Risks and resilience in southeast Asian cities: Use of EbA as the approach for adaptation and development

Name: Risks and resilience in southeast Asian cities: Use of EbA as the approach for adaptation and development
Start: 2021-11-06
End: 2021-11-06

6 November 2021

Overview

While Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) has gained significant momentum in broader adaptation and development strategies, EbA is still a relatively new approach, often used in the rural context, application of EbA in urban adaptation plans and strategies is still at infancy level. This event will share the lessons learned so far from UNEP’s City Adapt Asia project.

Background

Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) – is an approach for building resilience and reducing risk for local communities and ecosystems. EbA should be integrated into broader adaptation and development strategies to maintain and increase resilience and reduce the vulnerability of ecosystems and people to adverse effects of climate change. With more than 2.3 billion people in the Asia-Pacific region living in cities and in the face of increasing climate change pressures, the need to build climate resilience in urban areas is paramount.

This session will discuss how communities, national and local governments, and partners, can deliver adaptation results by planning, designing, and implementing EbA for enhanced city resilience. It will focus on the work done through the building climate resilience of urban systems through EbA in the Asia-Pacific Region (City Adapt Asia) project. The regional urban EbA project, funded by the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), aims to reduce the vulnerability of poor urban communities in Asia-Pacific to climate change impacts using EbA in cities of four target countries: Thimphu (Bhutan), Kep (Cambodia), Phongsaly and Oudomxay (Lao PDR) and Mandalay (Myanmar). This project is a sister project of the CityAdapt urban EbA project in Latin America.

Key Announcements and/or Outcomes

Enhanced understanding of EbA as a risk to the resilience approach
Challenges and opportunities of Urban EbA in Asia and Pacific region
Peer to peer learning and knowledge transfer on Urban EbA

Session Agenda and Format

The session will be moderated by UNEP’s Regional Coordinator of Climate Change Programme and experiences of three partner countries of Asia and the Pacific – Bhutan, Cambodia and Lao PDR will be presented by relevant representatives for 15 minutes each. Following an introduction of the City Adapt Asia project by UNEP representative, experience sharing of Bhutan will focus on the use of the national adaptation planning process for city-level vulnerability assessment targeting the EbA approach. The Cambodian experience will emphasize prioritizing EbA interventions based on the toolkit developed by UNEP, UN-Habitat, and Partners and the Lao PDR case will focus on challenges and opportunities in using relevant methodologies and techniques for the development of vulnerability and risk assessments, the identification, prioritization, and assessment of EbA options. These will be followed by open discussions. The total duration is 1.5 hours.

Resources