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Climate change processes pose significant challenges to development in cities across West Africa. These processes shape and mediate urban vulnerability across urban areas and hinder wider development efforts across these cities. This paper reviews these emerging perspectives within the context of UN-Habitat's work in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso and Saint-Louis, Senegal. It argues that policy-makers and researchers need to engage with issues of climate change and development at an urban scale and across “ordinary cities” through exploring the range of vulnerabilities inherent in each city. Specifically, the paper illustrates the diversities and similarities of climate change processes that exist across these two medium sized, or ordinary West African cities, the intersections with existing economic profiles and potential impacts and the emerging urban governance responses to these issues. It demonstrates the need to move beyond constructions of an archetypal “West African” city, and illustrates the emerging work by UN-Habitat and local partners in developing localised knowledges about urban vulnerabilities and the multiple and divergent ways in which these issues are beginning to be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sorsogon City is a rapidly urbanising coastal area in the Philippines. Its location, combined with a rapidly changing and growing urban fabric, leaves it vulnerable to both incremental climate change and associated extreme weather events. In this paper, UN-HABITAT data are used to draw out the climate change vulnerabilities and policy responses in Sorsogon City. Vulnerability “hotspots” highlight the spatial intersection of socio-economic justice concerns, particularly in terms of vulnerability to increased cyclone activity. We discuss vulnerabilities of Sorsogon City and its citizens to climate change and measures undertaken through various social, environmental and technical systems and interventions to increase resilience. The paper also attempts to unpick the relationship between the neat, concise reported city and the complexities of urban life using the Sorsogon experiment to consider the limitations of such approaches to governing climate change. We group these under four headings: social simplification in the absence of data; over-governance (and under-representation); quick wins versus strategic investment; and stretching the ecological and vulnerability footprints of the city. The experience of Sorsogon City is then extended to reflect on issues of governance and planning in other Asian coastal cities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper introduces a special issue ofLocal Environmentthat has arisen through collaboration between academic researchers and the Urban Planning and Design Branch of UN-Habitat, focused on how we can understand and respond to the challenges of urban vulnerability, adaptation and resilience in the context of climate change. The paper establishes the existing state of the art in the field, and considers critical challenges that are emerging in the research-based literature. In this context, it introduces UN-Habitat's Cities and Climate Change Initiative and reflects on the lessons learnt and challenges ahead, drawing on insights from across the papers in the special issue. In conclusion, it identifies the role of international/transnational co-operation, the relation between adaptation and mitigation, issues of multi-level governance and the ways in which change in urban socio-technical systems might be achieved as critical issues across the science/policy interface where increased dialogue and the co-production of knowledge needs to focus in order to advance this agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper suggests a two-tiered climate insurance strategy that would support developing country adaptation to the risks of climate variability and meet the intent of Article 4.8 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The core of this strategy is the establishment of a climate insurance programme specialized in supporting developing country insurance-related initiatives for sudden- and slow-onset weather- related disasters. This programme could take many institutional forms, including an independent facility, a facility in partnership with other institutions of the donor community, or as part of a multi-purpose disaster management facility operated outside of the climate regime. Its main purpose would be to enable the establishment of public-private safety nets for climate-related shocks by assisting the development of (sometimes novel) insurance-related instruments that are affordable to the poor and coupled with actions and incentives for pro-active preventive measures. A second tier could provide disaster relief contingent on countries making credible efforts to manage their risks. Since it would be based on precedents of donor-supported insurance systems in developing countries, a main advantage of this proposed climate insurance strategy is its demonstrated feasibility. Other advantages include its potential for linking with related donor initiatives, providing incentives for loss reduction and targeting the most vulnerable. Many details and issues are left unresolved, and it is hoped that this suggested strategy will facilitate needed discussion on practical options for supporting adaptation to climate change in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The “Ricardian” technique for projecting climate change impacts on agriculture has generated an unusual amount of critical attention. Ricardian climate sensitivities are typically viewed as the necessary and static result of exclusively local economic and biophysical conditions. In this paper, six spatial econometric models are estimated to explore how human-environment relationships associated with climate sensitivities have varied over space and time in the Great Plains, 1969–1992. Results indicate that spatial effects, such as extra-local communication processes and proximity to and regulation of Ogallala irrigation water, are important influences on climate sensitivities. Projected climate change impacts also vary significantly with the scale, location, and time of analysis. Under a hypothetical climate change, at the county scale, land values would decline (by up to one-third) in the western counties, but increase (by up to one-half) in the eastern counties. In some cases, the projected impacts for a given county change algebraic sign or order of magnitude during the study period. At the regional scale, impacts are significantly higher in the early years (a projected increase of about 5 percent of regional land values, ∼$7 billion [1992$]) than in the later years (an increase of about one-half of one percent, ∼$0.7 billion). These results suggest that, suitably modified, the Ricardian framework can be used constructively to explore subtle yet important social dimensions of dynamic climate risk, and that on balance the Great Plains system of agricultural production, despite a heterogeneous picture of projected impacts, appears to be increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]