Abstract
Urbanization and climate change are two current significant trends of the Earth’s history. Both influence one another. Given the increasing disastrous impacts of global warming, it is vital to understand their development and interaction.
The concentration of people, infrastructures, and economic activities in urban areas contributes to the global growth of greenhouse gas emissions. But it also makes cities particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Yet many opportunities lie within the powers held by local governments. In fact, through their sectoral policies (land-use planning, transport, buildings, energy use, waste management, etc.), city governments can develop efficient strategies to mitigate and adapt to the effects of global warming. Adaptation strategies are especially important as they allow connecting local needs with global concerns. The governance structure of the city and the capacity of the different stakeholders to collaborate in the definition and implementation of adaptation plans are therefore essential to ensure that local actions are efficient.
This chapter presents the implications of climate change in urban environments and the challenges it raises in terms of adaptation policies. It provides illustrations of responses adopted at the city level and points out at the barriers and opportunities faced by local policy-makers.
This research was funded by the AXA Foundation post-doctoral fellowship.
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- 1.
Governance refers to “the formation and stewardship of the formal and informal rules that regulate the public realm, the arena in which state as well as economic and societal actors interact to make decisions” (Hyden et al. 2003).
- 2.
According to CBA, it is “an approach that is putting people in the centre of their own development, by facilitating a learning process that increases resilience and anticipatory capacity. It is not just a response to climate events and shocks, but rather a complex and holistic process that includes personal development and organizational development to ensure an enhanced problem solving capacity, and the capacity to anticipate events and plant so that future shocks are buffered” (Koelle and Annecke 2011).
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Dreyfus, M. (2015). Adaptation to Climate Change in Cities. In: Leal Filho, W. (eds) Handbook of Climate Change Adaptation. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38670-1_67
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38670-1_67
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