A slight divergence from the usual WATSAN updates: climate adaptation! With increasing attention on climate change and the need to look at water and sanitation, and general infrastructure with greater holisticity, this post is a short review of last week’s Resilient Cities 2011 – 2nd world congress on adaptation and climate change.
Globally it is anticipated that we need to spend between US$80-100 billion per year on climate adaptation activities, and it is believed that 80% of this funding needs to spent in cities. It is therefore increasingly important that we understand how we can build it right in the first place, how we can modify existing infrastructure and what is the best way to fund such action.
Konrad Otto-Zimmermann, Secretary General of ICLEI, argues that “a step-change is needed so that building resilience and adapting to climate change are understood as urban planning par excellence”, and based on the congress summary & the interviews, it doesn’t sound like cities are waiting around.
There were 7 key issues which the conference covered (see below), using case studies of Viet Nam, Nigeria and London to illustrate good practice. Key issues to climate adaptation in cities were:
- Integrating resilience: identifying synergies which include; water, energy, food security and ecosystems
- Assessing impacts of climate change: establishing meaningful cost-benefit approaches that can be updated as better data comes available
- Using local planning to drive resilience: combining long term and short term planning and incentives, using building codes and planning for rapid growth
- Developing innovative finance mechanisms: using public and private funding, understanding long terms costs and knowing whether to adapt or insure,
- Building in governance between national and local levels,
- Linking mitigation and adaptation, and
- Inclusion of urban poor
Out of the congress came the Bonn Declaration of Mayors which declared various points related to adaptation, UN climate negotiations and collaboration. I found the following action points regarding climate adaptation and urban resilience particularly interesting:
- Efforts on urban resilience and adaptation need to shift from a singular, special purpose focus on specific climate-affected infrastructure and locations towards a more integrated focus on overall risks, development conditions, and local area performance.
- A move to ecosystem based adaptation recognised as offering a cost-effective and sustainable approach to adaptation that can improve human wellbeing, particularly of vulnerable groups, in the cities of the Global South.
- There is a need for financial institutions to fund locally relevant and appropriate development, rather than conventional global financing mechanisms determining which local projects are eligible for funding, underlining the following three essential bottom-up features for building adaptive capacities for resilient communities and cities;
a. Local planning processes for identifying vulnerabilities and risks,
b. Local technical and institutional capacity for designing comprehensive adaptation and resilience upgrading projects;
c. Mainstreaming new adaptation and resilience standards into conventional urban development projects, similar to recent ‘green building’ standards that have been mainstreamed into urban development and construction over the last decade.
d. Developing specialized financial instruments for comprehensive local adaptation and resilience upgrading projects in urban areas and systems known to be highly vulnerable.
e. Building additional local institutional capacity to prepare, structure and manage large scale redevelopment;
f. Local procurement of investment through managed, competitive sourcing mechanisms and processes.
The event was also used to launch the white paper ‘Financing the Resilient City’. The report presents locally responsive climate financing investment strategies and instruments. It argues that finance for resilience and adaptation need to be demand-driven, rather than having conventional global financing mechanisms determining which local actions are eligible for funding.
Climate adaptation over the past few IPCC COPs has been getting increasing attention. It is expected at the COP 17 in Durban, dialogue will continue on the consolidation of the network/mess of funding mechanisms into the controversial centralised Climate Fund (should World Bank host this or not??).
Whatever happens, it appears clear that adaptation in cities needs to happen now, with grass root actions taken to address the specific challenges with funding and governance at a local level.
