Climate and Disaster Resilience at the City Level Recording

City-level resilience towards climate and disaster-related risks requires a suite of interventions embedded within wider processes of sustainable urban development. This includes risk-sensitive land use management processes, resilient infrastructure that provides equitable access to the urban poor, improved early warning systems and disaster preparedness, and strengthened financial preparedness to deal with disasters.

Changing climate risk context may also require cities to revisit and improve existing policies related to low-cost housing, labor market, delivery of health services so that they can better support emerging risks faced by the citizens, especially the poor and vulnerable population. However, typically cities and municipalities have limited capacity to respond effectively to rapid urbanization-related challenges and high levels of rural to urban migration. Increasing climate and disaster risk poses further challenges, which need to be dealt with in an integrated and holistic manner. This requires building capacity, including fiscal capacity of urban local bodies to understand climate and disaster risk and factor risk management considerations into decision-making processes.

This session aimed to discuss city-level actions for building resilience and how these translate to increasing the resilience for urban poor communities. The session discussed challenges, lessons learned, recommendations, and future opportunities, including opportunities for involving the private sector in building resilience, with a specific focus on land use and infrastructure planning for resilience.