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Making capacity building critical: Power and justice in building urban climate resilience in Indonesia and Thailand

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Abstract

A growing number of programmes and initiatives around the world are attempting to strengthen the capacities of civil society and local governments to build urban climate resilience. However, these often treat issues of power and justice in relatively unproblematic ways, without considering whether their activities will entrench existing relationships or whether they have the potential to achieve more transformative change. This paper examines the capacity strengthening initiatives undertaken in two cities within the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) - Bandar Lampung (Indonesia) and Hat Yai (Thailand) - to assess how ideas of power and justice have been incorporated. It examines the ways in which these activities are perceived to generate particular benefits, but also explores how the process and content were defined, and the ways in which different stakeholders participated in them. By doing so, it assesses both the procedural elements of capacity building (who is involved, how they are selected) and the distributional elements (how the outcomes of capacity building programmes affect different groups). These elements of justice can be both implicit and explicit, but need to be engaged with more critically if the processes and outcomes are to contribute to more transformative patterns of urban resilience.
Making capacity building critical: Power and justice in building
urban climate resilience in Indonesia and Thailand
Diane Archer
, David Dodman
Human Settlements Group, International Institute for Environment and Development, 80-86 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8NH, United Kingdom
article info
Article history:
Received 29 January 2015
Revised 25 June 2015
Accepted 30 June 2015
Keywords:
Climate justice
Civil society
Urban resilience
abstract
A growing number of programmes and initiatives around the world are attempting to
strengthen the capacities of civil society and local governments to build urban climate resi-
lience. However, these often treat issues of power and justice in relatively unproblematic
ways, without considering whether their activities will entrench existing relationships or
whether they have the potential to achieve more transformative change. This paper exam-
ines the capacity strengthening initiatives undertaken in two cities within the Asian Cities
Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) – Bandar Lampung (Indonesia) and Hat Yai
(Thailand) – to assess how ideas of power and justice have been incorporated. It examines
the ways in which these activities are perceived to generate particular benefits, but also
explores how the process and content were defined, and the ways in which different stake-
holders participated in them. By doing so, it assesses both the procedural elements of
capacity building (who is involved, how they are selected) and the distributional elements
(how the outcomes of capacity building programmes affect different groups). These
elements of justice can be both implicit and explicit, but need to be engaged with more
critically if the processes and outcomes are to contribute to more transformative patterns
of urban resilience.
Ó2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC
BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
1. Introduction
A growing number of programmes and initiatives around the world are attempting to strengthen the capacities of civil
society and local governments to build urban resilience. The clear identification of the risks that climate change will pose
to urban centres by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report (Wilbanks et al.,
2007) helped to encourage local and municipal governments to develop a range of adaptation strategies and projects, many
of which are recognised in the IPCC Fifth Assessment (Revi et al., 2014). At the same time, initiatives by international agen-
cies and networks of cities have helped to foster recognition of the role that cities can and should play in addressing climate
risk, both through mitigation and adaptation. These are exemplified by events such as the formalisation of a ‘Cities and
Subnational Dialogue’ at the UNFCCC Conference of Parties meeting in Warsaw (2013) (Dodman, 2013), and the signing
of a Global ‘Compact of Mayors’ associated with the UN Secretary General’s Climate Summit in 2014.
Achieving these ambitions, and unlocking the potential for cities to contribute effectively to addressing the challenges of
climate change, will require new skills and competencies within individual households, urban communities, formal civil
society, and municipal governments. To this end, many resilience-building projects and programmes have included specific
capacity building components, covering a range of approaches from public awareness campaigns to the building of specific
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.uclim.2015.06.007
2212-0955/Ó2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: diane.archer@iied.org (D. Archer), david.dodman@iied.org (D. Dodman).
Urban Climate 14 (2015) 68–78
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Urban Climate
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/uclim
technical skills. However, these capacity building activities often treat issues of power and justice in relatively unproblematic
ways, without considering whether they will entrench existing relationships or whether they have the potential to achieve
more transformative change that meets the needs of all urban residents.
This paper examines the way in which capacity building has been implemented and is understood in two south-east
Asian cities that have been involved in a major regional initiative to build urban resilience. It draws on the expanded concept
of climate justice described by Bulkeley et al. (2014) in order to explore elements of recognition, rights, responsibilities, dis-
tributions and procedures in the planning and implementation of capacity building activities. More specifically, it engages
with the ways in which the process of capacity building was conceived and implemented, the mechanisms by which the
key priorities for capacity building were set, and the approaches that determined the appropriate participants for capacity
building activities. This forms the basis for analysing the extent to which capacity building in these contexts has contributed
to climate justice and set up preconditions for transformational change, and for recommending ways in which future urban
climate change capacity building activities could do so more effectively.
The cities that serve as case studies for this analysis are Bandar Lampung (Indonesia) and Hat Yai (Thailand), both of
which have been part of the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) since its inception in 2008.
ACCCRN was created as a network of ten core cities in India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam that would experiment with
a range of activities to individually and collectively improve their resilience, defined in this context as the ability ‘‘to with-
stand, to prepare for, and to recover from the projected impacts of climate change’’.
1
The specific focus of ACCCRN has evolved
since its inception, but a brochure outlining the programme’s activities (ACCCRN, 2012a,b) highlights ‘‘capacity building of
cities’’ as the first anticipated outcome of the initiative. However, Bandar Lampung and Hat Yai should not be seen as specific
examples for assessing the effectiveness of this particular capacity building outcome, but rather as illustrative cases for explor-
ing the ways in which the implementation of particular ideas and discourses causes particular results with varied implications
for different individuals and groups within a city; in addition, they are among the lesser documented of the ACCCRN core cities.
The experiences of the ACCCRN initiative have already been widely documented and discussed, from the approaches and pro-
cesses applied at city level (Sharma et al., 2014;Lassa and Nugraha, 2014) to considerations of lessons learnt in the broader
process (Jarvie et al., 2015; Reed et al., 2014, 2013; Kernaghan and da Silva, 2014; Brown et al., 2012).
The findings presented in this paper were generated from the authors’ participation in ACCCRN as employees of a regional
partner engaged in learning activities across the network. This included attending national and regional workshops, working
with city partners to document and learn from activities, and supporting research into key issues for urban resilience. At the
same time, the ethos of ACCCRN has always included a strong element of reflection and critical awareness, meaning that the
analysis presented here comes from an ethnographic perspective of participant observation that is positioned within – but
not limited by – engagement in the process being described. These general experiences were supplemented by a series of
targeted interactions with city-level actors in late 2014 which engaged more explicitly with the specific themes of this
paper: five semi-structured interviews in Bandar Lampung, and a focus group with nine city actors in Hat Yai. Questions
focused on the capacity building process(es) that they were engaged in; the composition and design of training workshops;
and the impacts of training on the respondents’ own ways of working and those of other actors and institutions in the city.
The participation of city actors was coordinated and facilitated by the ACCCRN country partner in each country. The authors
also conducted interviews with key ACCCRN country partner staff to understand the process underlying capacity-building
activities. The results of these interviews and discussions were then manually coded by the authors, according to key themes.
The following section of the paper reviews some of the key concepts that have informed the research and analysis, par-
ticularly around the nature of capacity building to build urban resilience, and the ways in which power, justice and equity
have been framed in relation to climate change adaptation (particularly, although not exclusively, in urban areas). This is
followed by a description of the empirical findings of this work, organised around the themes of benefits, process, content,
and participation. The discussion and conclusion link the ways in which these issues are practised with regard to capacity
building with the ways in which they contribute (or not) to the achievement of procedural and distributional justice in urban
centres facing a range of climate-related hazards.
2. Approaches to capacity building for urban adaptation
This paper uses the empirical material gathered in Bandar Lampung and Hat Yai to assess the outcomes of capacity build-
ing activities in terms of their effects on power relations, climate justice, and urban equity. Capacity building has long been
accepted as a critical element for improving responses to climate change (both mitigation and adaptation) at the local, urban
and national level. However, the way in which capacity building activities have been conceived of and implemented has sel-
dom been examined to assess its broader implications.
In the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), frameworks to support capacity building
were initially adopted in 2001. Decision 2/CP.7 states that:
‘‘Capacity building should assist developing countries to build, develop, strengthen, enhance, and improve their capabil-
ities to achieve the objective of the Convention through the implementation of the provisions of the Convention and the
preparation for their effective participation in the Kyoto Protocol process’’.
1
http://acccrn.org/about-acccrn (accessed 16/1/2015).
D. Archer, D. Dodman / Urban Climate 14 (2015) 68–78 69
It also provides general guidelines about particular capacity building needs (for example in ‘‘particularly vulnerable’’
countries), and approaches (highlighting the importance of ‘‘learning by doing’’ and ‘‘demonstration projects’’) (UNFCCC,
2001). This has contributed to the development and implementation of multiple projects in capacity building.
Various authors have also identified capacity building as an important mechanism for equipping city stakeholders to
build urban climate change resilience (Brown et al., 2012). In the context of Manila, Porio (2011, p425) states ‘‘both the urban
poor residents and the formal institutions... need resources and capability building to increase their capacity to adapt to the
effects of climate change’’; in reference to disaster risk reduction in Indonesia, Djalante et al. (2012, p798) make a distinct
recommendation ‘‘to improve the capacity and capability of local governments, especially with regard to programme
implementation’’; and in the case of Delhi, Hughes (2013, p48) highlights the ‘‘lack of institutional capacity’’ in the technical,
financial and leadership arenas as an underlying reason for climate adaptation injustice in the city. In interviews with local
government planners in seven Indonesian coastal cities, Yoseph-Paulus (2014) found that half of the respondents felt that
the lack of climate awareness and capacity in local government was impeding coordination for effective responses to climate
change. In some cases, city stakeholders are reported as actively stressing the need for capacity building support in order to
build resilience; while others identify the opportunity for capacity building as a motivation to engage in resilience planning
and similar activities (Sharma et al., 2014).
Specifically in the context of ACCCRN, capacity building has been defined as the ‘‘improved capacity to plan, finance, coor-
dinate and implement climate change resilience strategies’’ (Brown et al., 2012, p532). This was widely incorporated within
the first round of project interventions, with eight out of 23 of these being identified as having a specific ‘‘education and
capacity building of citizens’’ component (ibid). A review of ACCCRN resilience projects as ‘‘experiments’’ concludes that
the programme’s ‘‘focus on the capacity to learn and reorganize is what ultimately distinguishes them as contributing to
resilience’’, by focusing on creating shared knowledge, developing networks and testing new management techniques
amongst stakeholders (Reed et al., 2014, p2).
Beyond lack of capacity, some authors have identified other issues that hamper urban resilience: for example, Reed et al.
(2013, p398) suggest that ‘‘differing values and interests’’ may be more significant than ‘‘technical challenges such as lack of
knowledge, coordination and capacity’’. These authors also advocate for a more politically nuanced process of building
capacity for analysis and self-representation, rather than simply technical capacity. They suggest that this should focus
on ‘‘stakeholders who may otherwise lack the time, opportunities, clear incentives and, more fundamentally, information
and capacity to formulate, voice and advocate positions, especially when problems are framed as scientific or technical’’
(p399), and that this can help marginalised individuals and groups to engage with more powerful local actors. Hughes
(2013) echoes this by highlighting the political economy of poverty as a barrier to poor Delhi residents accessing
decision-making processes and public services. This begins to raise the issues at the core of this paper: that narrow interpre-
tations of capacity building may neglect other underlying drivers of vulnerability, and that technically defined and
externally-driven approaches to capacity building may impede efforts to achieve greater levels of social and environmental
justice in cities.
In concluding this section, therefore, we do not take issue with conclusions such as those from Brown et al. (2012, p553)
that there is a ‘‘need to identify creative ways of scaling up capacity building in order to equip city stakeholders to advance
UCCR [urban climate change resilience] efforts’’; nor those from Anguelovski et al. (2014, p156) that ‘‘when climate adapta-
tion is advanced with a focus on learning, awareness, and capacity building, the process will likely lead to more sustained,
legitimate, and comprehensive adaptation plans and policies that enhance the resilience of the most affected urban areas and
residents’’. However, we do feel that these recommendations for strengthened capacity building are sometimes made or
understood in isolation from the underlying structural issues shaping vulnerability, or without adequately recognising the
political relationships that mediate the ways in which particular technical interventions result in differentiated outcomes
for different groups.
3. Power, justice and equity in (urban) climate adaptation
In parallel to this pragmatic focus on building capacity, urban climate change researchers have increasingly highlighted
issues of power, justice, and equity in relation to the distribution of vulnerability to climate change in towns and cities. A
wide range of empirical studies describe various elements of this inequality, addressing issues such as poverty and informal-
ity (Chu et al., 2015; Dodman and Satterthwaite, 2008; Hardoy and Pandiella, 2009; Hughes, 2013; Banks et al., 2011; Roy
et al., 2013), gender (Jabeen, 2014; Sultana, 2014), and age (Bartlett, 2008; Brown and Dodman, 2014). Indeed, the IPCC Fifth
Assessment report chapter on urban areas concludes ‘‘for each of the direct and indirect impacts of climate change, there are
groups of urban dwellers that face higher risks’’ (Revi et al., 2014, p547).
There has been less focus, however, on understanding the important socio-political implications of climate change
responses, whether mitigation or adaptation. In relation to the Clean Development Mechanism and other forms of carbon
governance, Bailey et al. (2011) ask ‘‘for whom’’ new forms of carbon governance operate, and observe that they effectively
exclude ‘‘the majority of developed and developing country populations whose lives are affected by climate change and by
carbon markets from participating in key decisions’’ (p17). Addressing climate change adaptation, Kothari (2014) describes
the way in which resettlement policies are framed as climate change adaptation in the Maldives, and concludes strongly that
‘‘technocratic and de-politicised discourses of climate change have often been invoked to conceal underlying political
70 D. Archer, D. Dodman / Urban Climate 14 (2015) 68–78
agendas in which environmental concerns are drawn upon to justify unfavourable government policies of mobility and
resettlement’’ (p130). Dodman and Mitlin (2014) also examine the political conditions and contexts of climate change adap-
tation in the case of Zimbabwe, and use this to raise political questions that should be addressed if adaptation activities are
to generate long-term improvements in well-being for low-income urban residents.
More broadly, a wide range of literature (e.g. Harvey, 1996; Castree and Braun, 1998) has identified the politicised nature
of responses to perceived (urban) environmental crises, and the way in which these responses themselves generate partic-
ular benefits or disadvantages for specific groups within towns and cities. Linking this explicitly to climate change responses,
Whitehead (2013) makes the case that urban adaptation regimes need to engage with more critical urban theory if they are
not to reproduce existing neoliberal practices of governance, privatisation and entrepreneurialism. Responses to climate
change tend to favour institutional and ‘scientific’ information over locally-generated knowledge which might arise from
more participatory approaches, though there are limits to all forms of knowledge (Bahadur et al., 2013). Attention therefore
needs to be given to who sets the agenda for climate change responses (including capacity building), how these transform
socio-environmental systems, and the benefits and costs that are generated for different actors.
As will be seen below, the conclusions we draw about capacity building initiatives to build urban resilience are somewhat
less critical. Indeed, in many ways capacity building initiatives represent an effort to redress some of the inequities in access
to information that have impeded more just responses to climate related shocks and stresses. However, in most cases they
have still failed to grapple explicitly with issues of power, justice and equity which could give them greater transformative
power (Pelling, 2010) in reducing risk and improving well-being.
One way in which this could be achieved could be through a more explicit examination of issues of urban climate justice.
Bahadur and Tanner (2014, p200) specifically examine and sympathetically critique the ACCCRN programme, and argue that
the ‘‘resilience approaches’’ applied in the initiative mean that issues of ‘‘people, politics and power’’ are not adequately
addressed. Nelson et al. (2007) highlight the importance of equity in process and equity in outcome in governance for envi-
ronmental decision-making, and the Bahadur et al. (2013) review of the key elements of resilience includes social and eco-
nomic equity as one of ten components. Chu et al. (2015) adopt three indicators of inclusivity in urban climate adaptation:
the consideration of needs of vulnerable populations; procedural representation and equity; and just adaptation outcomes. A
large survey of cities engaged in climate change responses (Bulkeley et al., 2013) examines how notions of distributive and
procedural justice are included in these, and finds that largely they are only present in terms of the ‘‘right’’ to protection from
climate-related threats (i.e. a distributive approach), rather than in terms of setting the agenda for responses (i.e. a proce-
dural approach). A rights-based approach to adaptive capacity can also serve to highlight the underlying causes of exclusion
and marginalisation (Ensor et al., 2015), rather than simply the surface manifestations of these.
In this paper, we adopt the approach to urban climate justice outlined by Bulkeley et al. (2014). They argue that the tra-
ditional conceptualisation of climate justice as including axes of rights-responsibilities and distribution-procedures needs to
be supplemented by adding the dimension of ‘‘recognition’’ at its core. In relation to capacity building projects for building
resilience, this would mean that the procedural aspects (who is involved in capacity building activities? who has access to
climate change information?) should exist alongside the distributional or equity aspects (how are the benefits of capacity
building activities experienced?): but that the core of defining projects and programmes should be based on a deep and
politically informed recognition of needs and priorities. In subsequent sections of this paper, we use the ideas of process,
content, and participation to develop this argument further.
4. Capacity building in ACCCRN cities
4.1. The Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN)
The ACCCRN programme, initiated in 2008, aims to ‘‘develop and demonstrate effective processes and practices for
addressing urban climate vulnerability using participatory planning as well as implementing targeted intervention projects’’
(ACCCRN, 2012a, p3). The initiative has three core objectives: first, to improve the capacity of cities to plan, finance, coordi-
nate and implement strategies to build resilience to climate change; second, to develop a network for learning, exchange and
engagement among ACCCRN cities and other stakeholders; and third, to scale up urban climate resilience approaches and
processes to new cities and partners. As identified above, capacity building is seen as a central element of the initiative,
but the targets for capacity building are fairly loosely defined in programme documentation as ‘city partners’ and ‘diverse
stakeholders’.
Conceptually, many ACCCRN country partners have organised their activities around the agents-institutions-systems
framework for urban climate resilience (Tyler and Moench, 2012). Of the characteristics specified for each component, of
particular relevance to capacity building is the capacity to learn of agents, and the application of new knowledge by insti-
tutions. However, the authors recognise that the model does not explicitly address the question of whose resilience is
increased, and may in particular leave out poor and vulnerable groups. Nevertheless, this model and others informing the
ACCCRN approach emphasise the need for understanding and building interdependencies between actors and systems in
order to strengthen collaborative approaches required for longer term action for resilience (Brown et al., 2012).
The ten original ACCCRN cities were in the first stages provided with financial and technical support to carry out vulner-
ability assessments, hold Shared Learning Dialogues (SLDs) and implement pilot projects, which led to funding for larger
D. Archer, D. Dodman / Urban Climate 14 (2015) 68–78 71
intervention projects from 2011 onwards. The technical support was provided by both national and regional/international
partners. SLDs have been a key component of city-level activities, facilitated by country partners, as a tool to ‘‘promote learn-
ing and co-production of knowledge; build new formal and informal networks across scales and sectors; build capacities of
stakeholders for analysis and self-representation; and spark innovative responses to problems’’ (Reed et al., 2013, p394). The
emphasis on ‘learning’ and ‘social learning’ in particular arises out of the social-ecological systems literature on resilience, as
a process which changes the behaviour of individual actors and more importantly brings change in organisations and
institutions. The authors conclude that SLDs have served as a ‘‘small starting point’’ (p409) to opening up discussions around
governance and urban development challenges, with the possibility of bringing in marginalised actors in future, while recog-
nising that the approach can also reinforce existing power dynamics within the city.
4.2. The case study context: Bandar Lampung and Hat Yai
Bandar Lampung was one of two ACCCRN intervention cities in Indonesia (the other being Semarang). A coastal city and
the gateway to Sumatra Island of approximately 900,000 inhabitants, the city has experienced high rates of population
growth (on average 8.6 percent per annum between 1971 and 2010) (Lassa and Nugraha, 2014). Despite being administra-
tively 100 percent ‘urban’, 55 percent of the city’s land is still used for agricultural purposes, putting pressures on the city’s
water demands and making it sensitive to drought (ibid). At the same time, the vulnerability assessment identified the city’s
coastal residents, many of whom live in informal settlements, as exposed to coastal floods, and incidences of flooding across
the city can also be linked to poor waste management practices.
ACCCRN activities in the city started in 2009 with SLDs facilitated by Mercy Corps, the Indonesian ACCCRN partner, the
first of which concentrated on scientific information related to climate change, the second on the findings of the city vulner-
ability assessments commissioned through ACCCRN, and the third on the impacts of the pilot projects and the formulation of
the city team. The period 2009–2013 saw more than 100 meetings attended by the government officials, civil society and
university researchers (Lassa and Nugraha, 2014), and a City Resilience Strategy (CRS) for 2011–2030 was developed.
Lassa and Nugraha highlight that while the CRS and vulnerability assessments were incorporated into the Mid-term
Regional Development Plan of 2010–2015, the city’s Spatial Plan for 2011–2030 does not make reference to these docu-
ments, due to the ‘‘lack of climate literacy’’ of the consultants selected (2014, p7).
Hat Yai is a city in the southern Thai province of Songkla, with a population of approximately 370,000. The city’s economy
is commerce and tourism oriented, as a gateway to Malaysia, and the surrounding areas are agricultural, with rubber being a
key crop. The key climate impacts which the city expects to face are increased flooding and rising temperatures. The city has
already experienced major flood events in 2000 and 2010, and poor communities living along the city’s drainage canals are
particularly exposed to floods. In the longer term, the city’s proximity to coastal areas means it may be affected by sea level
rise, salinity intrusion and contamination of water supplies.
ACCCRN activities in the city started in 2009 due to the expression of interest in the initiative by senior city officials, with
a specific objective to build knowledge and technical capacity. Activities, facilitated by the Thailand Environment Institute
(TEI) as country partner, started with a kick-off event which led to the identification of the city team, and which was fol-
lowed by an SLD and vulnerability assessments. Further SLDs led to the development of the City Resilience Strategy which
focuses on ‘‘flood risk reduction and management, by strengthening the capacity of city stakeholders’’ (private communica-
tion, TEI, November 2014) which include local communities and authorities. The pilot project focused on reducing flood risk
at the community level, and was followed up with larger intervention projects at the community and local government
levels and efforts to enhance business sector engagement in flood management planning, reflecting the sectors most exposed
to the impacts of flooding.
5. Capacity building: benefits, process, content and participation
5.1. Overall benefits of capacity building
The discussions with city actors in Bandar Lampung and Hat Yai revealed that capacity building activities have indeed
met some important needs. In both cases, an increased understanding of climate change issues was cited, particularly in
terms of distinguishing between mitigation and adaptation. In Bandar Lampung, a member of the Regional Planning and
Development Agency highlighted that this improved knowledge benefited the process of developing and planning projects
and programmes for resilience – in line with the key objective of the ACCCRN initiative. In Hat Yai, where dissemination via
various forms of media including radio and websites are a key component of the city’s activities, this improved understand-
ing also benefited the city actors’ ability to communicate issues around climate change to a broader audience, including peo-
ple living in the most exposed communities.
The capacity building activities, and ACCCRN processes more generally, were also acknowledged to have positively influ-
enced policy, particularly in the case of Bandar Lampung. A city team member from the local university felt that ‘‘capacity
building related to climate change has really influenced publication of policy. The city team influenced the Mayor to produce
these policies, based on their knowledge about the importance of city resilience’’. More broadly, respondents acknowledged
that ACCCRN capacity building and city-level processes had improved the ways of working of local government. For example,
72 D. Archer, D. Dodman / Urban Climate 14 (2015) 68–78
a Bandar Lampung health official stated that the capacity building helped to develop ‘‘how to think analytically, how to do
problem solving, how to make decisions, how to make policies, and carry out cost-benefit analyses’’. Similarly, a Hat Yai
water resources official stated that he gained knowledge that showed ‘‘the importance of working together, as an example
of integrated development and of cooperation of different people and agencies’’. Capacity building activities thus enabled
city actors to coordinate their activities towards achieving resilience goals more effectively, even where these do not directly
include adaptation projects.
In Hat Yai it was clear the process of regular group discussions and shared learning arising from the SLDs and continued
city team meetings led to a multi-sector core city team with a high level of trust, working towards a common goal. As an
irrigation official on the city team stated, ‘‘we succeeded in all agreeing that ‘we were ACCCRN people,’ not people from sep-
arate agencies, with the common aim of early warning for floods, and learning how to support the communities’’. At the
same time, the individual members also participated out of interest, because the process ‘‘supported people in developing
knowledge in things they are interested and engaged in, with benefits for the whole department [in which they work]’’.
Such close engagement in the city-level processes suggest that a sense of local ownership over resilience-building activities
has been built, which could support more sustainable resilience interventions as set out in the ACCCRN theory of change
(internal project document).
5.2. Capacity building: the process
The way in which capacity building was interpreted varied slightly between the two cities. In Bandar Lampung, respon-
dents described capacity building fairly narrowly as meaning attending externally organised training courses. There was,
however, little recognition of the processes that would enable broader capacity building across departments, with civil soci-
ety, or with community organisations – although an NGO city team member recognised his role in ensuring that ‘‘capacity
building from ACCCRN does not stop with me or in Mitra Bentala [the local NGO] but is shared through regular meetings with
the community. It is not ACCCRN’s role to share knowledge with the community – that is why we are partnering with them
[to share information with communities]’’. The implied model for capacity building was one that was centralised, with
‘knowledge’ flowing from central ‘better informed’ actors (whether international or national, those seen as the core group
most able to direct planning) to local (urban or community) stakeholders.
However, there were some recent positive signs about new directions in capacity building that appear more inclusive in
focus, and less reliant on externally-driven training. An environmental practitioner on the Bandar Lampung team mentioned
that city team members were now conducting training in other Indonesian cities, reflecting a more peer-to-peer approach.
Similarly, the SLD process in Hat Yai was downscaled by a city team member to a local community to discuss rainfall pat-
terns, and this was the starting point for discussing climate change. These initial discussions led to the creation of a network
of around 200 individuals along a particularly flood-prone canal who could then extend the network and discussions
themselves.
However, the Hat Yai city team recognised the challenges of scaling up change. There was evidence of change in the
knowledge of civil servants related to climate change, but this had not reached the level of influencing policies. As an
NGO member of the city team explained, ‘‘there is change in terms of understanding, accepting responsibilities, but not
in actual policies... At the level of the province, it is hard to see whether there is change, as they are constrained by policy.
There is no change in the organisational structure, but there is change in the people who work with us’’. The remaining divi-
sions of responsibility across government agencies also creates a barrier to integrated approaches, so there remain limits to
the adoption of the ways of working of the city team.
Respondents in Hat Yai did not disaggregate specific capacity building events from the overall ACCCRN processes in the
city. Programme-imposed time constraints meant that the process from the first climate workshop, to carrying out SLDs and
vulnerability assessments, had to be done in a period of ten months, and during which there was uncertainty about whether
the next phase would follow. The SLD processes focused around the problem of flooding as this was seen by city represen-
tatives as the key issue to be addressed. As an NGO representative on the city team recognises, ‘‘the benefit is that everyone
joins hands together, but the negative is that they do not look at the whole picture of climate change’’ and thus limited the
likelihood of the team taking a long term vision of action for the city, in favour of more immediate priorities, with decisions
shaped by the city representatives.
5.3. Capacity building: defining the content
The capacity building courses given in Indonesia appear to have applied a top-down process in terms of defining the con-
tent. Even when a training course was developed in response to local demands, the type of course that was selected seems to
have replicated certain elements of previous courses. This did have the benefit of exposing the participants to different
methodologies, although these were not necessarily adopted: a city inspector from Bandar Lampung stated that ‘‘they gave
us a different methodology about climate change, we discussed and debated it...but we do not use it because we are already
using the vulnerability assessment approach’’; while another city team member stated, ‘‘the city team has received many
kinds of capacity building, but maybe it is not specifically targeted as to what capacity needs to be improved’’. Therefore,
there remains scope for city team members to play a larger role as ‘active agents’ in identifying needs, including those of
D. Archer, D. Dodman / Urban Climate 14 (2015) 68–78 73
the communities identified in the vulnerability assessment, and in co-producing knowledge and practice on urban climate
change resilience.
In Thailand, the TEI team supporting city level activities observed a shift in understanding regarding resilience to climate
change:
‘‘When it came to city level specific issues, the discussions veered towards the key issues and work areas of the partic-
ipants. In general, the discussion was about global warming, planting trees, reducing waste. There was more of a focus
on mitigation in earlier proposals submitted to Rockefeller. Then there came more understanding of the need to focus
on adaptation’’.
The TEI team recognised that using climate change as the starting point in city-level discussions created difficulties due to
the initial lack of knowledge on climate change. They therefore modified their approach in newer cities by steering discus-
sions around ‘city visions’ and the potential impacts of climate change on these. They then returned to the ACCCRN cities to
hold these workshops too, demonstrating an iterative learning process. As new tools became available to the TEI team, these
were applied at the city level: for example, the UNISDR Local Government Self-Assessment tool, which identified ten essen-
tials for making cities resilient, was applied to get both officials and businesses to reflect on the city’s readiness. However,
while tools such as these have a focus on reducing the exposure of vulnerable groups to particular hazards, and promote
participatory approaches, they do not address the underlying drivers of vulnerability such as imbalances in power and
representation.
Similarly, city exchanges have been organised to develop the network and support the development of city-level strate-
gies. These are particularly an opportunity for other cities to learn from the experience in Hat Yai and Chiang Rai, by showing
municipal officials from other cities a different way of working and thinking, through the different approaches of the ACCCRN
cities. Whether this then leads to change on the ground in the visiting cities often depends on the existence of a budget and a
champion to push it forwards. These exchanges can be seen as a capacity building tool for other cities: for example, Hat Yai
now has a Climate Change Resource Centre for visitors. For the city team itself, it is also a chance to be questioned about their
approach, challenges and successes. More broadly within ACCCRN, regular international meetings known as ‘knowledge
forums’ were an opportunity for ACCCRN practitioners from all four countries to discuss lessons learnt around specific
themes.
5.4. Participation in capacity building activities
The ultimate objective of ACCCRN, as stated on the initiative’s website, is to ‘‘equip poor and vulnerable communities
with the right resources, tools and methods for responding to existing and future climate risks’’.
2
The initiative seeks to
achieve this objective by developing the capacity of cities to integrate climate resilience considerations in city planning and
operations, with the assumption that multi-stakeholder processes in these activities will generate greater local ownership
(internal project document). This suggests an implicit assumption that city planning processes are equipped to and oriented
towards supporting poor and vulnerable groups. The programme documentation also assumes that the initiative will be scaled
up and out organically, as ‘‘key network champions will emerge from within cities or the region to support and drive network
activities’’ (ibid.).
However, discussions with the city teams suggest that capacity building activities have been fairly narrowly focused in
terms of participation and limited in scale and scope. In both cases, the ACCCRN country partners engaging at the city level
and leading capacity building activities largely engaged with the city teams, consisting mainly of municipal officers, as well
as NGO staff and academics. In terms of the selection process for training events, in Bandar Lampung there were clear criteria
for selection which the city team members seemed to be familiar with. There was a responsibility on training participants to
ensure that the training benefited others within the city team, though no specific requirement to share with other city
stakeholders, as a member of the Bandar Lampung inspectorate explained ‘‘we try to share in the city team, but not to other
agencies... perhaps we should go beyond the city team to other agencies engaged in climate change, for example, environ-
ment, and spatial planning’’.
In Hat Yai, the climate workshops and SLDs were a way of narrowing down and self-selecting the relevant city actors, who
then formed the city team. The process of selecting the city team appears to have been fairly organic, with a number of team
members actively participating before receiving an official confirmation letter from the provincial governor. The inclusion of
NGO representatives (as on the Bandar Lampung team) indicates at least a level of awareness of the need to reach out to the
most vulnerable communities as identified in the vulnerability assessment, while the presence of media experts on the team
shows a recognition of the essential role of communications and knowledge sharing to the city as a whole.
In the case of both cities, there is therefore an assumption of a relatively straightforward, linear process of knowledge
sharing, as highlighted in an ACCCRN monitoring report (internal project document) which stated that ‘‘the process [of
SLDs] has been strongly output driven, which has to some extent promoted an input–output model of learning rather than
a cyclical learning model which gives sufficient space for review and reflection’’. However, the city team members do recog-
nise that there are skills related to sharing of knowledge: an irrigation official from Hat Yai explained that ‘‘the Irrigation
Department has tools related to flood early warning and water flows, so the question was how to share this knowledge with
2
www.acccrn.org/about-acccrn/objectives (accessed 16/1/2015).
74 D. Archer, D. Dodman / Urban Climate 14 (2015) 68–78
communities in a way that is understandable’’. Being part of the city team was seen as offering opportunities to enable this,
thus going some way to meeting the ultimate ACCCRN objective of reaching poor and vulnerable communities.
While there was no obvious gender or age bias in Bandar Lampung, civil society groups appear to have been less fully
represented in training programmes, with the fact that many of the international courses were in English serving as an addi-
tional barrier. There was recognition from the city team members, including a city planner, that ‘‘maybe it is also important
to involve local community leaders in the training... If the local community is involved they can spread the knowledge
city-wide’’ (BL, city planner). Language barriers also limited participation of city officials from both cities in other interna-
tional ACCCRN workshops and events. An added challenge to the capacity building process in both cities is that staff mem-
bers are moved around local government departments, with the potential loss of trained, committed and engaged
individuals. However, this could also present an opportunity for climate-related knowledge to be disseminated across a
range of different departments that may not otherwise be targeted for training activities.
Although there may have been an expectation that strengthening the capacity of the city teams would sequentially lead
to sharing knowledge with communities, in practice one respondent in Bandar Lampung (environmental practitioner) com-
mented that ‘‘it is not really working in this way’’. The training activities may therefore have failed to reach the key imple-
menters on the ground, ‘below’ the targeted participants. There was a similar recognition in Hat Yai, where a water resources
official in the city team noted that ‘‘community groups are very important for the implementation of activities on the ground,
as are women’s groups’’. They also recognised the limited representativeness of the city team, but justified this due to the
time burdens imposed by the city team, with an NGO practitioner commenting: ‘‘when community representatives are
on the city team, having lots of meetings interferes with their livelihoods. So this limits the possibility of bringing in com-
munity members on the city team. It is better to work with the community directly on the ground on the relevant issues,
which is what we have done’’.
While community groups may not be directly represented in the Hat Yai city team, their participation is nonetheless
regarded as crucial for the important scaling up of climate-related activities to other communities, villages and towns
in the province. The members of the city team who work closely with community groups are involved in
training-of-trainers on the ground, as well as various forms of communication using social media, radio and websites, with
an NGO practitioner commenting: ‘‘we use the pilot community model to connect communities and scale up...We focus on
society and media, as well as organisations. We are trying to build networks and knowledge to bring about change. There will
be no change if there is no change at the society level’’. At the same time, there is recognition that top down processes have
their limitations and might limit scaled-up learning. For example, the same NGO city team member believed that:
‘‘the weakness in the ACCCRN Hat Yai initiative is the municipality picked the community that is at risk and is ready to
act, so other communities might not learn. This can create divisions, they might see some communities benefiting. So we
need to invite all of the communities, volunteers, to build an understanding of the motivation of the project, and those
that are ready can join, others can learn through the network. We need to build understanding of learning from the start
to the end, and no one gets left behind, we build consensus about where the pilot projects should be’’.
The fact that the Hat Yai city team only has two women members was put down to the fact that the team was selected on
the basis of the most appropriate person for the role, but also because ‘‘the people who select the team are men, they pick
those they know’’. Thus the imbalances in representation of local government structures are reflected in the city team’s com-
position. However, both city teams include academics and NGO representatives, and an environmental practitioner on the
Bandar Lampung city team reflected that there is a ‘‘good connection and relationship between NGOs and local government.
It was already good before ACCCRN, but through the city team under ACCCRN the relationship has become better and better’’.
The Hat Yai team also includes private sector representatives, with the provincial Chamber of Commerce taking an active
interest in resilience-building activities.
In both cities, it was also recognised that there have been limitations in building the knowledge and capacity of key deci-
sion makers ‘above’ the targeted participants: a member of the city inspectorate in Bandar Lampung commented that ‘‘there
is a need for capacity building not only for the internal city team, but also for the public policy makers. They need to know
about climate change. City team only gives input, but cannot make decisions.... Perhaps it needs more ‘important’ people to
be present who can implement it – if you are just the person behind it you have to pray and be patient!’’. In Hat Yai some city
team members, including an NGO practitioner, also saw the other missing group as ‘‘policy makers from the municipal and
provincial level, so we are missing the top-most and bottom-most sectors... we are also missing the community wisemen,
who know the conditions in the community’’.
In many ways, the approach of using a city climate change working group was a pragmatic decision about how best to
commence engagement. As a result, the capacity building opportunities, ranging from training courses to participation in
workshops and SLDs, have often been limited to city team members. While this does lead to coproduction by the city team
members, to a certain extent there is an assumption that knowledge gained will trickle down to community groups through
civil society members on the city team, or be communicated through mass media and social media, in a linear process. In Hat
Yai there is a parallel process of building community-level networks and understanding around climate resilience. However,
these processes do little to challenge existing power dynamics within a city, with city teams in both cities recognising that
the ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ levels of actors within the city have not been sufficiently represented or engaged with in city team
activities. Thus, while this multi-stakeholder city team model represents a seed of change in urban governance structures,
the extent of this is limited by the non-participating sectors, reflecting the underlying political economy of the cities. This
D. Archer, D. Dodman / Urban Climate 14 (2015) 68–78 75
requires re-examining the assumption that the capacity building processes would feed into a process of learning-led change
and reorganisation at the city scale which has been identified as necessary for resilience (Reed et al., 2014).
6. Conclusion
The empirical evidence from the two case study cities indicates that capacity building processes are valuable for devel-
oping knowledge and understanding around the technical aspects of climate change and responses to it, as well as in shaping
the ways of working of city actors to facilitate a more joined-up, collaborative approach. This has promoted a sense of own-
ership over city-level resilience-building initiatives, and the evidence emphasises that there needs to be demand from the
city itself in order for a capacity building process to be successfully taken up. The city teams are composed of diverse stake-
holders, including government officials, academics, NGO staff, and (in the case of Hat Yai) the private sector.
However, the city team members, as recipients of capacity building (whether this was perceived as a stand-alone activity
in Bandar Lampung or part of the overall city-level processes in Hat Yai), acknowledge that there are gaps in targeting, par-
ticularly in reaching the top-most and bottom-most actors, namely those with power over policy-making, and those most
vulnerable to climate change impacts. While the flow of information downwards is somewhat addressed by broader com-
munication initiatives and parallel training-of-trainers and SLD opportunities at the community level, there was an oppor-
tunity for a more inclusive approach. In part this did not occur as a result of programme-level limitations in terms of time,
staffing and financing on behalf of those providing the capacity-building process, but it is also a reflection of the current real-
ity and representativeness of urban governance in the cities. An alternative conception of capacity building could have
framed this as an opportunity to raise awareness of underlying structural imbalances and to identify entry points for redress-
ing these. In the absence of this, the capacity building efforts have remained limited to more technical issues without
addressing some of the root causes of risk. For example, imbalances in access to information and knowledge around climate
change may have been addressed, but not to the extent of challenging power dynamics and achieving climate justice.
What does this mean for future initiatives that seek to build capacity for urban resilience? Firstly, it is necessary to move
from a conception of capacity building as a one-directional flow of information from more knowledgeable to less knowledge-
able stakeholders, and instead to recognise the broad range of capacities that already exist within cities. One member of the
Bandar Lampung city team commented:
‘‘For the last four years, ACCCRN has focused on building capacity of the city team without considering that there are
other people outside the city team with capacity and commitment...The ACCCRN approach to capacity building is giving
capacity to the city team and hoping that they share knowledge with the community and other stakeholders’’.
This is particularly relevant given the recent attention paid to the coproduction of services in urban areas. If reducing the
risk from disasters and climate change is seen as a collective good in towns and cities, then it can be considered along similar
lines to other basic services (e.g. water and sanitation) which are increasingly co-produced by state and citizen actors work-
ing together. Coproduction not only generates the material benefits of improved services, but also re-shapes the political
relationships between citizens and the state to make them more equal and to enable greater negotiation over other benefits
(Mitlin, 2008). Encouraging the coproduction of resilience activities therefore would enable these to break out of the narrow
realm of climate change adaptation, and to address deeper underlying issues shaping the ways in which cities function and
drive risk and vulnerability, to meet the needs for their most marginalized and vulnerable residents. Ensuring that those
receiving capacity-building understand who the vulnerable groups are, the drivers of vulnerability, and the barriers to
addressing it (Hughes, 2013) will go some way towards achieving climate justice. Where there is a recognition of the need
to address the root causes of risk, and local governments are responsive and willing to engage with civil society, including
through processes of capacity building, the elements of ‘transformative’ or ‘radical adaptation’ (Dodman et al., forthcoming)
begin to emerge.
Secondly, and related to this, the creators not only of capacity building programmes, but of urban resilience activities
more generally, ought to incorporate a more critical analysis of power and justice at different stages of the development
and implementation of these. This analysis should be multi-dimensional, considering procedural dimensions (who is
involved in capacity building) and distributional dimensions (what are the outcomes of capacity building likely to be); as
well as rights dimensions (who is entitled to set the agenda for urban activities) and responsibility dimensions (who has
the capacities and advantages that equip them to contribute effectively). Finally, as Bulkeley et al. (2014) explain, the per-
spective of ‘‘recognition’’ can help as an entry point for exploring these dimensions and shaping the design of future climate
change interventions.
Like any other complex problem, addressing the risks associated with climate change in urban areas cannot be achieved
through a single solution. Strengthening the ability of different stakeholders to address the challenge will remain a signifi-
cant element of this, yet this will need to be done in a more reflective way if it is not to entrench the very social relations
which have contributed to the development of the problem.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the interest and support of staff from the ACCCRN country partners in each loca-
tion: Mercy Corps (Indonesia) and the Thailand Environment Institute (Thailand). In particular, Hartati Sinaga provided
76 D. Archer, D. Dodman / Urban Climate 14 (2015) 68–78
invaluable support in arranging fieldwork and translating interviews in Bandar Lampung, and Pakamas Thinphanga coordi-
nated meetings in Hat Yai. The comments from two anonymous reviewers were greatly appreciated, and have helped to
improve the paper. The research was funded through a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.
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... Capacity-building and the formation of social capital are seen as important in achieving more effective, sustained, and democratic participatory processes at the local level (Docherty, Goodlad, and Paddison 2001) and in meeting community needs (Flora and Flora 2007;Green and Haines 2008). Capacity-building has been recognized for serving a variety of purposes-improving responses to climate change (Archer and Dodman 2015); as a prerequisite for neighborhood regeneration (Banks and Shenton 2001); urban policy, regeneration, and social development worldwide (Craig 2007); and for health and education (Beckley et al. 2008). ...
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Using a 20-year-long community-engaged design process in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District as a case study, this chapter explores how capacity building can serve as a critical component in community-engaged urban design in the context of a historic, immigrant neighborhood. With the involvement of older adults, youths, and a variety of community stakeholders through community-university partnerships, the process has contributed to the renovation of parks, streetscapes, and other neighborhood open spaces that have led to a revitalization of the neighborhood. More than just the completion of built work, the projects have contributed to the development of new organizations that in turn pursue initiatives of their own. The growing capacity of both new and existing organizations is central to the socially transformative outcomes in the neighborhood. Reflecting on the 20-year-long process through participant observations, this chapter examines the specific arrangements and techniques, including sustained community-university partnership and participatory design methods that build on existing knowledge and expertise in the community. While these techniques and arrangements may not be appropriate in other settings, they do suggest how a particular focus on the capacity building can guide the way community engagement is approached to produce not only inclusive, well-informed design but also sustained capacity in the community in addressing social inclusion and justice in design. As such, the case of Seattle’s Chinatown-International District suggests how social justice must guide not only how designers practice and how the built environments are shaped, but also how communities and the publics are engaged in the design and development process.
... Moroni (2020) argues that justice must encompass democratic political rights not limited by a scarcity lens or zerosum framing. This is echoed in Ziervogel et al.'s (2017) call for "meaningful participation in decision-making processes" as integral to their vision of the just city and Archer and Dodman's (2015) argument for greater attention to be paid to "who sets the agenda" for policies and response strategies. This literature points to the need to reimagine the relationships between universities, Extension, local decision-makers and systems of governance, and communities, including redefining "expert" roles among these groups, recognizing epistemological pluralism in engagements, and acknowledging the multifaceted forms of knowledge held by community members. ...
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Many land-grant universities are examining approaches to community engagement to better align with the US land-grant mission of knowledge democratization. With a growing majority of the United States’ population living in urbanized spaces, it is a societal imperative for university engagement initiatives to devise strategies for engaging people on the complexity of urban issues central to individual and community wellbeing. Effective urban engagement demands collaboration and strong relationships with urban organizations and residents to co-create approaches to urban concerns. Through narrative-based inquiry, we explore urban engagements within Penn State Extension (PSE) across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (USA). PSE, located administratively in the College of Agricultural Sciences, is charged with carrying out Penn State’s land-grant commitment to serve Pennsylvania’s citizens through community engagement and nonformal education in the agricultural and food, human, and social sciences. We examine extension educator and faculty practices, program development, community engagements, and experiences, and those of community stakeholders. This work draws upon democratic methods to uncover the undergirding philosophies of engagement within PSE and how communities experience those engagements. This project offers an entry-point to longer-term applied research to develop a broadly applicable theory and praxis of translational research, engagement, and change privileging urban community resilience.
... This can also be described as a process from protest to reception in the realization of transformation, measured here by three indicators: corruption control, voice and accountability, and rule of law. Moreover, climate change resilience and adaptive capacity ensure the resilience of communities in coping with climate change shocks and the successful implementation of just transition (Archer and Dodman, 2015). In addition, the process of achieving positive transition tends to focus on production-related activities, and energy efficiency is an important measure, which points out the balance between energy and economic activities, and is therefore considered by procedural justice. ...
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In the context of climate change, just transition is particularly significant, and digitalization as a possible solution for a just transition is considered in this paper. We construct an econometric model between the digital economy and just transition by using a balanced panel dataset of 72 economies from 2010 to 2019, and explore their dynamic relationship and mechanism impacts by applying a system-generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM) technique and a mediating model. The main results indicate that both the digital economy index and just transition index increase during the study period. Moreover, the digital economy not only promotes just transition, but also increases distributional justice, procedural justice, and restorative justice. In addition, the infrastructure and social impact of the digital economy also significantly increase the level of just transition; however, digital trade presents a negative effect on just transition. Finally, from the mechanism analysis, the digital economy indirectly improves just transition by increasing the level of human capital and financial development. This paper provides new ideas for realizing just transition in the future.
... Nos cenários delineados pela crise climática, o processo da urbanização crescente sinaliza alteração do clima urbano. Riscos climáticos afetam a população, notadamente as populações mais vulneráveis, deixando-as expostas a ameaças múltiplas, ainda mais exacerbados pelos processos desordenados de ocupação territorial (ANDRADE; VENTURA, 2020; ARCHER; DODMAN, 2015). ...
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Este trabalho objetiva analisar ações propostas na estratégia de resiliência da cidade de Salvador, Bahia, buscando identificar como elas se vinculam com os choques e/ou com os estresses identificados na cidade. Essa vinculação foi feita através da análise de conteúdo do documento de apresentação da estratégia de resiliência – Salvador Resiliente. A partir desse material, construiu-se uma base de dados no software Excel, contendo todas as 138 ações previstas e/ou realizadas para a cidade, vinculando-as aos choques e/ou estresses. Para tal, a pesquisa utilizou-se da técnica de painel de especialistas. Constata-se que todas as ações propostas se vinculam a pelo menos 1 dos 4 choques (deslizamento de terra, surto de doenças, inundações e alagamentos, insuficiência de serviços básicos) e a pelo menos 1 dos 6 estresses (pobreza e desigualdade, desemprego, crimes e violência, uso e ocupação irregular do solo, falta de mobilidade urbana, falta de acesso à educação adequada). “Inundações e alagamentos” foi o choque que apresentou a maior quantidade de ações vinculadas de curto e médio prazos, enquanto “pobreza e desigualdade social” foi o estresse com maior total de vínculos de médio e longo prazos. A grande maioria das 138 ações se vinculam a apenas 1-2 choques e/ou estresses enquanto menos de uma dezena de ações estão vinculadas simultaneamente a 5-6 choques/estresses. Ressalta-se, todavia, como principal desafio a construção de uma boa governança para a implementação de ações vinculadas a choques e/ou estresses que fujam à responsabilidade unicamente da esfera municipal, tais como: surto de doenças e crime e violência.
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Capacity building is recognized as one of three means of implementation (MOI) within the Paris Agreement, along with finance and technology. There is a good reason for this, namely that all aspects of climate action require multiple forms of capacity. In fact, it could be argued that capacity is foundational even to the other two MOIs as advancing both finance and technology requires a variety of capacities across multiple specific contexts. The Global Stocktake (GST) recognized the importance of capacity building for the achievement of the Paris Agreement and included its assessment within its evaluation of progress. However, unlike the other two MOIs, no chapter within the IPCC AR6 explicitly attempts to synthesize the state of knowledge about capacity or capacity building for climate action, and coverage of capacity remains scattered across the report. In this commentary we briefly reflect on the coverage of capacity and capacity building in the IPCC’s AR6 and develop some initial proposals for how knowledge about this key MOI could be better included in future assessment processes.
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One way in which governments foster sustainable homebuilding and housing is by subsidizing single homes’ investment in sustainability technologies. The problem with these programs is that they incentivize inefficient investment by supporting technologies that make technical and economic sense on a small scale. Furthermore, this arrangement constitutes a flawed marketing system, producing a limited impact on global well-being and sustainability in the long term, as it rules out more efficient sustainability technologies. This paper addresses these shortcomings by designing a public policy proposal based on a contract between the government and homeowners that incentivizes the adoption of collective sustainable technologies, changing the marketing system with a shift in the behavior of a dominant actor, the government. Results indicate that an equilibrium in which the homeowners choose to participate in the new collective program in exchange for a subsidy is feasible and stable. Moreover, the generalization of the proposed program may generate a new way to incentivize the more efficient use of sustainable home technologies in the long run.
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This paper proposes a new model of urban security for city branding in Indonesia, which aims to address the gap in city branding indices lacking safety and security factors. The proposed model, the Urban Defense Index (UDI), measures a region’s ability to manage risks and handle security threats in urban areas. The UDI is calculated based on three sub-indices: Threats Disruptions- Obstacles- Challenges (TDOC), Posture, and Stability, which use objective and subjective measurements. A case study uses the proposed model to measure five Kalimantan cities’ urban defense readiness levels. The study found that Stability, Posture, and TDOC are essential factors in determining the level of urban defense readiness in the cities. Future research can address the limitations of the UDI model proposed in this study and expand the UDI model to include other factors that affect urban security.
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As cities increasingly engage in climate adaptation planning, many are seeking to promote public participation and facilitate the engagement of different civil society actors. Still, the variations that exist among participatory approaches and the merits and tradeoffs associated with each are not well understood. This article examines the experiences of Quito (Ecuador) and Surat (India) to assess how civil society actors contribute to adaptation planning and implementation. The results showcase two distinct approaches to public engagement. The first emphasizes participation of experts, affected communities, and a wide array of citizens to sustain broadly inclusive programmes that incorporate local needs and concerns into adaptation processes and outcomes. The second approach focuses on building targeted partnerships between key government, private, and civil society actors to institutionalize robust decision-making structures, enhance abilities to raise funds, and increase means to directly engage with local community and international actors. A critical analysis of these approaches suggests more inclusive planning processes correspond to higher climate equity and justice outcomes in the short term, but the results also indicate that an emphasis on building dedicated multi-sector governance institutions may enhance long-term programme stability, while ensuring that diverse civil society actors have an ongoing voice in climate adaptation planning and implementation.
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