Cities for Climate Resilience Conference 2010: Takeaways
May 30, 2010 I spent the weekend in Bonn at the ICLEI Cities for Sustainability Conference on Resilient Cities.* I want to share some highlights before I get to work on the serious journalist articles from the conference:
The most striking communication from the conference is that adaptation and mitigation, the all important structure for considering developing countries and climate change doesn’t actually have an “and” relationship. In fact, they are very separate structures and will have different financial sources as well. With regard to the NAMAs (nationally appropriate mitigation actions), the NAPAs (nationally adaptation programs of action) are the poorer cousin. The NAMAs have a business sourced financial mechanism in the CDMs, the NAPAs do not, in so far as there is no market instrument to it, though the adaptation fund currently sources its funding from a 2% CDM levy.
Cities, as institutions will arguably be exposed to the most intense processes of change when it comes to adapting and mitigating climate change. That’s why cities are beginning to structure their own adaptation and mitigation action plans, dubbed LAMAs and LAPAs by urbanists.