Building Climate Resilience for Urban Communities - Localization of Resilience Assessment for sustainable, adaptive, and inclusive development

This session aims to showcase real stories on how resilience assessment and co-development of climate adaptation solutions can support local governments in the empowerment and fostering of inclusive, resilient and sustainable cities and communities.

Nuha Eltinay

Facilitator

November 7, 2024 | 13:00 - 14:30

Multipurpose room 12

ICLEI European Secretariat

Germany

English

Reference:

NE 12-07

WUF12

Networking Events

Summary

Aimed at enhancing climate resilience in communities through a comprehensive and participatory approach for global partnerships, this event will share experiences from cities joining the Z Zurich Foundation Urban Climate Resilience Program (UCRP) that is currently taking place in nine countries around the world: Australia, Colombia, Ecuador, Italy, Malaysia, Spain, Turkey, the UK, and the US. The program focuses on mapping communities’ climate resilience vulnerabilities to floods, heat waves and wildfires, and working directly with local authorities to help them tackle multi-dimensional challenges, in collaborations between key stakeholders in the public and private sectors.
In doing so, climate adaptation challenges will be identified, and resilience solutions will be co-created to influence the ways cities' urban systems can be adapted to climate extreme weather events. The project's main aim is to analyze how selected communities operate during an extreme event, identify main gaps, and help develop the right interventions to fill those gaps. The Foundation's four-step, tailored approach is:
1.Identify communities in need and engage with them,
2.Gather information to conduct an in-depth analysis of each community’s climate-related issues,
3.Plan, develop, and deliver customized solutions which enable communities to build resilience,
4.Capture learning and scale the project in collaboration with the public and private sector.

Sharing experience from cities in Europe, Africa, Australia, Northern America and the Middle East, the significance of local representatives and leaders' role (formal/informal) as key stakeholders in urban transformation and climate resilience efforts will be emphasized. The session will share challenges faced, lessons learned and strategies applied for enhancing the capacity and involvement of local representatives in mapping community climate vulnerabilities, and promoting sustainable urbanization.

Objectives

Addressing one of the main shortcomings of the existing climate adaptation efforts around Key Stakeholders engagement such as: the inadequate stakeholder involvement, exclusion of marginal groups, inadequate attention to local context, inadequate attention to long term impact, the UCRP provides an ecosystem for multi-stakeholder climate adaptation with proven methodology and proof-points that underlie the impact of this session as part of WUF12 (UNEP 2022 Adaptation Report). Falling under the ‘Cities and the Climate Crisis’ Dialogue, the session will aim to achieve the following objectives in addressing the key question: “How can localization drive effective climate action to secure sustainable, safe, resilient and environmentally just cities and communities for all?”
1. Learning lessons on how to identify communities in need in Urban Settings, and the challenges faced in engaging with them.
2. Define limitations and key actions required to gather information and conduct in-depth analysis of urban communities’ climate vulnerabilities.
3. Guidance to plan, develop, and deliver customized solutions which enable communities to build resilience through open dialogues on vulnerabilities, equality, and the ethical dimensions of disaster management.
4. Capture best practices on knowledge exchange, global partnerships, and upscaling in collaboration with the public and private sectors.