By Cynthia Rosenzweig, NASA, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and William D. Solecki, Montclair State University

Several key issues reflecting specific societal conditions and constraints have been defined regarding the impacts of potential climate change of the Metropolitan East Coast (MEC) region. These issues include institutional constraints, equity, and global-to-local interactions.

The MEC region covers the greater New York City metropolitan area, which includes parts of three states (Connecticut, New Jersey and New York). The region is comprised of 31 counties in which nearly 1,600 cities, towns, and villages are located in an area of nearly 13,000 square miles. At the heart of the MEC region lies New York City, which currently has a population of about 7.3 million, while the total regional population is 19.6 million. The population is extremely diverse ethnically, racially, and economically - and is projected to be more so in the near future. By the year 2020, a majority of the region's residents will be of African, Asian, or Hispanic origin.

The population puts tremendous demand on regional land and water resources. Approximately 30% of the land area has been fully converted to urban uses, and the rate of conversion has accelerated although the rate of population growth has slowed. Regional water use is typically 1500 million gallons per day. Threats to the quality and quantity of the regional water supply are of increasing concern amongst regional decision-makers. The region's development has been intimately connected to the sea, with close to 1500 miles of coastline. This condition has had tremendous impact on infrastructure development; for example, four of the five New York City boroughs are located on islands.

They are connected with each other and to the mainland by approximately 2200 bridges and tunnels carrying rails and roads. The MEC maintains a versatile, high-volume transportation system by air, roads, and rails (above and below ground), and on the water. These and other essential lifelines are often used to capacity. The economic heartbeat of the region is controlled by the largest financial trading market of the world, with a volume of several trillion dollars annually in stocks alone. The MEC general economy is mostly based on service industries, which depend on modern, sophisticated means of communication and transportation.

Given these conditions, the MEC research group has identified the following overarching issues that will play a critical role in the assessment:

Institutional Constraints - The MEC region's institutional framework for land use and development is governed by an incredibly complex web of community, municipal, regional, and statewide formal and informal processes involving the public, nonprofit, and private sectors - and entwined with often overarching considerations such as environmental protection, health, and safety. Many of these do not typically take into account consequences of extreme events such as severe flooding, weather conditions, and ecological changes potentially associated with global climate change. While many of these existing programs have the potential capacity to link to one another to generate global warming solutions, the linking process will be complex and demand new institutional flexibility and adaptation. For example, it is expected that broad scale institutional shifts will be demanded of institutions responsible for regional water supplies.

Equity Issues - Social equity in the MEC region is a major concern. Increased economic disadvantages have caused greater inequity in the region in recent decades. This trend is expected to continue into the future. The potential impacts of climate change are expected to further these problems. It is widely recognized that neither climate variability and change nor the impacts of that change will be uniformly distributed. Some areas in the MEC region will experience greater changes in climate than will others. Meanwhile, some populations in the region will be more or less able to respond to these changes. For example, lower-income residents will be more adversely impacted by increased heat waves because of limited access to air-conditioning. The MEC population diversity also might become a particular problem in periods of stress, such as could be introduced by future climate variability.

If climate variability introduces disproportionate hardships (or even disproportionate changes) on some parts of the metropolitan area, it is expected there would be serious political problems and public rejection of policies put forward to deal with the change. Another potential source of problems is related to perceptions of inequity. This could be as critical as actual inequities in the experience of impacts. If specific socioeconomic, residential, or ethnic groups within the metropolitan area perceive that they are experiencing hardships that others do not experience, they will question, ignore, or possibly oppose the remedies proposed to deal with the problem. In short, both considerations of equity and perceptions of equity are central to successful public policy responses to climate variability.

Global-to-Local Interactions - The MEC region is one of the most important financial and business centers in the world. As such, local decisions and transactions that take place in the region every day have important implications for locations throughout the world. In turn, any significant disruption to the communication and transportation systems could have dire economic consequences, not only locally, but nationally and even world-wide because of the globally connected financial markets and their diverse and almost immediate impacts. From this vantage point alone, Metropolitan New York is an "Essential Facility" that is critical for the continued functioning of the national and global economy. An assessment of potential climate change impacts must take into the possibility that unusual weather events in the MEC region could disrupt these activities. For example, extreme events such as a hurricane could shut down the MEC regional communication and transportation infrastructure for an extended period, which would have impacts in distant locations for an equal and likely greater period.

The MEC assessment will focus attention on these critical issues, which reflect the extreme extent to which human systems are dominant with respect to other physical and biological systems in the region. The results of this assessment will provide insights that may be of value to other large population centers.

For more information, contact:

Cynthia Rosenzweig, NASA GISS, 2880 Broadway, Room 510, New York, NY 10025; phone: (212) 678-5562;email: crosenzweig@giss.nasa.gov; or William Solecki, Department of Earth & Environmental Studies, 350 Mallory Hall, Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043; phone: (973) 655-5129 ext. 4448; email: soleckiw@mail.montclair.edu.