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Facing Risk: New Urban Resilience Practices in Latin America
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This book presents effective urban resilience practices put in place in six Latin American cities: Manizales, Colombia; La Paz, Bolivia; Cuenca, Ecuador; Santa Fe and Pilar, Argentina; and Cubatão, Brazil.
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The rapid process of urbanization on a global scale and the centrality of the sustainable development agenda in the international context constitute two important inflections in the contemporary world. As a result, the prominence of cities in current international debates has grown so that cities exercise their diplomacy and implement internationally aligned policies through global agreements. In this context, this chapter analyzes the phenomena of city diplomacy and resilience in the sustainable development agenda of South American municipalities. Resulting from the discussion on the smart cities approach in the context of the region, it recognizes the uncertainty, complexity, interdependence, and multidimensionality of contemporary phenomena from a resilience perspective. The exercise of international relations at the municipal level in South America also has the support of local government networks and associations, such as ICLEI—Local Governments for Sustainability, which with the Smart Cities for Climate Analytical Report, published in 2017, has enabled the materialization of the perspective of convergence between the climatic action of cities and the strengthening of their governance and institutional capacity, as well as their capacity for innovation. This convergence is illustrated by the case of the Metropolitan Region of Campinas, which combines a regional program to enhance biodiversity and its socioeconomic benefits, a long-term vision of resilience and sustainable development, and a municipal Smart City Strategic Plan.KeywordsCity diplomacyResilient developmentAdaptationSmart citiesSouth America
Managing climate change and disaster risk reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) is a work in progress. Diverse institutional efforts have produced different kinds of local and national responses to climate change and disaster impacts over the past three decades. Although several institutional systems were put in place to deal with climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in the region over time, they remain split and embedded in two separate domains: the climate change adaptation (CCA) community and the disaster risk reduction (DRR) community. There are more than 30 climate change and disaster risk national system frameworks within the region, more than a dozen of prevention disaster risk management institutions, several regional cooperation mechanisms, and the military and several NGOs who contribute to the management of CCA and DRR. Even though some recent examples in resilient practices within cities may point to the right direction, the need of integrated and comprehensive approaches to deal with the DRR-CCA nexus is strongly required in the region. The chapter argues that governments of the LAC region have to acknowledge the need to seek an integral vision of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation with a special orientation to climate change management and institutional interplay. Through vulnerability reduction, capacity creation, improved information access, and institutional strengthening among others, together with a better response to preparedness and emergencies, the region can better deal with disasters and climate change impacts.
The details of a multi-hazard and probabilistic risk assessment, developed for urban planning and emergency response activities in Manizales, Colombia, are presented in this article. This risk assessment effort was developed under the framework of an integral disaster risk management project whose goal was to connect risk reduction activities by using open access and state-of-the-art risk models. A probabilistic approach was used for the analysis of seismic, landslide, and volcanic hazards to obtain stochastic event sets suitable for probabilistic loss estimation and to generate risk results in different metrics after aggregating in a rigorous way the losses associated to the different hazards. Detailed and high resolution exposure databases were used for the building stock and infrastructure of the city together with a set of vulnerability functions for each of the perils considered. The urban and territorial ordering plan of the city was updated for socioeconomic development and land use using the hazard and risk inputs and determinants, which cover not only the current urban area but also those adjacent areas where the expansion of Manizales is expected to occur. The emergency response capabilities of the city were improved by taking into account risk scenarios and after updating an automatic and real-time post-earthquake damage assessment.
This article discusses the importance of census data for analysing the urbanization process, and looks at the characteristics and the true role of urban areas in Bolivia. The 2012 census, the author suggests, will reveal the countrys young, urban face, as well as the swift pace of the demographic and social changes that have taken place in the last few decades, indicating the need to manage these changes through public policies
Los Atlas de Riesgos municipales constituyen uno de los instrumentos que el gobierno mexicano ha privilegiado en los últimos años, con la finalidad de apoyar el ordenamiento de los asentamientos humanos en México. Este artículo recupera los principales antecedents conceptuales, metodológicos, institucionales y legales de estos productos cartográficos, y analiza sus alcances y limitaciones reales en cuanto instrumentos de regulación de usos de suelo y gestión de riesgo en el caso mexicano. Para ello, utiliza los conceptos de juridificación, cumplimiento de marcos normativos (enforcement) y gestión multi-escalar, con el objeto de analizar las condiciones en las que estos atlas surgen como dispositivos jurídicos en el contexto de una descentralización parcial del ordenamiento territorial y la protección civil, así como la distancia que los separa de los efectos territoriales esperados de ellos. El artículo sustenta las razones para la relativa inoperancia de los atlas en el contexto de los gobiernos municipales; entre estas razones destacan la indefinición en el marco legal sobre su contenido y uso; la falta de claridad sobre las instancias responsables de su implementación, y la carencia de sanciones que conlleva su incumplimiento en la mayoría de las legislaciones estatales.
How Latin American countries became leading voices and innovators on addressing climate change—and what threatens their leadership.
Latin American countries have increased their influence at the United Nations climate change negotiations and offered potential solutions on coping with global warming. But in the face of competing priorities, sometimes these climate policies are jettisoned, undermined, or simply ignored.
A Fragmented Continent focuses on Latin America's three major blocs at the U.N. climate negotiations and how they attempt to balance climate action with building prosperity. Brazil has reduced its deforestation but continues its drive for economic growth and global recognition. A leftist group led by Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador decries the injustice of climate change but is highly dependent on the export of fossil fuels. A new group, including Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru and supported by Mexico, offers sharp reductions in their carbon emissions in return for greater action by others; these countries now have to deliver on their promises. Weaving together issues of politics and economy, trade, foreign policy, civil society, and environmental protection, A Fragmented Continent offers a long-missing perspective on one of this century's greatest challenges and neglected regions.
Urban ecology is a field encompassing multiple disciplines and practical applications and has grown rapidly. However, the
field is heterogeneous as a global inquiry with multiple theoretical and conceptual frameworks, variable research approaches,
and a lack of coordination among multiple schools of thought and research foci. Here, we present an international consensus
on how urban ecology can advance along multiple research directions. There is potential for the field to mature as a holistic,
integrated science of urban systems. Such an integrated science could better inform decisionmakers who need increased understanding
of complex relationships among social, ecological, economic, and built infrastructure systems. To advance the field requires
conceptual synthesis, knowledge and data sharing, cross-city comparative research, new intellectual networks, and engagement
with additional disciplines. We consider challenges and opportunities for understanding dynamics of urban systems. We suggest
pathways for advancing urban ecology research to support the goals of improving urban sustainability and resilience, conserving
urban biodiversity, and promoting human well-being on an urbanizing planet.
