Coastal Adaptation Plan for the Metropolitan Area of Lima

The Coastal Adaptation Plan for the Metropolitan Area of Lima (AML) is a pioneering document in Climate Change Adaptation for metropolitan coasts. Its scope includes the coastal stretch from Pucusana to Ancón. An area of about 120 km distributed across 20 districts and with a population of 8.5 million inhabitants. This area, where one-third of Peru's GDP is generated and the majority of employment across all sectors is concentrated, has a high exposure to climate change. For this reason, the plan has received support from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in its implementation and execution, with the recipient being the Ministry of Environment of Peru (MINAM). Other key organizations for the development of the work have been the National Meteorology and Hydrology Service of Peru, the Hydrography and Navigation Directorate of the MGP, the municipality of Callao, NGOs, citizen associations, fishermen's guilds, companies, and local academic and research entities.

The work, which began in December 2021 and extended throughout 2023, has been carried out by a large multidisciplinary team of international and local experts formed into a Consortium created for this purpose.

While it is true that the main objective of the work is to define a Coastal Adaptation Plan, its development includes Risk Analysis, the Adaptation Plan itself, an Investment Profile, and Engagement and Training Plans.

It is a rigorous document that includes a high-resolution geospatial risk analysis for 2050 for the entire area. For the risk analysis, the conceptual framework developed by the IPCC in the AR5 (2014) has been established, where the risk of an impact or set of impacts derived from climate change is the result of the integration of three components: hazard, exposure, and vulnerability.

The natural variability of the climate and the effect of anthropogenic climate change generate changes in sea level rise, storms, etc., which constitute a threat capable of producing an impact (flooding, erosion, thermal stress, marine heatwaves, droughts, salinization, etc.) on the elements exposed on the coast, whether they are human or natural systems. In the case of AML, there are also several additional factors of natural origin, but not climatic, that can lead to an increased risk (tsunamis, landslides) which have also been integrated into the analysis. In particular, a total of 70 different scenarios have been considered up to 2050.

The Coastal Adaptation Plan has primarily focused on reducing exposure (by delineating areas subject to future flooding and erosion risks) and vulnerability (through the design of specific adaptation strategies and measures). The methodology used hybridizes risk analysis, territorial planning, participation, climate change adaptation proposals, and resilient design. Due to the scale of the work, the methodology, the process, and the results obtained, it is the first Coastal Adaptation Plan in Latin America with impact and implementation capacity.

Although for this extension, quantitative methodologies for risk analysis and adaptation measures exemplified in indicators are usually chosen, on this occasion, given the need to reach a consensus and prioritize specific adaptation measures with the set of territorial agents and define an investment profile, coastal landscape design has been used as a mediation element between high-resolution risk analyses and decision-making by local agents. In this way, design becomes a tool that enables involvement, participation, and training within the framework of a broader territorial reflection. Therefore, the participation process has been considered from the preparation phase, ensuring continuous evaluation and contributing to the awareness and appropriation of the work by the various stakeholders. To this end, more than 20 workshops and participatory processes have been conducted both in-person and online, with technical and graphic material that is understandable thanks to the development of a taxonomy of adaptation measures.

Likewise, it has been possible to define the investment profile in La Punta and the adaptation measures (advancing with structures), which, far from being mere structural measures, have been designed as social infrastructure: redesigning public space and offering a tidal pool-dike where erosion had taken away sports courts.

The results of this work have significant implications for offering alternatives in the way climate change adaptation is addressed in coastal areas, at the metropolitan scale.