Quito, Ecuador is facing a variety of natural hazards, making it imperative to develop proper resilience strategies. David Jácome Polit, the city's Chief Resilience Officer, explains why any such strategy has to be based on a neighbourhood's social structure.
Multilevel governance is essential to the implementation of resilient infrastructure in cities around the world. For our spotlight on urban infrastructure, Jisun Hwang, Senior Climate Advocacy and Policy Officer at ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, sums up what COP24 holds for local governments' resilience strategies.
At COP24, India-based Sheela Patel from SPARC talked to Lou del Bello about how climate change affects people in informal settlements the most – and about strategies to address their special needs.
In the fourth part of our series on the Talanoa Dialogues, Kirti Kusum Joshi talks about the need for dialogue between federal, provincial, and local governments in order to reduce Nepal's vulnerability to climate change.
Constructing a house is a rite of passage to adulthood in most peri-urban areas of Mozambique. While it is common for people to build their own homes using traditional techniques, it often reproduces vulnerability as most of these self-built houses are easily damaged even by low or medium magnitude weather events. How can resilient construction techniques prompt behaviour change in house construction and generate income?
The agricultural sector of the municipality of Dumangas in the Philippines is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. We spoke to its mayor Ronaldo Golez about strategies to become more resilient and to empower local communities.
This April, the second Nexus Conference will focus on the links and trade-offs between water, energy, and food—the “nexus”—in urban areas. Cities are at the forefront of the climate challenge and the heart of the global economy, so they are critical to implementing an integrated approach to meeting the SDGs and building climate resilience.
How can vulnerable groups and their needs be integrated into resilience building? URBANET talked to Vera Bukachi from the Kounkuey Design Initiative, who strongly believes that participatory planning and design are key to sustainable urban development.
How Africa as a continent makes cities work for all while realising a low carbon and climate resilient economy, will determine the success of the Paris Agreement, says Sadiq Okoh. In his article, he outlines possible paths to green development.
What does a sustainable urban future look like? In a new video, municipal officials, urban experts and local residents from around the world talk about urban challenges, solutions for climate-friendly cities and future needs for low-carbon urban development.
How does climate change impact cities and urban citizens around the world, and what can cities do to not further contribute to global warming? URBANET's infographics show current trends regarding issues such as water and energy supply, solid waste management, and urban green.
"Building cities able to accommodate half a billion people over the next 30 years is one of the biggest transformations of our planet and we have to get it right", Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General stated at the Langenburg Forum for Sustainability. Read the full speech here on URBANET
In the process of developing an urban resilience strategy – one that answers these questions, one that addresses the concerns of planners, developers, mayors, local government personnel, investors and concerned citizens – inevitably more questions arise. The most important one is arguably the question of 'resilience to what and why?' This was also discussed during the recent Resilient Cities Conference 2017 in Bonn.
In these days, climate and Bonn are thought together. As a matter of fact, adaptation to climate change, building resilience and dealing with loss and damages will challenge the world just as much as the necessity of mitigating global warming to no more than two degrees Celsius or less. Bonn is a hotspot for the joint efforts to get there. Already this 8 May, the Bonn Climate Talks will bring parties, observers and stakeholders together in the city at the Rhine.
Urban populations face risks, not only in regard to natural disasters and climate change, but also in terms of social problems such as unsafe public spaces. In an interview with URBANET, Ebru Gencer from CUDRR+R explains how cities and local governments can make cities more resilient and manage risks effectively.
