Toward Transformative Adaptation

Toward Transformative Adaptation: After last month’s sobering 8-Factsheet Survival Guide for Hong Kong to Survive Rising Seas, this month we turn to potential transformative solutions. From design leveraging nature to climateproofing HK’s & regional airports and the cement of the future to purple roofs. Plus, for healthy oceans we need to go back to the estuaries. Each on their own aren’t transformative but together can deliver the transformative adaptation we will need to futureproof our coastal cities.

Radical reconsiderations are needed to solve the massive problems we are facing and that is what MLA+ is doing with its new style planning shares Martin Probst, Associate Director at MLA+. Using a nature as a tool they are transforming new builds and existing neighbourhoods to become climate resilient. Why not make seawalls beautiful and multi-functional?

Check out their award winning Shenshan Coastal Area Vision that covers 103km² within a new district in Shenzhen, as well as their Mangrove Museum design in Shenzhen and Walk Des Voeux Road project in HK. Plus, see why MLA+ sees regions like the Greater Bay Area as an opportunity.

Speaking of new style development and seawalls, the Airport Authority Hong Kong (AAHK) has been conducting pilots to eco-enhance their seawalls as Peter Lee, Sustainability GM at AAHK, tells us.

Around HK$69 million has been spent on 50 projects so far – artificial reefs, coral transplantation & more. They are part of the AAHK’s Marine Ecology & Fisheries Enhancement Strategy.

It’s also good to see the Airports Council International (ACI) taking action on building adaptation for airports. The theme of this year’s ACI’s annual Young Executive Award (YEA) was climate change. Full disclosure – CWR’s Debra Tan was one of the judges.

Airports are crucial to our economies, to building resilience and yet, many airports around the world are low-lying. At 1m of SLR, 80 airports worldwide will be underwater – see which airports and more in our 5 Report Series – The CWR survival Guides to Avoiding Atlantis and our HK Survival Factsheet – Shore Up Trade Resilience.

The winning paper focused on climate impacts for APAC airports & highlighted collaborative opportunities. See more in our interview with Stefano Baronci, ACI Director, plus access the winning paper and find out the theme for the 2023 award.

Even with eco-enhancements, seawalls and other hard infrastructures to protect against climate impacts will require enormous amounts of cement. And there is all the cement that will be used as the world continues to urbanize. Given how carbon intensive cement is, we need to get it right.

China’s record fall in CO2 emissions in 2Q2022 was partly caused by a 18% drop in cement production, driven by China’s on-going real-estate slump. Clearly, cement can impact the climate.

Excitingly, Formwork IO – a HK start-up – is developing carbon sequestering cement as well as other sustainable building materials. Formwork IO’s vision for urban carbon removal comes from its CEO, Antonio Ng, a design architect for 20 years who became frustrated that he wasn’t making enough of a climate impact.

Ng says applying their paving block product in the Northern Metropolis could save up to 3.8 million tonnes of CO2e, which is approximately 10% of HK’s annual carbon footprint. Check out more interesting points in our interview with Ng including why he thinks HK is the ideal testbed.

Another solution for buildings – new and existing – are green and purple roofs that help tackle extreme heat, flooding and can build biodiversity. You’ve probably heard of green roofs but what about purple roofs? Dr Anna Zakrisson from GRD explains.

Also, find out how these roofs can help HK tackle the urban heat island effect that can have serious consequences.

Extreme weather and SLR are in the spotlight but another key issue with the climate crisis is biodiversity loss, especially marine biodiversity. We can’t ignore this and need solutions here too.

The Global Estuaries Monitoring Programme (GEM) co-led by City University HK’s Professor Kenneth Leung is one solution tackling this. Yes, estuaries matter for marine biodiversity, without healthy estuaries we won’t have healthy oceans. And for healthy estuaries, we first need to measure their quality.

We get the latest on this programme as well as results of a preceding programme on pollution in rivers – HK’s rivers didn’t do well.

All eyes are on the upcoming COP27 in Egypt where the theme is ‘Together for Implementation’. We are pleased to see that it will not just be about decarbonisation but also adaptation. Prioritising adaptation is not admitting defeat on decarbonisation. It is being sensible and recognising the reality that we will need to adapt due to already baked-in climate impacts today. As there is now a 50-50 chance we will reach 1.5°C by 2026, this means that impacts we were expecting in 2100 are happening now.

Adaptation is behind. We need to catch up because otherwise adaptation gaps are only going to widen. As devastating as the floods in Pakistan are, it will only get worse looking at the flood projections of the Indus River basin. It’s time we also race to resilience – we should be all in on solutions like these and continue to innovate so that we move towards transformative adaptation.