Getting local governments,residents and enterprises to respond to the new IPCC assessment

There are two new urgent challenges facing city and municipal governments: they now have to add climate change adaptation and contributions to mitigation to their policies, plans, regulatory frameworks and budgets. This is one of the key messages from the new assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.⁽¹⁾ Yet so many city and municipal governments have little or no capacity to do so. Many cannot meet more long-standing challenges such as ensuring provision of basic services to most of their inhabitants;⁽²⁾ most have little or no investment capacity; and the scale of their failure can be seen in the one billion or so urban dwellers who live in informal settlements and who lack provision for risk-reducing infrastructure and basic services. It seems fundamentally unfair to add these two new challenges for most urban centres in low- and middle-income nations, which have contributed so little to greenhouse gases. They have to adapt to the increasing risks and uncertainties created mostly by wealthier nations and people. And the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is so urgent that they are asked to contribute even if their emissions levels are low.

Then there is the urgent need for city and municipal governments to pay attention to disaster risk reduction, which includes disaster risks other than those linked to climate change. How can we make progress across the vast and diverse set of cities and smaller urban centres in all four priority areas – poverty reduction that includes universal provision of basic services; disaster risk reduction; and now the two new challenges of climate change adaptation and mitigation – in ways that are rooted in the needs, priorities and capacities of each urban centre and its population? We have examples of cities that show progress is possible, as described in various papers in this issue of the Journal (and previous issues). But these are the unusual, the exceptions, the outliers.

I. Transformative Adaptation

The new IPCC assessment includes a long and detailed chapter on adapting urban areas. The first paper in this issue of the Journal draws from this chapter, and includes the Executive Summary and other extracts. This highlights the very large differences in adaptive capacity among the world’s urban centres. It then discusses how risk levels may change for a range of climatic drivers of impacts in the near term (2030−2040) and the long term (2080−2100), assuming global mean temperature increases of 2°C or 4°C. This highlights the limits to what adaptation can do in protecting urban areas and their economies and populations without the much-needed global agreement and action on mitigation. This is even the case for cities with high adaptive capacities. The paper ends with a discussion of transformative adaptation, which has been defined as adaptation that is recognized “… for its potential to address root causes of poverty and failures in sustainable development, including the need for rapid progress on mitigation.”⁽³⁾ The discussion focuses on the learning that is necessary to achieve this and where it needs to come from.

For those of us who work on urban issues, the urban chapter in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment has considerable significance.⁽⁴⁾ It is the first time that the IPCC assessments on adaptation have devoted a whole chapter to urban areas; the chapter is also particularly long, as the authors struggled to present a comprehensive yet concise review of all the relevant literature. There has been a phenomenal growth in the literature on urban adaptation since the previous IPCC assessment was written − especially for urban centres in low- and middle-income countries – and this literature is now very large and continues to expand rapidly.⁽⁵⁾ An important part of this is outside of academic journals and includes reports and other documents produced or commissioned by city governments.

II. Who Needs to Respond to the IPCC Assessment?

Now that there is a more substantial literature on urban adaptation, how do we get the needed attention to climate change of all those who influence urban development? This includes issues of where urban development takes place, its form and spatial structure, what is funded (and by whom), provision for housing, infrastructure and services, connections to the region around it or close by, waste collection and management, and the regulations, incentives and management that influence or should influence these. Those who influence urban development include not only those involved in government (from national through sub-national to metropolitan, city, municipal and district/ward) but also residents and workers, civil society (in all its diversity, including uncivil society) and the private sector (in all its diversity from “illegal” street vendors or waste pickers to multinational corporations and including property developers). What needs to be done to make sure that the key points in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment reach and influence all of them?

Looking at Vanessa Watson’s paper in this issue of the Journal and responses by Gautam Bhan and Allan Cain,⁽⁶⁾ how can we change the way in which national and city governments see their urban future (and their accountability to their citizens), away from fantasies of “world cities” that do not address development needs or disaster risk reduction or climate change adaptation or mitigation? Some of the urban plans described in Vanessa Watson’s paper are even claimed to have green credentials and to be eco-cities, but it is difficult to see by what criteria these can be judged as such.

We are faced with the fact that it will fall to urban (municipal, city and metropolitan) governments to plan and manage much of the adaptation to climate change and much of the mitigation; also, to achieve the needed integration with disaster risk reduction and poverty reduction that includes the universal provision of basic services. This does not mean that urban governments have to implement and fund all of this but they do have to provide the framework (including regulations, incentives and management) that encourages and supports relevant investments and behaviour change among households, communities and enterprises. If the framework is right, it can mean that new residential areas and new investments align with adaptation and mitigation. For instance, managing land use and changes in it can help keep down the costs of land for housing, provide legal alternatives to informal settlements for low-income households, avoid low-density urban sprawl with its high infrastructure costs and dependence on private automobile use, expand and enhance public spaces and protect and enhance critical ecosystem services. But the fact that there are so many cities where none of this is taking place points to the scale of change that is needed. How do we begin to move to “transformative adaptation” with all that it implies?

III. Translating Scientific Assessment into Action

If we focus only on an urban agenda that addresses climate change adaptation and mitigation (within the obvious need to support development/poverty reduction and disaster risk reduction), what needs to be done to respond to the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment? Do we simply continue with the new assessments every five years or so and thus begin planning for the IPCC Sixth Assessment? There is certainly recognition within the IPCC and the Technical Support Units for each of the three new reports of the need for wide dissemination, supported by effective communication strategies.

The timing for the release of this new assessment fits well into the discussions on what should replace the Millennium Development Goals – and what form the post-2015 sustainable development agenda will take. There is a very substantial network of organizations that includes many international agencies and local governments that are demanding a stand-alone urban Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) to “… mobilize stakeholders, promote integrated, city level approaches and accelerate progress towards sustainable development, including the end of extreme poverty.”⁽⁷⁾ The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment also comes in time to influence discussions at Habitat III (the third UN Conference on Human Settlements), planned for 2016, and hopefully to ensure that climate change gets adequate attention. It received no attention at all in the Habitat Agenda that came out of the second UN Conference on Human Settlements in 1996.

But what needs to happen to encourage and support action on climate change in urban areas? Clearly, there is a need to engage and involve urban governments and those who are or will be most at risk within urban populations. Yet how can this be done in ways that protect the scientific integrity of the process? How will representatives from national governments who form the IPCC⁽⁸⁾ feel about being called on to engage with local governments and civil society? And how will governments react to an engagement by researchers with representative organizations formed by the residents of informal settlements who absolutely have the right to influence government responses and to take action themselves?

There is also the issue of how the next IPCC assessment can fully cover urban issues in light of the very large increase in the literature, which is likely to continue growing. Is it possible to rely on a small team of urban specialists to do this, most of whom work with no financial support other than having their transport and accommodation costs covered when attending meetings?

IV. Some Ideas for Getting Urban Aspects of Climate Change to be Taken Seriously

Perhaps we are finally at a tipping point regarding recognition of the need for urban issues to be taken far more seriously in development and disaster risk reduction and now in climate change adaptation and mitigation. This can be seen in the Report of the High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which gives serious attention to urban areas and to their local governments. As it states: “The post-2015 agenda must be relevant for urban dwellers. Cities are where the battle for sustainable development will be won or lost.”⁽⁹⁾

It has taken a long time to reach this point − and the knowledge base on urban issues remains woefully thin in most low- and many middle-income nations. The experience of the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) is relevant here – it set up and helped fund an international network of research centres to address the enormous knowledge gaps identified several decades ago on agricultural and rural development. Perhaps now there is a comparable need for a substantial international funding system to support urban research; but what we need is not so much a formal network of international urban research centres but, rather, a process that encourages and supports relevant research in each nation (and city) that can be drawn on for needed syntheses and shared learning. This would bring together key individuals and institutions around different aspects of climate change adaptation and mitigation within a framework that also prioritizes poverty reduction and disaster risk reduction. The learning has to be strongly connected to what is being done or tried in particular urban centres (metropolitan, city, smaller urban centre). It also needs to become more specific and useful to local actors in order for them to understand the particular implications of climate change for, for instance, heat stress and heat islands within cities, or coastal flooding, sea level rise and storm surges. This will depend on the buy-in and support from existing institutions, and in many cases the funding and staff they could commit to this. The system is not envisaged as an initiative to fund research but, rather, to support researchers and other key actors to meet, engage, learn and synthesize. It would need a budget to support these activities and to support a strong documentation process – so that there is a process that constantly updates syntheses of what is known for each climate change risk and that commissions assessments of local experiences in order to drive learning and develop the material that is relevant and useful to enterprises, local governments and civil society. In effect, to support the documentation of what could be termed “good practice” – and to discuss the relevance of what these cities have done for other urban centres. The papers in this issue of the Journal on Manizales and Chetumal, and the five papers published in previous issues on the city of Durban’s engagement with climate change, are examples of this.

This process needs to involve local government staff chosen for their expertise. (The urban chapter for Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability was greatly enriched by having a senior local government staff member on the author team.) It would need to draw on relevant grey literature, following the careful guidelines developed by the IPCC and the Technical Support Units on how to do this. What is implied here, then, is a global network of researchers and research institutions with competence on urban issues and on climate change issues, who choose to work together. And who collectively focus on and update the literature on each identified climate change-related risk and its implications for urban economies, populations and governments.

Such a network would need to be inclusive, encouraging new individuals and institutions to join. Initially, university departments or research institutes that have already shown leadership in the field could be invited to consider how they could contribute. The mix of institutions in this network should not all be in high-income nations and should be able to cover the literature in languages other than English. From the outset, there should be plans to expand the network – bringing in other university departments and research institutes and, as the network consolidates, supporting centres of training, including those for local governments. Perhaps one of the trickiest aspects would be recognizing where there is work already underway and ensuring that those involved are fully included in this network. So this would include the Asian Cities Climate Change and Resilience Network (ACCCRN), the International Centre for Climate Change and Development (ICCCAD), the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN) and the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities, among others.

One of the most important yet difficult issues is how such a process would engage with civil society – especially those groups that are formed by or represent low-income urban dwellers. This includes hundreds of millions of urban dwellers who live in informal settlements and/or work in the informal economy. They are usually seen by local and national governments as illegal and often as detrimental to urban development. They also include most of those in the urban population who face the greatest risks and those who are particularly vulnerable. They need to be engaged not only because they are “at risk” but also because they can bring knowledge, capacity and innovation to adaptation (and mitigation). This engagement with those most at risk has to involve more than inviting representatives to attend meetings. There is a need to also support the documentation of “good practice” by grassroots organizations and federations in what they do and contribute – and perhaps most critically in the partnerships they form with local governments.

This process would also need to think about how it could support the National Adaptation Plans that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will be supporting (starting with the least-developed countries). These are meant to be more operational than the existing National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs), where a role for sub-national stakeholders (e.g. city governments) is already recognized.

This process would develop regular briefs written for non-specialist audiences and would link with institutions or networks of local governments to develop these and ensure their widespread dissemination in a range of languages – for instance through the United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG) and each of its regional secretariats, ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability), C40–Cities Climate Leadership Group.….

Thus, this process would help amplify the knowledge of how to act on the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment in relation to urban development, and also help provide the foundation for any new IPCC assessment. Regarding the financing needed to support this, it is difficult to know what to recommend, except that it has to build knowledge, capacity and learning in each nation. As we move to a far greater engagement with developing, implementing and financing adaptation (and mitigation) in each urban centre within a commitment to meeting development and disaster risk reduction needs, so the central role of changing urban planning, management and governance becomes obvious. The potential cost of what is outlined above is negligible in relation to what it could contribute in terms of knowledge on how deaths, injuries and massive economic disruptions could be avoided. There is a strong case now for support for work on urban adaptation in each nation – and beyond this on transformative adaptation.

V. Insights into the Four-Fold Urban Agenda

City and municipal governments may look with horror at new obligations to address climate change adaptation and mitigation. Most can claim that they lack the funding, resources, knowledge and capacities to do so (and to address poverty reduction and disaster risk reduction). But it is worth reflecting on what can help achieve coherence across the four-fold agenda. All four aspects seek to reduce risk. Although they may highlight different risks, there are many overlaps. Addressing the needs of those living in poor quality housing built in areas at risk of flooding with no provision for the collection of solid and liquid wastes meets development needs, reduces disaster risks and should increase resilience to climate change impacts (and it can be done in ways that reduce greenhouse gas emissions – for instance in how solid waste is managed). All four aspects include as a priority attention to vulnerable populations and measures that can be identified to reduce or remove the risks they face; there are also many overlaps in these across the four aspects. What is more difficult is to know how to assess and rank priorities. But priorities need to be influenced by the needs and demands of those who are most at risk; they need to be supported by good local information. In some cities, they have been well served by elected mayors and other local politicians or civil servants who have given support to this four-fold agenda. Here, a focus on addressing the most pressing local risks now is integrated with measures that help reduce local risks in the future (adaptation and disaster risk reduction) and global risks (mitigation).

The papers on climate change and disaster risk in this issue of the Journal highlight the increased attention being given to action on the ground. This is evident in the review by Cassidy Johnson and Sophie Blackburn of what local governments in more than 50 cities are doing with regard to disaster risk reduction. The review shows how resilience to disasters is being conceived and addressed by local governments, especially with regard to changes in their institutional framework and engagement with communities and other stakeholders, also in mobilizing finance, undertaking multi-hazard risk assessments, upgrading informal settlements, adjusting urban planning and implementing building codes. It suggests that a focus on more tangible and operational aspects of resilience (resistance + coping capacity + recovery + adaptive capacity) helps local governments to understand and act on resilience.

We have two new case studies of cities where local governments have sought to address climate change adaptation. The first is for Manizales in Colombia and, as Jorgelina Hardoy and Luz Stella Velásquez Barrero describe, it shows how the city’s long-established urban environmental policy provides a foundation for incorporating climate change adaptation into its plans. The success is rooted in coherent, multi-level governance, including a capacity to integrate disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, land use, and territorial planning and development serving all stakeholders. The second is for Chetumal in Mexico and it focuses on how the city and state governments have addressed disaster risks, especially with regard to cyclones. Rather than prohibiting development in at-risk areas, the focus has been on trying to make development compatible with environmental protection and risk reduction.

The papers in this issue of the Journal also include more attention to transformative adaptation and – not surprisingly – to political aspects of adaptation. The paper by Michaela Hordijk, Liliana Miranda Sara and Catherine Sutherland looks at changes in water governance and the management of water resources in four cities (Guarulhos, Arequipa, Lima and Durban). It explores the extent to which these reveal a move towards greater resilience or beyond this to transformative change. It suggests that in Guarulhos and Durban there are signs of transformation, but the authors wonder whether the existing power structures will allow these to reach their full potential. The paper by Aditya Bahadur and Thomas Tanner reviews the experience with adaptation in two cities in India that are part of the ACCCRN network (Gorakhpur and Indore) and argues that resilience thinking must be coupled with the concept of transformation in order to bring issues of people, politics and power to the fore.

The paper by Huraera Jabeen brings a gendered perspective to understanding the relationship between the built environment and vulnerability and resilience for women and men within low-income households in Dhaka. Given gender roles and the division of labour between women and men, the impacts of climate extremes are likely to affect women and men differently. But Huraera Jabeen also highlights the fact that conceptualizing gender only in terms of the vulnerability of women can overlook the complex and intersecting power relations that marginalize women and men differently. The power to make decisions in the built environment and the nature of gender subordination, rights and entitlements will influence the capacity to adapt to climate extremes.

Three papers consider how individual, household and community adaptation can contribute to resilience. The paper by Alfredo Stein and Caroline Moser shows how “bottom-up” community asset planning for climate change adaptation can help to address the uncertainties in how climate change will impact each particular city and help mainstream this into “top-down” citywide strategic and operational planning. This is based on a conceptual and operational framework developed in recent years by the authors in collaboration with partners in the global South. An example of the application of this framework is given for Cartagena (Colombia), where community members and representatives of local government, the private sector and NGOs set up a dialogue space that enabled them to identify, negotiate and agree climate change adaptation solutions that were legally, financially, socially and technically feasible.

The paper by Christine Wamsler and Ebba Brink provides an overview of urban residents’ coping and adaptive practices that includes their risk-reducing effects, highlighting their importance and the need for municipal authorities and aid organizations to take them into account. The paper suggests that the success or failure of urban societies in building resilience and moving towards transformation does not necessarily depend on the effectiveness of individual coping strategies but on the flexibility and inclusiveness of coping/adaptation systems at the individual, household and community level (i.e. the combined set of strategies).

The paper by Anika Nasra Haque, David Dodman and Md. Mohataz Hossain looks at individual, communal and institutional responses to climate change by low-income households in Khulna, Bangladesh. It describes the practices of low-income urban residents in responding to climate-related shocks and stresses. It also considers the extent to which individual, communal and institutional actions are “coping” – or whether these actions create the conditions in which individuals and households can strengthen their own long-term resilience and whether this, in turn, can generate broader political change that strengthens the position of marginalized groups in the city.

The paper by Leanne Seeliger and Ivan Turok discusses how a resilience perspective can highlight the systemic challenges surrounding the growth and management of informal settlements. It also makes clear the many political complexities of doing so (in the city of Stellenbosch in South Africa, which has had six regime changes in the municipality in the last 16 years). It proposes adaptive governance as a framework for building resilience through strengthening local capabilities. This flexible and engaged approach goes beyond “just managing” informal settlements to integrating them in a more positive way into the wider city or town.

VI. Feedback on Previous Issues

There are some amazing papers in the Feedback section. These include Vanessa Watson’s paper on how sub-Saharan Africa’s larger cities are currently being revisioned in the image of cities such as Dubai, Shanghai and Singapore, even as most of their populations live in deep poverty and with minimal urban services. The most likely outcome of these plans is a steady worsening of the marginalization and inequalities that already beset these cities. In his response to Vanessa Watson’s paper, Gautam Bhan sees these plans in part as a yearning for a controlled and orderly city free of the messiness of democratic politics and guided by authoritarian city states. If implemented, they would further disconnect city plans from the actual citizens of the cities they seek to reshape. A second response to Vanessa Watson’s paper by Allan Cain (which is available now online and will be published in the October 2014 issue of the Journal) describes how the government of Angola has been able to use financing from Chinese credit facilities to build prestige projects that include support for the public–privately developed city of Kilamba with 20,000 apartments. The apartments are too expensive for most of the population and the state has had to help subsidize them to make them affordable for middle level civil servants. Today’s income from high-priced natural resources and the current easy access to Chinese credit lines and technical expertise should be addressing the very large backlogs in basic services infrastructure and housing for the poor.

The paper by Yves Cabannes and Zhuang Ming describes the development of one of the largest examples of participatory budgeting (PB) – in the rural villages and communities of the city of Chengdu in China. Between 2009 and 2012, more than 40,000 PB-funded projects were implemented in more than 2,300 communities. These resulted in large improvements in the day-to-day lives of millions of villagers and, at the same time, also introduced democratic changes at the local level through processes of deliberation and greater democratic autonomy for village residents.

The paper by Katherine Gough, Thilde Langevang and Rebecca Namatovu presents a study of entrepreneurship in a low-income settlement, which combined participatory quantitative and qualitative approaches. It shows how drawing on a range of participatory methods can contribute to creating more engaging research relationships and generate a deeper and more contextualized understanding of entrepreneurship.

The paper by Miniva Chibuye is a valuable addition to the literature on setting poverty lines, as it reviews and assesses how urban poverty in Zambia is defined and measured by the government and by the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection (JCTR). It shows the often dramatic differences in the assessments of the scale and nature of urban poverty depending on what poverty measurements are chosen and applied. This includes a discussion of how much poverty lines would change if they were based on what urban poor households actually eat and actually pay for food and the actual cost of the cheapest “reasonable quality” accommodation. The paper also discusses other reasons why official poverty lines understate urban poverty, including their neglect of the costs low-income groups face for transport, health care and keeping their children in school.

The paper by Jakub Galuszka reviews three community-based settlement upgrading projects in Metro Manila that are part of the ACCA (Asian Coalition for Community Action) programme.⁽¹⁰⁾ It highlights the common features of a community-based approach, as integrated by the ACCA programme, and reviews its potential and challenges.