Week 1: Exercise

1. How are cities in your nations being affected by the changing climate?

Hello, I'm Daisy from Vietnam, my hometown is Ho Chi Minh city but I'm working now in Soc Trang, a province in Mekong Delta. Vietnam is one of the top 5 countries predicted to be among the most affected by climate change (World Bank, 2009). As most of its population concentrated along the low land coastline, many cities in Vietnam have already been affected by sea level rise. Big cities like Ho Chi Minh city, Hanoi have experienced urban flooding, especially after heavy rains, with river floods, together with high tide and bad drainage systems, lack of storage space for water (because of high coverage of concrete sealing in the cities). In past decade, a significant rise in weather extremes such as tropical typhoons, storm surges has been observed. Further challenge related to climate change is the urban heat island effect, which is clearly noticeable in the densely built center of big cities. Another problem is salt water intrusion, which has already been observed in cities in Mekong Delta.

2. How are your cities addressing climate change challenges?

Viet Nam has committed substantial government mobilized funds to tackling climate change, with the first major national policy framework committed over $50 million coming from domestic resources, in particular to respond to the impacts of climate change, initiated by the Ministry Natural Resources and Environment in 2008. In 2012, the country launched its “National Climate Change Strategy” (NCCS), which covers a range of vulnerability and low-carbon issues.

Links:

• Vietnam Assessment Report on Climate Change (UNEP, 2009)
• Addressing climate change in Vietnam (UNDP, 2011)
• Vietnam Climate Change Country Profile (World Bank, 2011)

Week 1: Climate Resilience in Your Cities

In this first introductory week it would be very interesting for us as a community to get a snapshot of the state of climate resilience in cities across our diverse nations.

The aim of this Learning Alliance is to share practices and approaches that might be utilised by others to address climate change challenges in cities. You may be able to provide inspiration or even solutions for peers facing similar challenges that your city has already overcome; others may provide the same for you; or we may come together to work on new solutions. In order to do that, a good place to start may be with a short introduction to how cities are being affected by the changing climate, and the level of response in cities across your nation.

We have created a short video about the importance of addressing climate related challenges at the city level, and what efforts are being made in Latin America to overcome these. We would like to invite you to watch this video and answer the following questions:

1. How are cities in your nations being affected by the changing climate?

2. How are your cities addressing climate change challenges?

We welcome you to upload files that may be of interest to other participants along with your contributions. For those of you looking for more information on Latin American solutions, or a general overview of the challenges posed by climate change in cities, please take a look at the supplementary readings in the Resource Library.

Introductory Phase Materials
	VIDEO: Welcome to the Learning Alliance on Climate Resilient Cities
	Welcome Video Transcript
	Introductory Slideshow: How the Learning Alliance will Work
	Learning Alliance Module Outline
	Guidelines for Participation
	Frequently Asked Questions
	Key Terms
Supplementary Reading:
	The United Nations Human Settlement Program: Cities and Climate Change - Global Report on Human Settlements 2011
	The Economist Intelligence Unit: Latin American Green City Index
	Building 'Equitable' Urban Resilience: The Challenge for Cities

Related materials:

 Interview: Introduction to Climate Change Considerations in Cities In Latin America

 Week1: InterviewTranscript

Introduction to Climate Change Issues in Cities Across Latin America – Interview Transcript 

Welcome to the ELLA Learning Alliance on Climate Resilient Cities

ELLA: Climate Resilient Cities - How the Learning Alliance will Work from ELLA Programme

Welcome to our Learning Alliance on Climate Resilient Cities. Thank you so much for joining us.

We hope that in the coming months we, as a community, will learn a lot from each other about good practices in terms of climate adaptation, disaster risk management, vulnerability reduction and climate change mitigation options in urban areas. We hope that you will use this opportunity to learn, share and set up new cross-regional collaborative partnerships.

Although we will follow a curriculum, this is not a prescriptive course, but more of a coordinated forum. We will begin each week by starting a discussion on a particular theme and sharing some Latin American case studies with you, we will invite you to share experiences and lessons from your own regions and enter into analysis and debate about key issues and approaches. We hope that each and every one of you will take something out of this Learning Alliance and will use ELLA knowledge to add value to projects, practices and policies that you are working on now, or may work on in the future.

Your active participation in discussions is key to making this interactive learning exercise a success, so we encourage everyone to share their experiences and analyse and comment upon each others’ contributions. At this initial stage, we invite you to upload your photos and fill in the profile information. This will help to get to know each other and make networking much easier.

Once again, welcome! We look forward to working with you!

http://ella.practicalaction.org/alliances/learning.php

ELLA Climate Resilient Cities