Extreme events – from Rio to Birmingham

Droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, storms and floods are increasing in frequency and intensity. An online conference in April places a welcome spotlight on responding to extreme events

It’s all too easy to make statements like “the world has reached a tipping point” or to announce that global warming, pollution and the destruction of nature form a triumvirate of doom.

 Perhaps they are unhelpful. Such warnings, which have become amplified in the decades since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, encourage both denial and inaction. We could simply give up, go back to our duvets and sip a sugary drink through a plastic straw. But we’re not going to, right?

A timely online conference Building Resilience: Housing, Health and Extreme Events, to be held in April, has attracted a buzz and speakers and interest from all over the world.

Organised by the Healthier Housing Partnership and hosted by Birmingham University, the conference will include 32 speakers and case studies from 14 countries. Focused on community-based solutions, it is aimed professionals and civil society organisations and academics worldwide.

The whole planet is affected by extreme events and they are coming to more of us, more often. In wealthy countries, we’re being lashed by storms and hurricanes with increasing frequency. The cities that we live in, or go to on holiday, may be unbearably hot at certain times of year – or in, some cases, subject to cyclones or actually surrounded by burning forests. The messages couldn’t be clearer.

Last year, torrential rain in East Spain brought over a year’s worth of precipitation in eight hours. Floods caused 232 deaths. This year, cities in Southern California were struck by devastating wildfires. 

Community empowerment

Rightly, the Californian fires were well reported. Most people weren’t told, however, by the same news channels, that Chile, in South America, had suffered the country’s worst ever wild fires in 2024 or that Canada’s national conflagrations that year produced the global warming effect of a year’s worth of greenhouse gas emissions in India.

Preparations and adaptions for extreme events can be relatively low-cost and low-tech. Those are the ones that will endure when the relief has ended and international NGOs have left the scene. They are also the most sympathetic with improving biodiversity and local capacity building.

Nusrat Nasab, CEO of the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat (AKAH) Pakistan, will tell the conference that in Pakistan the agency produces village disaster risk management plan, involving talking to elders.

Local solutions are being adopted – for example, using large boulders to reinforce river banks and planting schemes that protect slopes from flash floods causing landslides and soil erosion.

Nusab says: “Empowered communities are more resilient. The west always looks to the government for help. Here, it’s more about the people themselves.” 

This great example and many more, will be showcased at the Building Resilience conference.

Register for Building Resilience: Housing, Health and Exreme Events

For more information contact Will Hatchett. E-mail wahatchett@gmail.com

Pic: The Senegalese Federation of Inhabitants is improving resilience to climate change in Senegal. World Habitat