Urban climate resilience : a global assessment of city adaptation plans

Abstract

As policy makers accept climate change as an irrefutable threat, adaptation planning has emerged as a necessary action for countries, states, and municipalities. This thesis explores adaptive responses to climate change in 17 cities, comparing municipal plans created to "battle" a global problem at the local level. Incorporating capitals and megacities from both the developed and developing worlds, this analysis studies whether municipal responses to the impacts of climate change adhere to the conventional understanding of who needs to adapt and how they are planning for adaptation. The three assumptions challenged in this analysis are (1) that mitigation is primarily a responsibility of the global north while adaptation is the primary response of the global south, (2) that adaptive action is planned in response to vulnerability, and (3) that mitigation action and groups pave the way for subsequent adaptation through the creation of knowledge and global networks on climate issues. Through a comparison of the levels of resource and hazard assessment, objective frameworks, levels of coordination, citizen involvement mechanisms, and concern for equity that city governments are using to develop climate action plans, I argue that municipalities are not using the resources and priorities ascribed to them by the global community. Instead, global networks and programs, as they are now, encourage the creation of perfunctory adaptation statements, rather than specific actions.

(cont.) Global mitigation relationships are effectively muddling and suppressing the creative development of local strategies for climate change adaptation. Keywords: climate change, adaptation, resilience, vulnerability, municipal adaptation plan, city adaptation plan, risk