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In so doing, Quito officials represent a global trend: The citiesthat are most active in preparing for climate change are notnecessarily the biggest or wealthiest. Instead, they are oftenplaces buffeted by natural disasters and increasing changes intemperature or rainfall. In places where the climate seems to be agrowing threat to human lives, resources and urban infrastructure,local officials have been working with scientists, conductingassessments and examining which new measures may best prepare themfor the future. Indeed, as an MIT survey released today shows, 95 percent of majorcities in Latin America are planning for climate change, comparedto only 59 percent of such cities in the United States. Leadership on climate adaptation "can come from cities of manydifferent sizes and ilks," says JoAnn Carmin, an associateprofessor in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning andlead author of the survey's report. While international climatepolicy measures -- such as potential agreements limiting greenhousegas emissions -- require agreement among national governments,Carmin says, "cities are able to make some important stridesin this area. There are numerous examples from around the worldwhere there are no national policies or explicit support foradaptation, but where local governments are developing plans andtaking action to address climate impacts." The survey is the first to systematically investigate the effortsof cities around the globe to adapt to climate change. Among 468cities worldwide that participated in the survey, 79 percent haveseen changes in temperature, rainfall, sea level or other phenomenaattributable to climate change; 68 percent are pursuing plans foradapting to climate change; and 19 percent have completed a formalassessment of global warming's impact. U.S. cities are lagging in this area, Carmin believes, becauseclimate change, for various reasons, is a more politicallycontentious issue in this country than elsewhere. "Climatechange discussion is off the table, quite frankly, more in the U.S.than anywhere else," Carmin says. "We are caught up overthe cause of climate change, and this has led all climate-relatedissues to become highly politicized, undermining our potential tofocus on promoting long-term urban resilience. This is not the casein many other countries where they take climate change as a givenand are able to move forward with adaptation alongside theirefforts to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions." Same effects, but to a greater degree? The survey report -- "Progress and Challenges in Urban ClimateAdaptation" -- was written by Carmin and MIT graduate studentsNikhil Nadkarni and Christopher Rhie. The survey was conducted inpartnership with ICLEI -- Local Governments for Sustainability, amembership organization of local governments from 70 countries. Thesurvey was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. While many factors explain the willingness of some cities to pursueclimate-adaptation planning, local governments moving ahead in thisrealm tend to integrate adaptation efforts into existingdepartmental responsibilities. Climate change may become a problemof unique magnitude, but some of its possible effects -- such asthe potential to create large storms and flooding, or deadly heatwaves -- are hazards local governments already grapple with. "We expect government departments will work mostly in the sameways they always do," Carmin says. "Some cities haveestablished task forces and commissions to jumpstart adaptation.However, it's not like they're going to set up some separate majordepartment to try to implement everything. … If you'reworking on stormwater management or public health provisions oremergency preparedness, you're going to continue to work on thoseusing the tools you have available, it's just that now you accountfor projected climate changes in the context of your planning andimplementation." Some of Carmin's own field research, apart from the new survey,explores this issue in depth. In a paper published this spring inthe Journal of Planning Education and Research, "Urban ClimateAdaptation in the Global South," Carmin and co-authorsIsabelle Anguelovski and Debra Roberts analyzed the local politicsof climate planning in Quito and Durban, South Africa, anotherleader in planning for the potential effects of climate change.Places such as these, the authors concluded in the paper, are"creatively linking new agendas to existing goals, plans andprograms." Durban, for instance, has suffered from extensiveflooding in the past and is now addressing the matter as aclimate-change policy issue. The extent of change in many cities throughout the developingworld, through rapid growth or migration, should also give leadersin those places reason to consider how climate change could affectthose areas, notes Karen Seto, an associate professor of the urbanenvironment at Yale University. "A place that is rapidly developing needs to think about bothclimate change adaptation and mitigation," Seto says. Bycontrast, she notes, "I'm not surprised that a smallerpercentage of cities in the U.S. are thinking about adaptation. Inthe U.S. and in countries where income levels are relatively high,there is this false belief that we can buy ourselves out of it,that we can buy some technology to fix things, or that some otherinstitution, whether it's local, regional or national government,will come help save us." As Carmin observes, climate change does present one new hurdle forurban planners in any part of the world: the need to start usingscientific projections to understand the potentially novel impactof global warming. "Urban planning traditionally uses historical trends as abaseline," Carmin says. "We also need to begin looking atthe projections. If we want to protect human lives and urban assetsover the long term, we need to be prepared for new impacts and forgreater variability and magnitude in impacts than we haveexperienced in the past. That means looking at both historical dataand climate projections and generating multiple scenarios of what acity might face in 50 or 100 years. It's not perfect, but we needto plan based on a forward vision, instead of only lookingbackward." National help needed To be sure, some large U.S. urban areas, such as New York andChicago, have also been leaders in planning for climate change. Butas Carmin acknowledges, even the largest city can only do so muchby itself; help from the national government, including financialsupport, is ultimately essential. "Many cities feel that national governments don't understandthe challenges they face," says Carmin, who readily notes that"there's a limit" to what cities can accomplish withoutmore federal support. Moreover, because global warming is a highly complex phenomenon,long-range climate models inevitably contain uncertainty. Thatmeans local governments in some cities may be reluctant to investin physical infrastructure or specific programs based on theseprojections. "Cities are aware of the uncertainty,"Carmin says. "While many are not going to sit and wait for thescience to be perfected, they are also not going to put all theirresources in one basket." As a result of the uncertainty and limited resources, she adds,much of what local governments are doing at the moment "issmall-scale change, incremental planning and a lot of nonstructuralmeasures, like planning and outreach to the public. In the longterm, that will not be sufficient. For now, however, cities arebeing creative and taking action in ways that are feasible giventhe scientific, political and resource constraints they face.". 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