Planning for Uncertainty in Bremen and Gothenburg: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Sea Level Rise Osäkerhetsplanering i Bremen och Göteborg: En interdisciplinär studie av stigande havsnivåer Degree project in strategies for sustainable development, Second Cycle AL250X, 30 credits Author: Per Björklund Supervisor: Jacob von Oelreich Examiner: Måns Nilsson Division of Environmental Strategies Research (fms) Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engine- ering School of Architecture and the Built Environment KTH Royal Institute of Technology TRITA TRITA-INFRA-FMS-EX-2016: 16 Table of Contents Abstract / Sammanfattning 3 Introduction 3 Methodology 4 Quotes, figures and text boxes 5 Relationship between theory and case study 5 Methodological limitations 6 Chapter 1: The psychology and practice of risk assessment 8 Risk as a variable in urban planning 8 General principles of risk assessment 9 Psychological heuristics 10 Heuristics relevant to the perception of risk 11 Conservatism, culture and incentives 13 The risk professional 13 The natural scientist 14 The practitioner/decision maker 15 Reducing bias in decision making 16 Chapter 2: The science of climate change and sea level rise 18 Understanding the drivers of climate change 20 How much will the climate system warm? 21 The Paris agreement and the 1.5 degree goal 23 Global sea level rise over the long term according to current scientific understanding 24 Global sea level rise in the 21st century according to current scientific understanding 27 Localizing global average sea level rise 28 Currently unknown science 29 The West Antarctic 30 Arctic Sea Ice, Greenland and the Gulf Stream 33 “The Cold Spot” and changing weather patterns 35 Chapter 3: Overview and comparison of Bremen and Gothenburg 37 Bremen, Bremerhaven and the North Sea Coast 37 The organization of coastal defense 40 Sea level rise along the German North Sea Coast 41 Future plans 42 Possible future alternatives 43 Gothenburg 45 The organization of sea level rise adaptation 46 Sea level rise along the Swedish West Coast 47 Future plans 48 Country guidelines and city plans 49 Comparative analysis 51 Conclusion 53 References 55 Interview references 65 2 Abstract This thesis examines the readiness and perception in the regions of Gothenburg and Bremen towards future sea level rise. It does so through the theoretical lens of risk psychology / policy research and of climate science research. Results are built on some of the most recent research of these fields, as well as interviews with 14 people on the local, regional and national level in Germany and Sweden. Key findings of this thesis are that both contexts struggle to deal with the great uncertainties inherent in sea level rise. On the German North Sea coast, there is long experience with sea level variation and extensive civil institutions created to deal with storm surges, dikes and sea level rise which may partially compensate for inherent vulnerability to future sea level rise in this region. The novelty of sea level rise in Gothenburg and Sweden means that it is in the process of creating similar institutions and national-regional divisions of responsibility from scratch. The great uncertainty around the pace and extent of future sea level rise is however an obstacle which may have to be overcome before a more coherent response may be developed. Keywords: Gothenburg, Bremen, Sea Level Rise, Uncertainty, Heuristics, Risk Assessment, Climate Change Adaptation, Climate Science, Earth System Science Sammanfattning Denna uppsats undersöker beredskap och uppfattningar kring framtida havsnivåhöjningar i Göteborg och Bremen. Detta görs med de teoretiska ansatserna riskpsykologi / beslutspsykologi och grundläggande klimatvetenskap. Uppsatsens resultat bygger på de senaste resultaten inom dessa fält, samt intervjuer med 14 personer på lokal, regional och nationell nivå i Tyskland och Sverige. Efter genomförd studie kan konstateras att bägge kontext har svårigheter att hantera de stora osäkerheter som havsnivåhöjningen medför. Tyska Nordsjökusten har mycket lång erfarenhet och kapabla offentliga institutioner vilka skapats för att hantera skyddsvallar, sjunkande landnivåer och stormfloder, vilket balanserar det prekära läge som området annars står inför. I Göteborg och i Sverige är havsnivåhöjning något fundamentalt nytt, vilket innebär att man nu försöker skapa liknande institutioner och ansvarsfördelning mellan nationellt och regionalt som de Bremen och Tyskland redan har. Ett hinder för detta är de stora osäkerheter som råder kring hastighet och absolut nivå på framtida havsnivåhöjningar. Dessa osäkerheter kan komma behöva reduceras innan problemet börjar hanteras på ett mer samordnat sätt. Nyckelord: Göteborg, Bremen, Havsnivåhöjning, Osäkerhet, Heuristik, Riskbedömning, Klimatanpassning, Klimatvetenskap. Introduction “When we look at any of the major impacts of climate change, they one way or another come through water… So it will be no exaggeration to claim that climate change is really in fact about hydrological change.” Richard Damania, lead author of the World Bank report “High and dry, Climate Change, Water and the Economy” (Mooney 2016). 70% of our planet is covered by water, and an entire continent (Antarctica) is covered by 30 million cubic kilometers of ice. Were all the great glaciers on earth to melt, it would equal 70 meters of average global sea level rise (NSIDC 2015a). But how much, and how quickly, may it melt? When studying adaptation, it is unavoidable to encounter the concepts of risk and uncertainty. If anything can be said with certainty, it is that climate change mitigation will not be completely successful or unsuccessful. Rather, it will be somewhere in between. Furthermore, whatever success we achieve will have different impact in 3 different regions, which may or may not be ready to deal with them. While all climate change is in some ways directly or indirectly about water, the study of sea level rise is obviously so. This thesis is about how two regions (the sedimentary and sinking German North Sea coast and the rocky and rising Swedish West Coast) deals with the uncertainty that surrounds it, and what differences and parallels there are between the port cities of Bremen and Gothenburg. On first glance, this comparison may seem curious, as there are quite a few obvious differences. But there are many similarities as well. They are of similar size, are economically dependent on trade and shipping, and both are notable for their vulnerability to sea level rise within their countries. This combination of similarity and difference seemed to promise a dynamic final result. The goal of this thesis is to uncover what sort of assumptions about the future that exist in these two contexts, compare them, and assess them in light of risk psychology, policy research and climate science research. This interdisciplinary approach was decided upon as a way of making this thesis applicable not only in the context of Bremen and Gothenburg, but also as more general examples of the world-wide challenge of sea level rise and universal psychological tendencies when it comes to how humans tries to deal with risk and uncertainty. Methodology When it comes to thinking about how the world will respond to projected changes in the climate…it is important to guard against a failure of imagination… Failure to think about how climate change might impact globally interrelated systems could be stovepipe thinking. (King et al 2015: 23) This thesis has an interdisciplinary approach1, blending insights from areas such as urban planning, history, geology, intelligence studies, risk psychology, social anthropology and earth system science / climate science in order to study adaptation to sea level rise in a holistic manner. Social anthropology and closely related fields such as Intelligence Studies and Development Studies has been especially important2. There it is not uncommon to shape the approach after what is being studied and both put a heavy emphasis on contextual information. In the case of this thesis, it was deemed that the critical context was (1) The regions of Bremen and Gothenburg, (2) The planners, scientists and risk-analysts set to improve and protect them, and (3) The science of predicting future sea level rise. While taking an interdisciplinary approach always risks spreading attention too thinly over too many subjects, this concern must be balanced against the nest of complexity-upon-complexity that is future human-climate interaction. A very important inspiration has been the approach taken by the report “Climate Change: A Risk Assessment” (King et al 2015). The principles behind that report can be found on page 9, and helped guide how to write chapter 1 and 2. Wilhelm Agrell’s book Konsten att gissa rätt, underättelsevetenskapens grunder (The art of guessing right: The foundations of Intelligence Studies) (Agrell 1998) has been very useful for helping provide some of the tools necessary for investigating the relationship between producers and consumers of uncertain information (such as climate science and risk assessments). This thesis takes the point of view that the sort of methodical thinking practiced by risk professionals is 1 ”Interdiciplinary” being defined as: integrating knowledge and methods from different disciplines, using a real synthesis of approaches (Stember 1991). 2 Works of particular importance include ”Europe and the People Without History” (Wolf 1982), ”City: Urbanism and its End” (Rae 2005), ”Seeing Like