TWO INITIATIVES TO ACHIEVE SUSTAINABLE CITIES
Writes: Ximena Gómez, LEDS LAC
- In the last couple of decades, Latin America's urban areas have become home to 86% of the population of its territories, a growth rate that has brought social, political and environmental challenges, leading the region to bear the title of "the most urbanized after the USA".
- The Urban LEDS project has a global cCR (carbon climate registry) platform powered by ICLEI that registers different climate initiatives for communities, from pledges to GHG inventories, at community and government level.
- The IDB's ICES initiative seeks to promote the implementation of integral and sustainable solutions to urban problems without harming their development.
The webinar "Promoting resilient and low-emission urban development: The experience in Latin America and the Caribbean", held on May 17, 2016, presented the Urban LEDS project promoted by ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability and the methodology of the Emerging and Sustainable Cities Initiative (ICES) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).. The webinar was attended by Igor Reis de Albuquerque (ICLEI Brazil) and Daniela Carrera Marquis (IDB).
What methodology do these initiatives propose?
The Urban LEDS project uses the Green Climate Cities methodology, which consists of 9 steps grouped into 3 categories: (1) analyze, (2) act, and (3) accelerate. The "Analyze" steps range from assessing the current state of cities to identifying their priority needs. In the "Act" category, the action plan is developed to address the identified priorities, the preparation of a pilot and the final implementation of the planned actions. Finally, in the "Accelerate" category are the steps that seek to reinforce the actions of the previous step through the Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) methodology, and interaction with peers to share lessons learned, city forums, national-subnational integration, among others, depending on the particular needs.
The Urban LEDS project also relies on the cCR (carbon climate registry) platform, launched in 2010, which registers different climate initiatives at community and government level.
The IDB's Emerging and Sustainable Cities Initiative (ESCI) provides direct support to central and local governments in the countries. It is framed within the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically Goal 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. The methodology proposed by the IDB has 3 fundamental dimensions: (1) environment and climate change, (2) fiscal and good governance, (3) urbanism (land and territorial planning). For the first dimension, a competitiveness index with a series of environmental criteria is used. The second dimension considers the comprehensive framework for addressing climate change, including aspects of social inclusion, fiscal, social, and democratic processes. Finally, the urban planning dimension considers 2 stages: (1) core(1) The preparation of the action plan: includes preparation, diagnosis, prioritization of strategies and preparation of the action plan, so this stage requires considerable analysis and is expected to last one year; (2) executionpre-investment, monitoring and investment of the projects identified in the first stage, and may last 3 to 4 years or more.
What results have been obtained so far?
As of February 2015, the cCR platform already had reports from 37 cities, 28 pledge registrations, 379 actions, 33 community-scale GHG inventories and 31 government-scale GHG inventories. In addition, the Earth Hour challenge recognized 2 "urban-LEDS" cities from the platform as finalists.
The ICES methodology has had a favorable impact on the urban footprint of LAC and has enabled the development of action plans for 36 cities. In addition, 31 cities have been assessed and are seeking to integrate vulnerability and urban sprawl into the planning process. An estimated US$630 million in investment has been mobilized for 34 participating cities.
For the case of the city of La Paz in Baja California Sur, Mexico, a study was done through the IDB's ICES, evaluating how sea level would rise based on rainfall levels and potential flooding. The results gave between 50cm and 1m of sea level rise, which indeed happened some time later with Hurricane Odile in 2014.
In addition, the "integrated area" approach of the ICES has been able to plan actions based on the main problems of each city, for example: flooding and solid waste management in Quetzaltenango, sanitation of the bay in Campeche (for which the 12 districts involved agreed to create an autonomous institute in charge of the issue), high population variability in Mar de Plata, pollution of the main river in Tegucigalpa, among others. With the results of the different cities in the ICES, the main infrastructure investment costs are related to mobility (33%) and water and sanitation (27%), followed by adaptation to climate change (14%).
Some lessons learned from the process towards urban sustainability
- Articulation of actors. The articulation of efforts between climate-smart cities is a long and very complex process, which requires multi-sectoral participation and great commitment and openness on the part of the local government. Transparency and good quality data are necessary for the information to really mesh, as well as the participation of the private sector, even though it is usually a sector that is not very involved. It is important to learn the lessons learned in order to improve the process.
- The participation of experts from different specialties helps to develop indicators that enrich the analysis. In the case of ICES, an average of 100 indicators are used for each city.
- Financing challenge. One of the enormous challenges is how to access financing for resilient and environmentally friendly infrastructure, as there is insufficient access to traditional sources of financing such as local taxes, government transfers and processing fees, so it is important to consider non-conventional sources such as the private sector.
- Strategic partners for dissemination. For the dissemination of ICES, alliances have been made with strategic partners in each territory, as well as with technical and international cooperation partners, who are also investing in the methodology.
What are the next steps?
The third stage of the ICES methodology is being developed with a high level of citizen participation and will be launched at the end of 2016, including the competitiveness module, which will require additional baseline studies, such as urban mobility and solid waste management.
Links
Video about the cCR platform: https://goo.gl/m1Jn9T
Interactive ICES indicators: http://www.urbandashboard.org/
Full video of the webinar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ6PyK4l4M8