SCRIPT draft v 2 (Vladimir Arana comments)

What solution do you see as essential to build urban resilience to climate impacts?

 Planning is a very important tool to prevent climate related disasters. However, villages,
town and cities in developing countries in Latin America and Africa have a planning rate
below 20% as average, which means that cities are not planning their territories and that
planning is not a State priority.

 Climate change adaptation strategies in developing countries are better connected at the
national level than at the local level and that can be seen in the interaction that Ministries of
the environment and National water agencies make. However, very little coordination of
national and water national agencies take place with local governments. A change in the
institutional model to tackle cities’ adaptation needs to be reviewed and strengthened.

 An important aspect to build urban resilience is the fast-track prevention and reaction.
Which depends on a combination and availability of financial and technical resources. Most
of the climate change resilience in developing countries is built and implemented from
central governments, while local governments in Latin American and African developing
countries have less than 5% of the budget dedicated to build water resilience. A water
resilience mechanism in villages, town and cities requires direct funding to local
governments and communities that are or will be affected by climate change.

People that have no access to safe water supply or sanitation. What do you see as important
solutions?

 Water supply and sanitation depend on the existence and access to water which has become
a problem in developing countries, especially with vulnerable indigenous communities,
since water resources are depleting fast due to climate change. Here, developing countries
face a double challenge: First, the trend of rural population migrating to urban peripheries
and second, the inability of local governments to sustainably incorporate the new wave of
migrants. One solution could be the provision of portable water potabilization systems, like
manual filters or small portable potabilization tanks that families could take rural to urban
areas, especially knowing that in developing countries when rural families arrive at urban
peripheries it may take an average of 10 years before they have a permanent safe water
supply and sanitation infrastructure, and also knowing that (in Latin America and Africa)
families without these basic services are 20 times more vulnerable to climate-change related
diseases than families that count with these services.

How do you get urban planning involved to prevent floods from affecting poor people?

 Planning has become an elitist activity where mainly architects and planners can make urban
planning and where professional planning societies mainly admit architects. However, the
problems of the city are more economical, social and environmental, so, we need to
democratize and open urban planning to all, and that includes teaching land planning to
 economists, sociologists, environmentalists and so on, and begin looking at planning in a
real holistic way. Also, we should teach planning to poor urban communities that need to
grow and expand so they will know how to do it and avoid the mistakes of informal
occupation. In this way, many disasters in developing countries could be avoided.

How can adaptation solutions have win wins? Addressing both floods, droughts and
heatwaves?

 Adaptation solutions are a win-win when they touch the more vulnerable.

How do we involve urban citizens in urban resilience building?

 Typically, financial resources for urban resilience come from central governments. So, to
comply with national regulations, the allocation of funding for a project in developing
countries may take from one year and a half to four years and if the political will is
maintained. It would be more efficient to allocated public funding directly in citizens-
managed organizations that may implement urban resilience projects faster.
 Citizens need to apply planning criteria in their daily life to build resilience. Training urban
communities in planning is very important to internalize risk prevention and resilience
capacities. At the end, poor urban communities in developing countries depend mostly on
themselves, so the capacities should be with them.