected population is expected to exceed 10 million by 2030. About 18.6 per cent live in slum conditions.

Between 1980 and 2012, the city’s built-up area expanded from 47 km² to 402 km², while the area of wetlands declined from 186 km² to 71 km².

What is driving this?

India’s central and state governments have proposed large-scale projects to promote coastal resilience. The ongoing efforts to adapt to frequent episodes of urban flooding in Chennai, have led to thousands of people being displaced from urban centres to peri-urban areas.

State agencies and mainstream political parties began advocating slum resettlement as a way of mitigating risk from increased urban floods. The vision of a “slum-free Chennai,” first articulated by middle-class environmental activists, started showing up in state.
In the 2000s, the narratives and reasoning for slum removal shifted from protecting low-income residents against urban floods to blaming them for the state of the rivers, with the implication that eco-restoration required their removal.

The city leaders’ attention was focused disproportionately on the low-income settlements, though the largest and most environmentally destructive forms of urban infrastructure development were related to commercial and industrial developments supported by the state.

This “relocation” of population with the ostensible goal of climate adaptation has led to adverse impacts on coastal ecology and local livelihoods. It has significantly undermined the goals of improving coastal resilience and climate justice and constitutes a process of what the authors refer to as maladaptation.

Skewed policy responses are not only unjust, point out the authors, they are also ineffective. The “resettlement” of residents from the city’s slums into the ecologically sensitive zones in the surrounding areas, and a failure to prevent the siting of infrastructure in ecologically sensitive areas of peri-urban Chennai, have led to continued degradation of the city’s ecology.

Lacks inclusivity

What, therefore, are the root causes of the apparent contradiction between climate adaptation and climate resilience interventions? Drawing on field research involving key-informant interviews and analysis of ongoing policy developments, the authors show that maladaptation results from a lack of democratic decision-making and a failure of accountability.

They conclude that policy responses for climate resilience and adaptation are mediated by the socioeconomic and political context. Under a policy context that excludes most of the city’s residents from participating actively in the policy process, decision-makers do not pay heed to the interests and perspectives of low-income residents.

Likewise, climate change impacts are experienced differentially, and responses to climate change are mediated by social, political, and economic inequalities in society. This is also true of urban climate policy responses, which are often driven by a top-down approach by national and provincial governments, working with market actors and local governments.

These climate resilience and adaptation responses are nested within broader contestations over urban development in which popular politics, elite aesthetics, middle-class environmentalism, and real-estate interests jostle for influence. As a result, strategies required for climate change adaptation can worsen the climate resilience of the already marginalised.

There is a tendency to prioritize building new physical infrastructure to counter climate impacts. Yet, climate resilience depends as much, if not more, on ecological infrastructure – natural vegetation, mangroves, wetlands, and waterways that are crucial for responding to landscape level stocks and flows of flood waters and to urban heat island effects.

The success of climate adaptation depends on how individuals, specific social groups, and society at large, “manage risk and moderate harm from perceived or projected change,” sometimes referred to as “adaptive capacities”.

The analysis of urban and peri-urban developments over time, including since the devasting Chennai floods of 2015, suggests that the root cause of maladaptation is related to skewed urban planning, which continues to enable high-end constructions in sensitive zones while displacing the urban poor to ecologically sensitive waterscapes around Chennai.

Researchers have for instance argued, say the authors, that the Mumbai Coastal Road (MCR) project that is intended to reduce flood risk and protect against sea level rise could cause damage to intertidal zone.

In conclusion

“Each disaster weakens recovery capacity, deepens inequality, and raises the human cost of the next event.” Cautions Climate Impacts Tracker Asia.

By 2047 India’s GDP is expected to be USD 30 trillion. 90% of the infrastructure is yet to be built. It is, therefore, very critical as to where and how do we build. What’s happening in Chennai is nothing unique.

It is very convenient to attribute such adverse outcomes as ‘Acts of God’. They are very much anthropogenic. If we must address the protection gap by growing penetration – the pitch needs to be re-laid.

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