Cities and climate change

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This initiative seeks to present an urban perspective on the adaptation challenge. Looking at cities is important when thinking about climate change adaptation for various reasons. For instance, due to the high complexity of the systems operating within and servicing a city (e.g. food, energy, water, waste, transport systems, etc.), changes in climate can affect its sound operation. Also, as urbanisation trends are on the rise – in 2008, and for the first time, the majority of the world population (3.3 billion) consisted of city dwellers, and by 2030 the number is expected to grow to 5 billion  - pressure is increasingly exerted on the capacity of cities and of the ecosystem services that they rely on to provide quality of life to its residents.  

As adaptation efforts need to be context-specific, local knowledge and the participation of local authorities and actors in the adaptation process should play a major role.  Indeed, cities often lead the way, ahead of national or supra-national (e.g. EU) adaptation efforts. At the same time, there is a need to coordinate and synergise initiatives at levels higher than the local, which requires constructive interactions between multiple levels of governance (i.e. between different levels of government, plus private sector and civil society).

Challenges to adaptation at the urban level include funding constraints, weak stakeholder engagement processes, insufficient knowledge, difficulty in integrating and creating synergies with mitigation efforts and other city initiatives, and the inability to exploit local knowledge potentials (e.g. because the information held by certain groups, and the groups’ needs, are not taken into consideration), among others. Furthermore, adaptation at the local level is often conducted with a piecemeal approach, failing to take advantage of the benefits of understanding the city systems and the linkages between sectors and climate impacts in a holistic way.

Appropriate frameworks for planning and conducting adaptation work, therefore, can provide a useful guide to city officials in their efforts to achieve desired results for various stakeholders and city departments, who often have different and competing values and priorities. 

If you work on any of these topics please do consider joining this initiative and adding urban adaptation related content that you have developed, and that others can engage with and learn from. Thank you!