Publication: Pro-Poor Adaptation to Climate Change in Urban Centers : Case Studies of Vulnerability and Resilience in Kenya and Nicaragua
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2010-06-01
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2012-03-19
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The objective of this economic sector work (ESW) is to address these gaps by piloting a methodology capable of quickly and cost-effectively introducing into adaptation planning processes an appreciation of the significance of climate change impacts for poor people in informal urban settlements. Specifically in the two case study sites (Mombasa in Kenya and Esteli in Nicaragua) sought to: a) make visible climate change impacts of various kinds on poor people; b) illustrate what poor households, small businesses and groups in communities are doing to cope with such climate change impacts (experienced as increasingly variable and capricious weather patterns); and c) identify how policy and institutional systems can best build on local realities to develop pro-poor urban climate change adaptation actions, particularly relating to resilience. The report introduces an asset-based framework to analyze the vulnerability of urban poor people to severe weather events whose frequency or intensity climate change may be increasing, and is very likely to increase in the future as well as their asset-based adaptation strategies as a source of long-term resilience, to cope with the onset of severe weather and to rebuild after such events. The importance of this study relates to the fact that urban centers of low and middle-income countries concentrate a large proportion of those most at risk from the effects of severe weather associated with climate change as lives, assets, environmental quality and future prosperity are threatened by 'the increasing risk of storms, flooding, landslides, heat waves and drought and by overloading water, drainage and energy supply systems'. The report describes an analytical framework and action research methodology developed so as to enable local authorities and other relevant institutions to incorporate socio-economic vulnerability and local level asset-based adaptation into climate change adaptation actions and strategies.
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“Moser, Caroline; Norton, Andrew; Stein, Alfredo; Georgieva, Sophia. 2010. Pro-Poor Adaptation to Climate Change in Urban Centers : Case Studies of Vulnerability and Resilience in Kenya and Nicaragua. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/3001 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
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