The Future of Asia-Pacific Cities Report 2019

The Future of Urban Governance and Capacities for Resilient Cities

Dr. Shobhakar Dhakal, Asia Institute of TechnologyNicholas Taylor, Working for Cities

Expert Group Meeting on the Future of Urban Governance and Capacities for Resilience09:00 – 17:00, Friday 23rd November 2018

Meeting Room A, United Nations Conference Centre, Bangkok, Thailand

Keynote Presentation

Bear in mind…• Aim is to build on, but also look beyond well-trodden examples;

to look at systemic approaches and tools that will support urban resilience building;

• Core focus is on resilience to climate change, but we also look at considerations of social inequity, economic shocks, and service and infrastructure provision;

• Focus on ‘solutions’ and ‘looking to future’ that are appropriate to the region’s specific urban storyline;

• Predicting future is challenging, we need collective wisdom.

What are the headline statistics?

Roughly 50% of Asia Pacific now living in cities (17% in 1950) over 67% by 2050 This means 1.37 bn new additions in 2015-50 alone (UN-DESA, WUP 2018 revision).

Rapid population growth expected in small (<300,000), 1-5 mncity, and the mega-cities (>10 mn) (UN-DESA, WUP 2018 revision).

If left un-cheked, slum dwellers globally from 1 to 3 bn by 2030 (about 65% of them in Asia)

Cities in Asia are……

• Economic front• Source of prosperity and economic growth• Innovation, people’s aspiration

• Environment front• Embody concentrated infrastructure and exposed to high

environment pollution• Generate large quantity of GHGs• Key hotspots of climate change impacts than other regions of the

world, and more vulnerable

• Social front • Very significant informal sector and informal settlements• Concentrated poverty, inequality

Urban contributions to GDP, 20 largest economies, 2013

(IEA, 2016)

Cities are transforming

• Political context of governance has significantly changed, i.e. economic deregulation, privatisation of state assets and urban service provisions, democratization, government as only facilitator and regulator

• But governance capacity yet not much changed, and the policy tools, laws, framework, institution and other provisions face challenge even now to govern cities.. let alone the future

Social

Economic

Physical

Environmental

Rapid past transformation

More transformation to come in the future

Asia-Pacific grapple with new wave…..

• How to manage 1.37 bn new urban population in 2015-2050 reaching 3.5 bn by 2050 in Asia?

• How to cope up cities as sustained economic growth center?

• What is the influence of new technology, digital economy and how that affect being urban and not urban?

• The growing importance of understanding rural to urban continuum as a way of building adaptation and mitigation solutions; and more…

Chapter 1 snap-shot1. Definitions and base resilience concepts- Building resilience to what?- Why resilience building is a key public policy tool;- The main governance loci/levels and drivers, for resilience building.

2. Analysis of current trends- Asia Pacific context: shocks and stressors, urban patterns;- Current state of urban governance in Asia and the Pacific;- Pinpointing where capacities must be built in order to enhance urban resilience.

3. Envisioning the future of cities and urban governance trends- What will the challenges for cities in Asia and the pacific in the future?- How current governance trends might play out in the future.

4. Future pathways for building resilience - Best practices and models;- Frontier trends and technologies;- New approaches that we should focus on.

1. Definitions, resilience concepts, scene setting

‐ Meerow (2016) has reviewed 25 different definitions of Urban Resilience  we are not entering into definitional debate here

‐ ‘capacity of a city (individuals, communities, institutions, businesses and systems) to survive, adapt and thrive no matter what kinds of chronic stresses or acute shocks they experience’. (Rockefeller Foundation: 2013).

‐ ‘Urban resilience can be defined as the ability of an urban territory/community exposed to hazards such as Climate Change, disaster, economic and social poverty, to resist, absorb, accommodate to and recover from these’ (European Commission, 2014)

‐ Resilience refers to the ability of any urban system to maintain continuity through all shocks and stresses while positively adapting and transforming towards sustainability (UN‐Habitat)

a) Building resilience to what?

Key shocks…

Extreme weather (cyclones, extreme rain sandstorms, extreme heat, extreme cold)

Natural disasters: Earthquakes, Tsunamis, wildfires, volcanoes;

Economic crises

And stresses…

Disruption to food systems and driving of rural-urban migration by drought,

Rising sea levels, depletion of natural resources, rising sea temperatures and ecosystem change;

Poorly managed and rapid urbanisation, inadequate provision of infrastructure. Lack of resource management in cities;

War, famine, air pollution

Poverty, (in)equity technological change;

Core focus is on resilience to climate change, but we also look at considerations of social inequity, economic shocks, and service and infrastructure provision;

b) Why resilience building is a key public policy tool?• Weak public institutions and poor track record of public policy

implementation need for a systems based approach that builds capacity in various sectors;

• New threats/stresses due to globalization, climate change, technology traditional and usual public policy alone are not effective;

• Resilience building forces cities to think beyond immediate everyday challenges, as well as provides integrated visions and platforms for de-risking and moving forward.

c) The main governance drivers and locations for resilience building;

Governments in the region emphasize/practice urbanization and hard infrastructure provision as core economic development strategies;

Public policy is somewhat strained, the urban governance becoming more complex with intense vertical and horizontal governance agents; and the private sector is also emerging as drivers of urban governance, and therefore urban resilience;

Tie-ing urban resilience into the complex web of urban governance is critical.

2. Recent trends, and the current status of urban governance and capacities for resilience

a) Contextualizing Asia and the Pacific within worldwide issues:

- Huge infrastructure gap for basic needs (like water and sanitation) and economic growth (highways, airports, energy etc.)

- Urban growth model still focused around the use of the private car;

- Rapidly growing medium sized cities, increased suburbanization, technological change happening very fast in few sectors;

- Democratic deficit, rapidly growing middle class (previously in China, now SE Asia, South Asia) and rising populism.

Much to do yet with respect to: equity and social inclusion, environmental sustainability, and quality of life

City Prosperity Index (CPI) with three dimensions: The CPI is a multidimensional index developed by UN-Habitat (2013) and comprising six dimensions with sub-dimensions (and indicators) that are measured for each city.

Rosenzweig et al. 2018, Climate Change and Cities Second Assessment Report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network, Cambridge University Press 

b) Current state of urban resilience• Current trends of governance does not well capture resilience; hinder from lack of

integration and long term consideration;

• Enabling environments vary in terms of how favourable they are to urban resilience building; Federal democratic states such as India vs centralized states such as Thailand or China provide very different contexts, and position different actors at the forefront.

• Local governments typically in the role of service provision; central or regional governments more “entrepreneurial” and resourceful;

• Mandatory enforcing, provisioning, incentivizing, enabling functions of governance tie complexly to resilience;

• Urban resilience building for environmental, social and economic resilience is therefore relatively complex, and requires concerted partnership building.

c) Where do capacities need to be built?• Public policy frameworks are somewhat strained, even if there are some case

studies of multi-level governance approaches that involve all members;

• Role of communities in building resilience; recognition their ability to build their own solutions based on their own knowledge. Moving away from top-down development solutions;

• Climate change amplifies vulnerability and hampers adaptive capacity, especially for the poor, women, the elderly, children, and ethnic minorities;

• Bringing-in private sector into resilience thinking beyond short to medium term asset protection

3. Envisioning the Future of Urban Governance and Capacities for Resilience

a) What will future shocks and stresses be? RCP4.5 Scenario in 100 cities:• Mean annual temperatures to increase by 1.3–3.0°C

in 2050s, and 1.7–4.9°C in 2080s;• Mean annual precipitation by –9 to +15% in 2050s,

and –11 to +21% in the 2080s;• Sea level in 52 coastal cities to rise 15–60 cm by the

2050s, and 22–124 cm by the 2080s.

Elevated UHI, air pollution, exacerbated climate extremes, increase in frequency and intensity of heat waves, droughts, heavy downpours, and coastal flooding etc.

100 cities and 2050s temperature change projections for the mean of 35 global climate models (GCMs) and one representative concentration pathway (RCP4.5). Colors represent mean annual temperature changes for a mid‐range scenario (RCP4.5), from CMIP5 models (2040–2069 average minus 1971–2000 average).

Rosenzweig et al. 2018, Climate Change and Cities Second Assessment Report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network, Cambridge University Press. 

Cities contribution to GHG emissions and mitigation potentials• Paris Agreement and 1.5 C target• Over 70% of global energy related CO2 emissions from cities (Seto et al, 

2014)  Asian cities play a key part (IEA, 2008, 2016) 

Under the 2DS, global urban CO2 emissions can be reduced by around 75% in 2050 compared with the 6DS.

IEA (2016)

More shocks and stresses

•Poverty•Slums• Informality• Inequity•Economic vulnerabilities• Infra and service provisioning

b) What do these projections imply for urban governments and resilience building?

• Increased need to adapt to shocks and stresses. more flexible, more agile (workforce, individuals, policies);

• Greater use of technology, disruptive technologies, digitalization of urban economy, blurring meaning of urban/cities vs non-cities, providing the possibility for more efficient decision-making, more efficient services. This also develops greater dependency on man-made systems;

• They create a new complexity for governance … but also open new avenues to build resilience in addition to harnessing past best practices around resiliency;

• Require an approach that enables governance actors at multiple scale and level more strongly, in well-coordinated fashion and proactive in face with more severe shocks and stresses;

4. Possible pathways to building capacities for resilience;a) How to support governance capacities in this context? What can help us accelerate or

consolidate better resilience capacities for governments?

Learning better how to financing urban resilience innovatively despite obvious difficulties;

Technology is helping decision making to become more agile; but also seeing the privation of data management;

Better data is helping decision-making to become more precise and effective;

Community planning mechanisms are helping local communities to take part;

Local governments and national governments reliant on the private sector for more support.

Opportunities of climate finance for municipalities

Rosenzweig et al. 2018, Climate Change and Cities Second Assessment Report of the Urban Climate Change Research Network, Cambridge University Press 

b) New avenues for environmental and economic resilience to be supported by governance actors;- Use of greening in cities to save water, prevent storm surges and provide

better food security (various examples)

- Use of new local economic development approaches that focus on the building of transferable, and higher value-add skills and the diversification of local economies;

- Using partnership and de-siloing policy tools such as the City Resilience Officer model for building resilience across government departments;

- Leveraging of smart technologies to build resource efficiency, provide early warning systems

Finally: What we need from you!

• Critical thinking about what works, and what does not work

• Developing of integrated solutions that can focus on adaptation mitigation, equity and economic growth through the prism of resilience.

• Real-life knowledge of what does or does not work now, and how you think certain approaches can approach problems in the future

• Solutions of/at different scale and examples are very important.

Thank you !

Shobhakar.dhakal@gmail.com