CDKN is proud to be an endorsing partner of the third Resilient Cities Congress.  Resilient Cities is the global forum for climate change adaptation and resilience building in cities and other forms of local government.  The conference convenes mayors, policy makers, international institutions, NGOs, academics and business, to the GSI Institute in Bonn to discuss the challenges and opportunities related to urban-level adaptation.  Resilient Cities has quickly become one of the key learning opportunities for city officials and other urban-level practitioners to learn from each other’s experiences, challenges and success stories.  In parallel, the Mayors’ Forum, a closed event hosted by the Mayor of Bonn and the Mayor of Mexico City is facilitating direct inter governmental dialogues on these issues.

Out of the hot issues debated at the Resilient Cities Congress, one strongly captures my attention: How to integrate local and national efforts for adaptation?  Several of the Latin American countries that CDKN is partnering with are also grappling with this issue.   Climate compatible development certainly needs strong leadership at the national level, but this needs to be carefully complemented by local level planning and implementation.

Three presentations from different parts of the world illustrate various approaches to local-national coordination regarding urban adaptation plans.

In South Africa, the central government is using fiscal incentives (grants) directed at city governments to fund adaptation planning.  Furthermore, the national government complements the grants with a capacity-building program which selects recent graduates from universities in each province, and brings them to the capital for 12 months to receive training and collaborate with the national climate change agency.  These professionals are then deployed back to their home cities in order to lead local adaptation efforts.  By selecting professionals from local universities, rather than offering the course to people in the capital, they have found that more professionals return to their home states for professional life.

A second example presented at the Resilient Cities Conference comes from the Philippines.  The Philippines’ approach to national-regional regulation has emphasized regulation and capacity building.  The National Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) has created a model Land Use Plan that has to be implemented by local governments.  HUDCC also convenes workshops in regions to provide training regarding application of this model.  The course invites mayors to the first day and then follows with courses to train planning officials who work in local governments.  In addition to this, the HUDCC is also striving to support local government in accessing global climate change funding.  The national government is putting together schemes that supports local governments in accessing the Green Fund and map other possible resources.

South Korea provides a third approach to this issue.   The government considered the province level as the most appropriate level of governance to scale-down adaptation efforts.  Thus, it has provided grants to support the 16 provinces of South Korea to create Adaptation Plans.  First, it supported pilot adaptation plans in two provinces.  Then, based on these two pilot experiences, the national government created Guidelines for the Adaptation Plans at the province level.   Third, the government rolled out the grant scheme to support implementation of the model in each province.  Fourth, the national government fostered capacity by putting together a training package, and creating a roster of experts that could support province governments in performing certain highly- technical aspects of the analyses.  Finally, as a result of this process, each province government has prioritised one sector/area that it will work with in the short term to start adaptation efforts.

All of these experiences illustrate the efforts of national governments trying to carefully downscale adaptation planning to a local government. We find that countries have used some mix of regulatory, fiscal and capacity building approaches.   These examples provide good insight for the discussions that CDKN is having with the governments that it supports.  For example, CDKN is supporting the Colombian government in its efforts to explore national-local coordination for adaptation through pilot programs in Cartagena the Alto Cauca.

As illustrated by the variety of cases shared above, The Sustainable Cities Conference has been successful in providing a good forum for the exchange of experiences related to local level adaptation and sustainability.  As David Cadman, President of ICLEI, pointed out “the densest areas of this world will feel the most consequences from climate change, namely urban areas”.  In this sense, the experiences explored above provide lessons that are important to make sure that national local governments are carefully planning for urban level adaptation.

For more resources related to urban areas and climate change, click here.

Image: View of urban area near river. India. Photo: © Curt Carnemark / World Bank

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The upcoming REDD+ Partnership meeting and the UNFCCC intersessional in Bonn are key opportunities to make progress on tackling the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation, both so critical for stemming climate change.

Many advance submissions from governments and observer organisations stressed the need to look beyond the forest sector to address the way other sectors drive deforestation. For example, the EU point out that ‘given the importance of rural development, food security, mitigation and adaptation in the agricultural sector and of agricultural expansion as a driver of deforestation, the implications of REDD+ implementation should be considered from a broad perspective’. The relationship between forests and sectors that drive deforestation and forest degradation is crucial to efforts to reduce emissions and achieve development objectives.

The ODI-led REDDnet’s work on REDD+ and other sectors has examined how REDD+ can be designed in a way to not only address the drivers of deforestation, but to also contribute to key economic and development objectives (including the agriculture and energy sectors).  Our report ‘Making REDD+ cross-sectoral’ calls for the drivers of deforestation to be addressed through participatory processes involving all relevant sectors and recognising local and regional contexts. This is reflected in the Japanese submission:  ‘it is important to establish a cross-sectoral system which includes … dialogue and coordination between sectors’. This approach is critical to understanding the different motivations, constraints and demands on forested land.

However, while there is recognition this needs to happen, it is easier said than done.  While in many cases countries are taking steps towards such coordination, it often remains weak and has been fraught with challenges.  A REDDnet study focussed on opportunities for cross-sectoral implementation in East Africa found that broad, multi-sectoral processes related to REDD+ are often hampered by disagreements in policy creation. Unclear working modalities, fragmented communication challenges and confused decision-making are just as prevalent in cross-sector processes related to REDD+ as they are in other similar processes. Some participants cite bureaucratic challenges while others talk of the blinkered ‘cultures’ of home institutions.

Cross-sectoral processes related to REDD+ are further complicated by the need to identify solutions that deliver multiple objectives, or at least do no harm to other sectors. While there may be some win-win solutions, in many cases tough decisions need to be taken. How are the needs of agriculture, energy and forests going to be balanced? How can poverty reduction, economic development, environmental and climate change objectives be reconciled in this context? How will conflicts over decisions be resolved? These are echoed in a recent CCAFS policy brief which states that ‘there are serious obstacles to creating meaningful cross-sector links [which are] able to alter strong economic forces and existing government targets and mandates’, with a particular challenge being how to reconcile sector conflicts.  There are examples where progress has been made – an EDF report outlines that, from 2003-2007, the state of Acre in Brazil achieved a reduction in deforestation by 80%, while the value of agriculture increased by 40% and the state’s cattle herd grew by 15%, alongside growth in GDP per capita of 40%.

So, as governments and other stakeholders meet to discuss these issues in Bonn, it will be interesting to hear of practical experiences of efforts to address drivers of deforestation:

• What challenges are being faced and what lessons learned or solutions have been identified?  What interventions are being implemented and how effective are they?
• How are countries approaching trade-offs and conflicts that they come up against?
• How is REDD+ and recognition of the need to curb emissions from forests feeding in to the dynamics?  Are REDD+ funds helping to find solutions, or change the dynamics, in efforts to tackle the drivers of deforestation?
• Is REDD+ helping to create more of an incentive to prioritise decision-making that supports conservation and sustainable management of forests?  Or is the remaining uncertainty about a long-term incentive for REDD+, coupled with increasing demand for alternative land uses, holding this back?

Recognition of the need to reduce emissions from forests as part of efforts to avoid dangerous global warming has helped push forests up the political agenda.  Whether these efforts are able to face head on the trade-offs and conflicts that exist and find solutions to these challenges will be one of its biggest tests.

This blog was first published on REDD-net. We occasionally invite bloggers from around the world to provide their experiences and views. The views here are those of the authors, and not necessarily those of CDKN.

Image: Sentarum Lake, West Kalimantan, December 2004, courtesy of CIFOR

Over the past decade, numerous websites, portals and online platforms have been set up to provide such information, and more are being launched every year. But the ‘knowledge infrastructure’ within the climate and development sector is still weak. There are many data and information gaps, and many of the knowledge sharing initiatives that do exist operate in isolation from each other, risking duplication of effort.

Climate Knowledge Brokers Workshop 2012

The Climate Knowledge Brokers’ workshop for 2012 will take place in Bonn in the mid week of the UNFCCC inter-sessionals, hosted by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbHand, co-sponsored by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN).

The overall objective of the 2012 CKB Workshop is to forge closer collaborative links between climate knowledge brokers working in the climate and development area. The ultimate aim is to improve access to reliable information and robust methods for those working in these sectors, particularly in developing countries, and to enhance their ability to share lessons and experience.

Click here for more information about the 2012 workshop.

Collaborative projects between knowledge brokers

Following the highly successful 2011 Climate Knowledge Broker’s workshop, CDKN issued a funding call to enable improved  collaboration among knowledge brokers, and thus enabling better access to climate and development knowledge for development country audiences.

The following projects received funding:

The InfoAmazonia GeoJournalism project 

Connecting climate journalists in Latin America

Automated tagging to make finding climate compatible information easier

Integrating global climate information and regional adaptation portals

Linking stakeholders to integrated climate change data

Addressing the climate change knowledge gap through user-group analysis

Guiding people to relevant knowledge with the Climate Change Knowledge Navigator

Image: Courtesy of the World Bank.

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