Abstract
Asia has been rapidly urbanising: half of the region’s population now lives in cities and additional 1,2 billion Asians will move to cities by 2050. This unprecedented urbanisation that often takes place at the expense natural ecosystems, which further exacerbates climate risks in Asian cities, making the urban poor most affected. For example, Bangalore and Chennai respectively lost 80% and 90% of their water bodies in the last 4 decades. As a result, Bangalore regularly faces severe floods since 2000 and the massive 2015 flood in Chennai caused an estimated damage of USD 2.2 billion. Both cities are expected to run out of ground water by 2020. In Manila, heavy floods of 2012 were aggravated by the lack of trees and open soil to absorb torrential rainfall water. These example demonstrate that development encroachments over green and blue areas significantly alter cities’ natural coping ecosystems and enhances climate risks. Ecosystem based climate resilience has been globally recognised as viable, cost-effective and generating multiple co-benefits for cities. It requires adopting and implementing ecosystem protective and regenerating urban planning and land use regulations. This requirement, in turn, needs transparent and supportive local governance and leadership, which remains a critical challenge in Asia. Root causes of this challenge are numerous: • Limited capacity and expertise in the field of climate change at municipal levels leads to uninformed decision-making; • Short electoral cycles do not incentivize decision-makers to look into long-term interventions. Land use regulations protecting natural ecosystems are seen as less tangible actions compared to engineering solutions such as installing pumping stations in low lying areas or constructing embankments; • Owing to vested interests, personal goals influence approvals of construction proposals that often compromise on a city’s green and blue spaces. Relatively weak checks and balances systems reinforce the matter; • Due to weak citizen awareness and engagement, real estate investors and big businesses tend to actively advocate for their interests, which are often not favourable to shared public ecosystems. International programs rarely target these root causes and, consequently, do not achieve meaningful and durable change. The paper looks at potential solutions to overcome these challenges and foster local leadership for ecosystem based climate resilience. It screens selected case studies that demonstrate how local leadership for ecosystem based climate resilience not only transformed the city but also boosted the career of the leader and led to up-scaling the example. Indeed, recent international steps such as the Agenda 2030, the Paris Agreement or the New Urban Agenda create valuable opportunities for climate sensitive local leaders to fully display their leadership potential and receive adequate recognition. For example, Surabaya Mayor Tri Rismaharini, successfully transformed one of the most neglected Indonesian cities – Surabaya – to a floodless city known for its parks and public initiatives by converting 20% of the territory into green areas. As a result, she has been re-elected three times and won several international environmental awards. Surabaya is but one of many successful stories of a successful local leadership in an Asia city, which other cities can learn from. Finally, the presentation examines ways of boosting local leadership for ecosystem based climate resilience in Asia and contributions the international development community, national governments, civil society and the media can bring to the matter. Case studies and considerations shared are a combined result of an on-going research and a field international technical assistance work in over 20 Asian cities and 40 Asian countries, conducted in the frame of projects implemented for international institutions such as the ADB, CDIA, UNECE, UNEP, UN ESCAP or UNDP.
