Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN)
The reason is simple:
More people live in cities than ever before, and within a decade, more than 500 cities will have populations exceeding one million, and seven cities in developing countries will have more than 20 million inhabitants.The funding in Asian urban areas is currently focused in four countries: Thailand, Vietnam, India, and Indonesia.
The Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network aims to catalyze attention, funding, and action on building climate change resilience for poor and vulnerable people by creating robust models and methodologies for assessing and addressing risk through active engagement and analysis of various cities.
…communities around the world need better weapons - new tools, techniques, and strategies - if they hope to tame the three-headed hydra of climate risk, poverty, and precipitous urbanization....Since it may be too late to stop the global warming that’s already occurred, we also must figure out how to survive it....there is far less attention paid to adaptation, what needs to be done to help people and environments cope with what’s already occurred and with what’s coming. -Judith Rodin, President, The Rockefeller Foundation
Objective
Through the actions of the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network, it is anticipated that by 2012, a network of cities in Asia will have developed robust plans to prepare for, withstand and recover from the predicted impacts of climate change.
To accomplish this, ACCCRN must meet the following objectives:
- Test and demonstrate a range of actions to build climate change resilience in cities
- Build a replicable base of lessons learned, successes and failures
- Assist cities in the development and implementation of a climate change resilience building process
- Help cities continue activities that build climate change resilience
Anticipated Outcomes
The Rockefeller Foundation’s initiative will develop a network of Asian city partners who will experiment with a range of activities that will collectively improve the ability of the cities to withstand, prepare for, and recover from the projected impacts of climate change. It is expected that interventions will span health, infrastructure, water, disaster, urban planning/development issues, and will include leveraging policy incentives and investment funds to improve infrastructure, services, disaster management and preparedness strategies.
The approaches taken will be determined by local needs and priorities, but will be replicable in different urban contexts and will bring particular focus to improving the resilience of poor and vulnerable populations to climate change impacts. Activities will involve the development of secondary partnerships and activities with a spectrum of actors, including local, state, and national governments, the private sector, community based organizations, and universities and research institutions. Anticipated results of the ACCCRN program include:
- Capacity building Selected cities in South and South East Asia have adequate capacity to plan, finance, coordinate, and implement climate change resilience strategies.
- Network for learning and engagement A broad range of representatives of cities, civil society, donors, private sector, technical partners engage with ACCCRN to mutually identify and solve key climate change resilience problems.
- Expansion, deepening of experience, scaling up New and more diverse partners provide resources and funding for replication in current and new cities to support the implementation of resilience plans and strategies.
Program
Phase 1 (April 2008 to September 2009): City Scoping and Selection
A broad review of a number of Asian cities in India, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam to identify a select number of partner cities in which ACCCRN will pursue deeper engagement. Key activities in this phase will involve:
- Understanding vulnerability to climate change in those cities
- Investigating the readiness of those cities to engage with the project on resilience
In India and Viet Nam, the city selection process has been completed:
Selected cities in India:
- Surat (Gujarat)
- Indore (Madhya Pradesh)
- Gorakphur (Uttar Pradesh)
Selected cities in Viet Nam:
- Da Nang
- Quy Nhon
- Can Tho
Selected Cities in Thailand:
- Chiang Rai
- Hat Yai
Selected Cities in Indonesia:
- Bandar Lampung
- Semerang
The scoping exercise in Thailand and Indonesia is currently underway, and we hope to have identified cities and partners there by the second half of 2009.
Phase 2 (January 2009 - mid 2010): City-level engagement and capacity development
Phase 3 (2010 - 2012): Implementation of effective urban resilience building projects
ACCCRN cities will work with local and international partners to implement replicable interventions identified in the climate change resilience action plan. In part these will be funded by the Rockefeller Foundation in the cities belonging to the ACCCRN network.
Phase 4 (Mid 2008 onwards): Replication
The ACCCRN program will scale up through networking between cities, countries and sectors to broaden stakeholder base, as well as leveraging a much larger volume of financing for credible and evidence-based resilience building initiatives.
