Besides frighteningly frank warnings (which some have disparaged as being apocalyptical) about the threat posed by climate change to everything from food security to human health and ecosystems, one of the stand-out themes from the latest Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) report is the threat posed to cities.

The report argues that many global climate risks are concentrated in urban areas, owing to the fact that cities house the majority of the planet’s citizens and valuable infrastructure assets. In addition, the economic impacts associated with disruptive weather events in cities will be amplified, because they are the centres of economic activity.

Titled ‘Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability’, the report is the product of IPCC Working Group II, which was tasked with assessing the impacts of climate change, as well as future risks and the opportunities to reduce risks. A total of 309 coordinating lead authors and review editors, drawn from 70 countries, including South Africa, produced the report, which was released in Yokohama, Japan, on March 31.

The urban risks range from heat stress and extreme precipitation, to inland and coastal flooding, landslides, air pollution, drought, water scarcity – risks that can be amplified by insufficient essential infrastructure and services as well as poor-quality housing and exposed areas.

One of the authors of the chapter on ‘Urban Areas’, Dr Debra Roberts, who is also environmental planning and climate protection head at the eThekwini municipality, warned that urban areas are at risk and vulnerable to climate change.

“It’s simply because we have so many eggs in the basket in urban areas: the majority of people now live in cities; the bulk of our infrastructure is in cities; the bulk of our economies run through cities; and we know from the literature we have assessed that a high proportion of the vulnerable people and the vulnerable infrastructure in the world is located in cities.

Therefore, anything done to improve the resilience of urban areas and make cities more sustainable “has the potential to greatly increase the global ability to adapt to climate change”.

Speaking at a postpublication briefing hosted by the Academy of Science of South Africa and Nedbank, in Johannesburg, Roberts argued that the analysis of the urban risks had material strategic implications for local governments.

“The strategic news is that cities offer us one of the single greatest opportunities for global adaptation, if we get our act together around urban development,” she explained, adding that, investments in climate-smart municipal infrastructure and services could change the adaptation path of the world.

However, there had to be an acceptance that municipalities were “at the coalface” of climate adaptation, which would require new policies and regulations, appropriate financing and greater access to scientific research to improve the capacity of cities to adapt.

The analysis is particularly worrying for South Africa, whose major cities are already battling to deal with the influx of people from rural areas and where service delivery is patchy, to say the least.

It is going to be tricky to weave the issue of climate resilience into the thought processes of already stretched city planners and implementers. But the scientists are warning that failure to do just that could come with some heavy humanitarian and financial costs.