Renewing Local Planning to Face Climate Change in the Tropics (Green Energy and Technology)

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. This book aims to inspire decision makers and practitioners to change their approach to climate planning in the tropics through the application of modern technologies for characterizing local climate and tracking vulnerability and risk, and using decision-making tools. Drawing on 16 case studies conducted mainly in the Caribbean, Central America, Western and Eastern Africa, and South East Asia it is shown how successful integration of traditional and modern knowledge can enhance disaster risk reduction and adaptation to climate change in the tropics. The case studies encompass both rural and urban settings and cover different scales: rural communities, cities, and regions. In addition, the book looks to the future of planning by addressing topics of major importance, including residual risk integration in local development plans, damage insurance and the potential role of climate vulnerability reduction credits. In many regions of the tropics, climate planning is growing but has still very low quality. This book identifies the weaknesses and proposes effective solutions. Front Matter....Pages i-xvi Renewing Climate Planning Locally to Attend the 11th Sustainable Development Goal in the Tropics....Pages 1-18 Front Matter....Pages 19-19 Setting up and Managing Automatic Weather Stations for Remote Sites Monitoring: From Niger to Nepal....Pages 21-39 Hazard Events Characterization in Tillaberi Region, Niger: Present and Future Projections....Pages 41-56 Characterization of Climate Risks for Rice Crop in Casamance, Senegal....Pages 57-72 A Methodology for the Vulnerability Analysis of the Climate Change in the Oromia Region, Ethiopia....Pages 73-102 Tracking Climate Change Vulnerability at Municipal Level in Rural Haiti Using Open Data....Pages 103-131 Visualize and Communicate Extreme Weather Risk to Improve Urban Resilience in Malawi....Pages 133-150 Building Resilience to Drought in the Sahel by Early Risk Identification and Advices....Pages 151-167 Rethinking Water Resources Management Under a Climate Change Perspective: From National to Local Level. The Case of Thailand....Pages 169-195 Front Matter....Pages 197-197 Relevance and Quality of Climate Planning for Large and Medium-Sized Cities of the Tropics....Pages 199-226 Local and Scientific Knowledge Integration for Multi-risk Assessment in Rural Niger....Pages 227-245 A Simplified Hydrological Method for Flood Risk Assessment at Sub-basin Level in Niger....Pages 247-263 Knowledge for Transformational Adaptation Planning: Comparing the Potential of Forecasting and Backcasting Methods for Assessing People’s Vulnerability....Pages 265-283 An Effective Approach to Mainstreaming DRR and Resilience in La Paz, Mexico....Pages 285-310 Possible Impact of Pelletised Crop Residues Use as a Fuel for Cooking in Niger....Pages 311-322 Review of Pilot Projects on Index-Based Insurance in Africa: Insights and Lessons Learned....Pages 323-341 Addressing Climate Change Impacts in the Sahel Using Vulnerability Reduction Credits....Pages 343-363 Renewing Climate Planning Locally in the Tropics: Conclusions....Pages 365-372 This book presents the most recent results of a research started at the end of 2011 in Africa South of the Sahara and then extended to the whole tropics. The focus of our work is climate planning. With this term, we mean all those plans to limit climate change (mitigation and sustainable action plans), to protect human settlements against its impacts (emergency, risk reduction, adaptation plans, and resilience strategies) and to pursue both the medium-term (municipal development plans) and long-term (comprehensive, general, and master plans) aims.During these years, we have organized three UICCA—Urban Impact of Climate Change in Africa—conferences (Turin 2011, 2013, 2016) to share and discuss the first results of our work with other similar experiences, involving over one hundred researchers, various officials and local administrators, as well as numerous students.A selection of the reports presented at the 3rd UICCA conference is provided here. The book tackles a topic which is going to be critical in the years to come: How to implement the 11th Sustainable Development Goal—SDG (2015). We are referring to the target which states “By 2020, substantially increase the number of cities and human settlements adopting and implementing integrated policies and plans toward inclusion, resource efficiency, mitigation and adaptation to climate change, resilience to disasters, and develop and implement, in line with the Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction 2015–2030, holistic disaster risk management at all levels” (United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 11). The adverse impacts on human-induced climate change are a global problem with different impacts in different localities around the world. Hence, adapting to those adverse impacts of climate change is both a local and a global problem. At the global level, we have agreed to include tackling climate change as one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG13) and also agreed the Paris agreement on climate change. However, the success of meeting those global goals will depend on every village, town, and city finding its own adaptation solutions and putting them in place. Unfortunately, we are still lagging behind in being able to do this successfully although many efforts are being tried around the world. This publication tries to learn and share lessons from many of the local-level efforts around the world. These lessons will be very useful for practitioners in towns and cities around the world who are also struggling to find adaptation solutions in their own localities. -- from foreword

climate vulnerability; urban resilience; climate change; adaptation; planning; environmental risk analysis; decision making; disaster risk reduction; tropical climate management