From Local Wisdom to Climate Action - Community Driven Pathways to Resilient Housing and Greener Communities

This highly interactive 2-hour training explores sustainable & climate-resilient housing design & construction rooted in community-based, culturally sensitive and traditional knowledge systems. Starting with housing – especially in flood-affected, climate-vulnerable settlements – participants will examine concrete examples and then broaden to Greening Communities: how local learning ecosystems empower residents to plan, co-design, and maintain resilience. The session responds to WUF13’s theme by linking adequate housing to climate adaptation, nature-based solutions, and locally driven action. We will highlight traditional knowledge and community co design as enablers of effective resilience, consistent with the Greening Communities Guidance under UNESCO’s Greening Education Partnership (GEP) – which calls for lifelong learning beyond formal schooling, multi stakeholder collaboration, and actionable community strategies & plans. A featured case from Sukhothai/Lower Northern Thailand (Naresuan University) shows how interdisciplinary education, walkshops/workshops, and designing with water integrate local wisdom with affordable technology to produce flood-resilient housing that protects cultural landscapes and strengthens community agency. This approach has been advanced by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Witiya Pittungnapoo whose work advances nature based design & international collaboration while facilitating intergenerational knowledge exchange, bringing elders’ traditional living practices of living in coexistence with water into dialogue with younger generations’ innovations in resilient building design. To situate this globally, we draw brief lessons from the UK, Netherlands, and Italy, where large scale systems and sponge city blue green infrastructure complement community led, culturally rooted housing upgrades. Structure • Lightning inputs on inclusive, flood resilient housing & greening communities • Interactive exercises including a) photo based co design of housing upgrades using traditional techniques & new & affordable technologies & b) translating learnings into a community green learning plan • Adapting tools to own contexts, action planning checklist. Benefits • Methods for multi-stakeholder engagement & co design • Using traditional knowledge & new tech for nature based housing • Guidance to green communities through local learning action plans • Key tools & resources to continue capacity building after WUF13