As the frequency and intensity of climate change related disasters increase, local communities are severely impacted. In response to recent climate related disasters on the continent, ICLEI Africa is stepping up to support cities in reducing their disaster risk. We draw on two decades of on-the-ground work in Africa, building and strengthening resilience through proactive planning.

The module focused on practices, policies and innovations on sustainable water management at municipal level, particularly on city solutions to address rainfall extremes and water stress. ICLEI KCC delivered modules planning, coordinated with city speakers and promoted ICLEI Resilient Cities agenda.

This research will take place over five semi-concurrent phases:
1. Literature analysis undertaken by researchers to understand existing and previous research topics and approaches.
2. Initial engagement & interviews in each city using narrative collection and documentation, and photographic expression to explore food production, processing, and distribution systems.
3. Co-production around food and social infrastructures will be undertaken at a workshop in which narratives will be presented, and stakeholders will be invited to co-produce theory about their food systems based on these findings and their experience.
4. Visualising socio-technical infrastructures using photographic expression.
5. The second workshop will expand the co-production of theory from food to other infrastructure systems, based on the outcomes of phase 2, the continued research of phase 1, and phase 3’s community-produced expressions, and express how this theory supports future development imaginaries and planning.

Through this project, ICLEI as a leading member of the implementing consortium leads the work package set up to help enhance institutional frameworks through political advocacy and networking. ICLEI leads the project’s support to address legal and institutional frameworks and promote multilevel governance in pilot countries to provide an enabling environment for local and national governments to coordinate and streamline their urban planning and relevant priority sector activities. To this end, ICLEI establishes dialogues (including Talanoa dialogues) and explores partnerships and networking opportunities with political leaders at all levels and leveraging on its role as focal point to the Local Governments and Municipal Authorities (LGMA) constituency of the UN Climate Change and the Friends of Cities group.

ICLEI also provides technical expertise to the local governments in the development of their Sustainable Energy Access and Climate Action Plans (SEACAPs); supports the project’s work to enhance local climate finance and supports the project’s communication and awareness raising activities.

ICLEI co-organizes the Human City Forum, which is hosted by Suwon City, in close cooperation with partner institutions and organizations based in Suwon. The forum aims to leverage the collective local actions for recovering human value in urban space. ICLEI mobilizes speakers from around the world and addressing the importance of the agenda in relation to SDG Goal 11, so that local governments in South Korea get unique insights on global trends on inclusive society and development.

To assist SI-CAT in its efforts, ICLEI is compiling the best practices in urban resilience and adaptation programs/projects taking place outside of Japan. In 2017-18, ICLEI conducted a set of interviews with local governments worldwide, analyzing those practices and submitted reports which will be used to help researchers and local government officials to further develop understanding of urban resilience and thus contributing to the development of adaptation plans at local level. In 2019, ICLEI will research and compile examples of how local governments are utilizing and systematically managing scientific data in its resilience planning and in its adaptation programs/projects.

ICLEI East Asia and UNDRR co-hosted two workshops for two Chinese cities – Ningbo and Chengdu – to raise awareness of urban resilience with specific focuses on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction among local officials.
The workshops were structured in sessions of concept and tools introduction, and presentations of international and domestic cases on resilience and adaptation. Assessments of local resilience were also conducted via group exercises followed by suggestions on improvements.
ICLEI East Asia and UNDRR will continue to work to support 2 more local governments in China in implementing the Sendai Framework and other urban resilience objectives via workshops. It is expected that local disaster risk reduction planning will be better risk-informed when cities are equipped with skills to assess their respective risks, identify gaps, and ultimately lead to projects to address those gaps. A learning publication will be produced as the final output of the series, to share lessons learned on improving urban resilience in the context of global warming with other cities.

ICLEI and its local partner International Climate Development Institute (ICDI) deliver three training events that teach local stakeholders how to improve resilience mechanisms under the UNISDR frameworks; how to ensure the life quality in order to achieve Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) from social, environmental and financial perspectives, by implementing the “Disaster resilience scorecard for cities;” and how to enhance and introduce new technology in DRR and resilience to start new business models in the related industry. The trainings include lectures and facilitation of group presentations and discussions.

In this action research project, ICLEI is providing support to four cities in developing collaboration mechanisms that advance climate resilient developmment, which can then be adapted to other contexts. The implementation of each country’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) via enhanced multi-level governance has been identified as an area of focus of this project. Through this project, ICLEI builds on the understanding of what enables collaboration mechanisms for climate resilient development, such as environments that allow for learning-by-doing and accumulation of knowledge that can be harnessed, local government officials who are engaged and passionate about building climate resilience, and cities where strong multi-sectoral partnerships exist. Building climate resilience is a multi-sectoral and multi-disciplinary issue, and therefore ICLEI promotes collaborative governance, which favours transdisciplinary collaborations that increase the depth and breadth of knowledge and expertise that can be drawn on when tackling complex issues such as climate resilience.

Through the Supporting African Cities Development of Climate Action Plans (CAPs) project, ICLEI Africa supported Moroni (Comoros) and Nacala (Mozambique) in becoming leading Africa cities in terms of climate mitigation and adaptation action planning as well as supporting these cities with continued compliancy to the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy (GCoM) initiative. Specifically, ICLEI is supported the cities in the development of Emissions Reduction Target Setting Reports and Climate Change Mitigation Action Plans under the GCoM mitigation reporting pathway; and co-developing Risk and Vulnerability Assessments and Climate Change Adaptation Action Plans under the GCoM adaptation reporting pathway for both cities.