The Poverty-Environment Initiative (PEI) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
Published: May 30, 2011
Climate change adaptation is an area of growing concern and engagement for many developing countries. The myriad and uncertain effects of a changing climate pose significant risks for development and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. Numerous initiatives and financing mechanisms aimed at assisting countries with climate change adaptation have been rolled out and are being implemented. Efforts also concentrate on developing specific adaptation measures, with a focus on the ones that correspond to countries’ most urgent and immediate needs.
Increasingly, countries are coming to realize that, in the long term, climate change adaptation needs to be supported by an integrated, cross-cutting policy approach. The purpose of this guide is to provide practical, step-by-step guidance on how governments and other national actors can mainstream climate change adaptation into national development planning as part of broader mainstreaming efforts. The guide draws on substantial experience and lessons learned by the UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Initiative in working with governments to integrate environmental management for pro-poor economic growth and development into national development planning and decision-making.
A new report from the London School of Economics looks at the “cycling economy” that is taking the United Kingdom by storm and the economic benefits generated by individual cyclists. The 24-page report investigates the factors that have all played a part in driving the growth of the cycling industry, which includes the 200 percent expansion of the National Cycle Network to more than 12,000 miles and the addition of dedicated cycling lanes in urban and city areas. The study also credits environmental concerns (83 percent of people in the U.K. believe that environmental issues are a priority) and health considerations (80 percent of men and 70 percent of women in the U.K. are forecasted to be overweight or obese) as factors that were drivers in the growth of the cycling industry.
The study cites five socio-economic benefits that cycling can bring to the U.K.:
£2.9b (US$4.7b) total contribution to U.K. economy
28 per cent increase in volume of cycle sales in 2010, generating £1.62b (US$2.6b)
£853m (US$1b) further contribution to the U.K. economy through the purchase of cycling accessories and bicycle maintenance, resulting in total retail sector sales of £2.47b (US$4b)
Over £500m (US$800m) generated in wages and £100m (US$160m) in taxes from 23,000 employed directly in bicycle sales, distribution and the maintenance of cycling infrastructure
Health benefits save the economy £128m (US$2m) per year in absenteeism
The expansion of the cycling industry can also mean a savings of US$3 billion within a decade to the British economy in reduced absenteeism. According to an empirical study on cycling and absenteeism, regular cyclists took 7.4 sick days per year in comparison to the 8.7 sick days taken per year by non-cyclists, concluding that people who cycle more often and longer distances are absent on fewer days.
In addition, if the existing cycling levels increase by a rate of 20 percent by 2015, the British economy can see a US $300 million savings in terms of reduced traffic congestion and a US$116 million savings in terms of lower pollution levels. And finally, the report cites that the latent demand for cycling holds a US$840 million untapped economic potential.
As profitable as an expanding cycling culture may seem, the good news comes with a bit of caution and hesitation. The study reports that safety, road confidence, self-belief and time availability are all barriers to an emerging cycling culture. And although 80 percent of children own bikes, the study reports a doubling of the proportion of children being driven to school over the past 20 years. If these economic benefits are to come true, a financial commitment from the U.K. government is an essential component, but sadly the report claims the proportion of GDP spent on public cycling infrastructure by the government has been lower than many other countries.
In Public Space We Trust Public Design Festival, 2009
I wrote The Enabling City, a toolkit on social innovation for urban sustainability and participatory governance, in the early days of green consumerism's ascendance to popularity. It was an interesting, if deeply troubling, time. Limited-edition designer tote bags were waging war on plastic bags, the Internet was obsessing over green gossip websites, and everywhere I looked a growing number of eco-gadgets were promising freedom from guilt with a kind of fervent urgency that can only be described as hopefully naive. I followed the spread of "participation through consumption" with growing concern.
As I write in The Enabling City,
“all around me, I saw consumerism being confused with activism, carbon offsets with environmentalism, and growth with innovation. Nowhere in the mainstream did I see the principles of self-organization, mutual support, and interaction — the elements that kindled my commitment to sustainability — recognized as valid pathways to participation. Instead, concerned citizens like me were being encouraged to buy (RED), shop green, and donate to far-away causes from the comfort of their home.”
Ever the stubborn student, I refused to believe that the only outlet for citizens to make a difference was through consumerism, so I started collecting evidence that spoke to the potential of collaboration to move cities and communities toward a more sustainable future. In so doing, I uncovered a rich world of underground hope where creative citizens tackle increasingly interconnected social issues in thoroughly encouraging ways.
At a time of widespread economic crisis and growing concerns over the increasingly devastating effects of climate change, the impact of neo-liberal policies on the social sphere and the consequences of unmitigated growth have become the objects of serious public scrutiny. Through my research I came to understand the importance of city- and neighborhood-level narratives in forming a more nuanced understanding of sustainability and developed an appreciation for the role culture and creativity can play in the process.
The Enabling City details my vision for urban sustainability and participatory governance from a "place-based creative problem-solving" point of view, an approach that leverages the imagination and inventiveness of citizens, experts and activists in collaborative efforts that make cities more inclusive, innovative and interactive.
Embedded in the idea of enablement is a participatory process that changes the way we think about the commons. If until recently we tended to see cities as dirty and aggressive places, today they are hotbeds for community innovation, the starting point for shifting the emphasis away from profit and private property to an enhanced idea of well-being. This is a kind of well-being that goes beyond GDP outputs and material stability to take into account holistic indicators like the health of the planet and the quality of our daily lives – with a particular emphasis on the conditions that enable citizens and communities to thrive and be empowered.
Tim Devin has been putting up broadsides, or small posters, in the Boston area since last March.
In my Thesis Chronicles series on CoLab Radio, I explore practical applications of "place-based creative problem-solving" through a series of posts that introduce creative citizen initiatives across six categories:place-making; eating and growing; resource sharing; learning and socializing; steering and organizing; andfinancing. The articles feature examples that can be found in the Enabling City toolkit, as well as initiatives that were launched following its publication. The aim of the series is to raise the profile of these inventive solutions and present them as alternatives to traditionally static forms of civic engagement. More importantly, I hope they serve as inspiration for individuals and communities to unlock their creative potential and embrace the contagious effects of collaboration.
Nine months into the release The Enabling City, my confidence in the power of the everyday has only increased, and I feel just as strongly about the capacity of communities to act as catalysts for positive change. As I write in one of my posts, “what happens in resilience circles, lending networks, co-working spaces, social enterprises, business alliances and public spaces can have surprisingly far-reaching social outcomes.” I find it reassuring to know there are countless "ordinary" people out there working hard to prove to us just how much these local efforts matter.
Chiara Camponeschi works at the intersection of interdisciplinary research, social innovation and urban sustainability. Her latest project, The Enabling City, is based on graduate research conducted at York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies in Toronto, Canada. To learn more about the project, visit the website or follow The Enabling City on Twitter.
Resilient Cities: Responding to Peak Oil and Climate Change by Peter Newman co-authored with Timothy Beatley and Heather Boyer. By ‘resilient’ they authors mean cities that can last, make it through crises, possessing inner strength and resolve, as well as appropriate built form and physical infrastructure.
The book calls for cities to plan for resiliency in response to depleting carbon-based fuels and climate change. Of course, there are those that don’t believe we have reached peak oil or that climate change is a real threat. However, for those of us on who are on-board, the authors provide seven elements vital for any city to become resilient:
Renewable Energy City: Urban areas will be powered by renewable energy technologies from the region to the building level.
Carbon Neutral City: Every home, neighborhood, and business will be carbon neutral.
Distributed City: Cities will shift from large centralized power, water, and waste systems to small-scale and neighborhood-based systems.
Photosynthetic City: The potential to harness renewable energy and provide food and fiber locally will become part of urban green infrastructure.
Eco-Efficient City: Cities and regions will move from linear to circular or closed-loop systems, where substantial amounts of their energy and material needs are provided from waste streams.
Place-Based City: Cities and regions will understand renewable energy more generally as a way to build the local economy and nurture a unique and special sense of place.
Sustainable Transport City: Cities, neighborhoods, and regions will be designed to use energy sparing by offering walkable, transit-oriented options for all supplemented by electric vehicles.
Bryna Jones is the Director of Communications at Hardy Stevenson and Associates Limited, and a member of the International Association of Business Communicators. Bryna’s project experience includes communications and marketing planning, advocacy campaign development, social media strategy, government relations, and project management. She also has considerable experience in copy writing and public speaking.
Especially as new advocates for social change, we expect that it's only a matter of people learning the truth about an issue before they change their habits and choices. And then we learn that's not necessarily so. Case in point: The more global climate change is in the news, the fewer people who seem to actually care that it's an important issue or believe that it's human-caused. Social psychologists have been studying the choices, habits and motivations of people for decades, and they're discovering that it's neither straightforward nor simple.
There have been quite a few books published recently about the psychology of change, motivation, and choices. One that all humane educators and advocates for social change should read is Change of Heart: What Psychology Can teach Us About Spreading Social Change by Nick Cooney.
If you've read books by Dan Ariely or Daniel Pink or the Heath brothers, you'll recognize most of the studies and examples included in Cooney's book. But Cooney doesn't just hash out relevant research; he offers specific examples of what activists might want to do differently and the approaches that might be most effective for spreading social change.
I was going to write a review of Cooney's book, but then I discovered how many wonderful bloggers have already written about him; so I'm going to share a couple those instead.
Deltas are places where water meets water. Places where land and sea meet in delicate equilibria. Places where, due to bountiful surroundings, people have gathered since earliest times. Places, where the richness of the sea merges with the fresh water of rivers. Deltas inspire our imagination.
Deltas have acquired many functions over the centuries; shipping, agriculture, fishing, housing, industries, recreation and protection from the elements are just some of them. Deltas house them all, in close quarters, often pressured by our pursuit of economic development. Today, deltas face even greater pressures due to the effect of climate change.
It was for these reasons that we organized the first international conference Deltas in Times of Climate Change, held in the city of Rotterdam at the end of September 2010. The conference drew over 1200 participants; scientists, policy makers, the business community and practitioners from 12 deltas and over 60 countries. Participants discussed diverse subjects of importance to deltas; they helped build networks between and within those concerned about the future of deltas.
To take this effort further we have created this magazine and webpages. By covering the broad spectrum of delta issues and examples on human interaction with nature we hope to inspire those who are actively involved in enabling a sustainable life in the worlds deltas. The magazine contributes to extending delta networks: ours and, hopefully, yours. We hope it helps you to get in touch with those who might have the solution to challenges facing your delta.
The creative climate in a meeting depends in large part on the actions of the leader. This person can make or break creative thinking. These suggestions to the chair can make a great deal of difference to the success of the meeting. 1. Do not compete with other people to generate ideas. Support and build on the ideas of others.
REASON: Leaders tend to favor their own ideas. This discourages other people from contributing.
2. Respond non-evaluatively to new ideas. Create an atmosphere in which people consider all ideas.
REASON: Responding in a non-evaluative way encourages everyone to participate.
3. Do not permit anyone to be put on the defensive. Find value in all points of view. Start with what you like about what you heard.
REASON: This approach encourages everyone to contribute and help new ideas.
4. Get people to talk about the positives of an idea before the negatives. Do not kill an idea; just put it aside.
REASON: This approach encourages everyone to contribute and help new ideas.
5. Keep your energy level high.
REASON: Your interest and alertness helps others.
6. Use every member of your work group. Talk to domineering people privately. Help quiet persons.
REASON: Everyone has unique perspectives, valuable ideas, and information that contribute to the quality of the outcomes.
7. Tape meetings and ask persons with poor behavior to listen to the tape.
REASON: This helps them to change their behavior.
8. Rotate the chair of the meeting.
REASON: Being a follower and leader leads to commitment and participation of others.
9. Do not damage egos or self-esteem.
REASON: This encourages everyone to share and leads to greater levels of participation.
10. Defer judgment during idea generation and avoid early commitment to an idea.
REASON: The leader has great power to sway members. This does not always result in choosing and developing the best idea.
Please let me know how these suggestions work for you. If you are not a leader, show these to him/her and let me know the result. •
About the Author | More by Edward Glassman
Edward Glassman, PhD was the President of the Creativity College®, a division of Leadership Consulting Services, Inc., and Professor Emeritus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he headed the Program For Team Effectiveness And Creativity. He was a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow at Stanford University and Visiting Fellow at the Center For Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC. His biography appears in “Who's Who In America” and “Who’s Who in the World.” He retired and now writes books.
Send Edward questions about your creativity at work through his Web site: www.r-and-d-creativity-innovation.com.
Cities were once constructed by the efforts of individuals, until the grand plans of master architects, and then city planning departments took over, making sense of the “chaos.” The city of the future will be both globally connected and highly local and customized — once again shaped primarily by the individuals living within it. This new power will include sustainable local economies and be thanks to the miracle of the Internet combined with fast, easy access it to through ubiquitous mobile devices and sensors throughout our environment. We are seeing the rise of people, empowered.
For a long time, America’s environmental community celebrated wilderness and the rural landscape while disdaining cities and towns. Thoreau’s Walden Pond and John Muir’s Yosemite Valley were seen as the ideal, while cities were seen as sources of dirt and pollution, something to get away from. If environmentalists were involved with cities at all, it was likely to be in efforts to oppose development, with the effect of making our built environment more spread out, and less urban.
We’ve come a long way since then, if still not far enough. We were and remain right to uphold nature, wildlife and the rural landscape as places critical to celebrate and preserve. But what we realize now, many of us anyway, is that cities and towns – the communities where for millennia people have aggregated in search of more efficient commerce and sharing of resources and social networks – are really the environmental solution, not the problem: the best way to save wilderness is through strong, compact, beautiful communities that are more, not less, urban and do not encroach on places of significant natural value. As my friend who works long and hard for a wildlife advocacy organization puts it, to save wildlife habitat we need people to stay in “people habitat.”
For our cities and towns to function as successful people habitat, they must be communities where people want to live, work and play. We must make them great, but always within a decidedly urban, nonsprawling form. As it turns out, compact living – in communities of streets, homes, shops, workplaces, schools and the like assembled at a walkable scale – not only helps to save the landscape; it also reduces pollution and consumption of resources. We don’t drive as far or as often; we share infrastructure. While recent authors such as Edward Glaeser and David Owen are sometimes excessive in extolling the virtues of urban density without giving attention to the other things that make cities attractive and successful, they are absolutely right that city living reduces energy consumption, carbon emissions and other environmental impacts.
A lot of my professional friends are committed urbanists as well as committed environmentalists. We understand the environmental advantages of urban living so thoroughly that we take it for granted that other people do, too. But we make that mistake at our – and the planet’s – peril. The increased development and maintenance of strong, sustainable cities and towns will not happen without a concerted effort.
A lot is riding on the outcome: 83 percent of America’s population – some 259 million people – live in cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas. Somewhat astoundingly (and as I have written previously), 37 of the world’s 100 largest economies are US metros. New York, for example, ranks 13th, with a $1.8 trillion economy equivalent to that of Switzerland and the Netherlands combined; Los Angeles (18th) has an economy that is bigger than Turkey’s; Chicago’s (21st) is larger than Switzerland’s, Poland’s or Belgium’s.
With so much population and economic activity, it can be no wonder that our working and living patterns in cities and suburbs have enormous environmental consequences, both for community residents and for the planet. And the implications are going to intensify: over the next 25 years, America’s population will increase by 70 million people and 50 million households, the equivalent of adding France or Germany to the US. With a combination of building new homes, workplaces, shops and schools and replacing those that will reach the end of their functional lives, fully half the built environment that we will have on the ground in 25 years does not now exist.
These circumstances provide not just a formidable challenge but also a tremendous opportunity to get things right. Unfortunately, past practices have done a lot of damage, particularly in the latter half of the 20th century, when America severely disinvested our inner cities and traditional towns while population, investment and tax base fled for (quite literally) greener pastures. The result, as we now know all too well, has been desecration of the natural and rural landscape while leaving behind decaying infrastructure, polluted air and waterways, and distressed populations.
Older cities and towns with shrinking revenues did what they could, but critical issues such as waste, public transportation, street and sidewalk maintenance, parks, libraries, and neighborhood schools – issues where attention and investment could have made a difference – were back-burnered or neglected altogether. Meanwhile, sprawl caused driving rates to grow three times faster than population, sending carbon and other emissions through the roof while requiring still more costly new infrastructure that was built while we neglected the old.
We cannot allow the future to mimic the recent past. We need our inner cities and traditional communities to absorb as much of our anticipated growth as possible, to keep the impacts per increment of growth as low as possible. And, to do that, we need cities to be brought back to life, with great neighborhoods and complete streets, with walkability and well-functioning public transit, with clean parks and rivers, with air that is safe to breathe and water that is safe to drink.
This, I believe, leads to some imperatives: where cities have been disinvested, we must rebuild them; where populations have been neglected, we must provide them with opportunity; where suburbs have been allowed to sprawl nonsensically, we must retrofit them and make them better. These are not just economic and social matters: these are environmental issues, every bit as deserving of the environmental community’s attention as the preservation of nature.
This is the first in a series of posts that will introduce NRDC’s agenda for sustainable communities. Move your cursor over the images for credit information.
Kaid Benfield writes (almost) daily about community, development, and the environment. For more posts, see his blog's home page.
This section is focused on systems used by cities and communities to plan, implement and monitor sustainability programs. Please share information and resources on this vitally important subject.
Urban Environmental Accords
The Urban Environmental Accords were developed and signed by over 60 international mayors during the United Nations Environment Programme World Environment Day, on June 5th,2005 in San Francisco, California. The Accords have served as a model for other frameworks, outlining the 7 key areas: http://www.sfenvironment.org/downloads/library/accords.pdf
Energy Renewable Energy-Energy Efficiency-Climate Change
Water Reduction Zero Waste-Manufacturer Responsibility-Consumer Responsibility
Urban Design Green Building-Urban Planning-Slums
Urban Nature Parks-Habitat Restoration-Wildlife
Transportation Public Transportation-Clean Vehicles-Reducing Congestion
Environmental Health Toxic Reduction-Healthy Food Systems-Clean Air
Water Water Access & efficiency-Source Water Conservation- Waste Water Reduction
EcoCity Builders and the International Ecocity Conference is establishing the International Ecocity Framework and Standards, working with a diverse group including representatives, employees and associates of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Manchester, British Columbia Institute of Technology, University of British Columbia, University of California at Berkeley, University of Montreal, Simon Fraser University, Tribhuvan University, The Ecological Society of China, World Wildlife Foundation US, Ecocity Builders, Urban Ecology Montreal, The One Earth Initiative, HealthBridge, Consensus Institute, Urban Resource Systems, Novatek, The Helen and William Mazer Foundation, Ecopolis Architects, and Wayne State University.
