The lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people will be affected by what is done (or not done) in urban centres in regard to climate change over the next 5―10 years. Urban centres are key players both in the generation of greenhouse gases and in strategies to reduce this generation, especially in reducing dependence on carbon-based fuels.¹ They also concentrate a large proportion of those most at risk from the effects of climate change ― and the enterprises that generate most of the world’s GDP. While the need for city and municipal governments and civil-society groups to act...

Urban areas in low- and middle-income nations have more than a third of the world’s total population, nearly three-quarters of its urban population and most of its large cities. They contain most of the economic activities in these nations and most of the new jobs created over the last few decades. They are also likely to house most of the world’s growth in population in the next 10―20 years.¹² In regard to climate change, they already house a large proportion of the population and the economic activities most at risk from extreme weather events and sea-level rise ― and this...

The Fourth Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of 2007 noted the following, all with high confidence:

“The most vulnerable industries, settlements and societies are generally those in coastal and river flood plains, those whose economies are closely linked with climate-sensitive resources, and those in areas prone to extreme weather events, especially where rapid urbanization is occurring

“Poor communities can be especially vulnerable, in particular those concentrated in high-risk areas. They tend to have more limited adaptive capacities, and are more dependent on climate-sensitive resources such as local water and food supplies.

“Where extreme weather events become...

For most environmental hazards, local governments can act to remove or lessen them. For climate-change, they cannot.¹⁹³

In the literature on climate change, adaptive capacity is the potential of a system or population to modify its features or behaviour to cope better with existing and anticipated stresses.¹⁹⁴ So adaptation is about enhancing resilience or reducing people’s vulnerabilities to observed or expected changes in climate.¹⁹⁵ Development should increase adaptive capacity and reduce the vulnerability of low-income groups. Adaptive capacity will influence adaptation (the actual adjustments made) although high adaptive capacity does not necessary translate into measures that reduce vulnerability.

In terms...

At the risk of over-repetition, it should be clear that the largest constraint on getting the needed scale of response is the incapacity and/or unwillingness of city and municipal governments to act appropriately. If city and municipal governments cannot or will not act to reduce the vulnerability of their low-income population to everyday environmental hazards and to disasters not related to climate change, and address backlogs in infrastructure and service provision, they are not likely to act on adaptation to climate change. It is also difficult to conceive of how they could do so, if much of the population within...

It is not surprising that most city governments and most ministries and agencies at higher levels of government in low- and middle-income countries have not given much attention to climate-change adaptation within their urban policies and investments. Where governments are representative and accountable to poorer groups, they generally have more pressing issues, including large backlogs in provision for infrastructure and services and much of their population living in poor-quality housing. They are also under pressure to improve education, health care and security ― and are looking for ways of expanding employment and attracting new investment.

Unless adaptation to climate change...