Fostering Local Leadership for Urban Climate Resilience in Asian Cities

Despite global efforts, Asian cities remain highly vulnerable to climate change and extreme weather events as well as to economic shocks. Local leaders often times prioritize short-term structural engineering solutions over a longer-term inclusive planning process that generates climate resilient land-use regulations. Lack of political motivation is a key factor, primarily due to short-term electoral mandates, which pressure leaders to demonstrate tangible outcomes in the short run. The local political economy also tends to significantly influence spatial development decisions. Successful implementation of the New Urban Agenda, to a significant degree, depends on finding ways to foster and support local leadership .

Hat Yai Municipality came together with UNDP, SEI, and USAID in a joint effort to promote and facilitate local leadership for climate resilience. Hat Yai actively contributed to designing a five-year innovative UNDP program Regional Urban Climate Resilience Initiative (RUCRI) for Asian cities. Fostering local leadership as well as informed, inclusive and participatory climate resilience planning stand as central elements of RUCRI, which will be presented at the WUF9 along with a call for partnerships.

The event will be conducted in an interactive manner and will aim to:

• Underline the critical importance of developing local leaders of climate resilient future, who creatively address challenges brought on cities by rapid urbanization coupled with climate change;

• Widen the existing Community of Practice and call for partnerships, providing an interaction platform for local decision-makers, civil society, potential donors and development institution;

• Jointly identify actions each stakeholder can undertake to support local leadership amd elaborate a joint action plan.

• Launch an Urban Human-Health and Well-being initiative, while boosting urban resilience through research on good urban governance and integrating scenario planning tools for air quality, energy and water resource use for sustainable cities.