This talk delves into the revolutionary impact of data on reshaping urban landscapes and improving lives.

Research by BBC Media Action in Bangladesh in 2023 revealed that adaptation efforts by communities and individuals are often not reported or communicated.  Media coverage is mainly focused on climate disasters and the international climate negotiations. In 2023, GCA teamed up with BBC Media Action to train journalists on reporting local efforts by communities to tackle the impacts of climate change.

Starting in 2020, the Nairobi city government began implementing a community-driven, multisectoral upgrading plan. The plan was the product of an ambitious two-year process known as the Mukuru Special Planning Area or SPA. While the Covid-19 pandemic has delayed official ratification of the upgrading plan, the Nairobi city government and Nairobi Metropolitan Services have already built roads, storm drains, several hospitals, a school, and a pilot water and sanitation project. Ongoing implementation efforts provide opportunities and pose several challenges.

Mukuru residents worked with the local government to plan crucial infrastructure investments to improve their health, safety and dignity. The SPA is an example of a true “co-planning” process. Work was undertaken together by government, residents and their civil society partners. This empowered residents to make planning decisions that have improved their resilience to climate change.

The Educational Partnerships for Innovation in Communities (EPIC), which has been implemented by universities worldwide, is a transformative approach to prepare students for the workforce, advance scholarships for researchers and make meaningful contributions to communities through engagement with, and empowerment of, local community members.

The eight Principles for Locally Led Adaptation, developed by the Global Commission on Adaptation, aim to empower and give communities on the frontlines of climate change a voice in decisions that directly affect their lives and livelihoods.

Heat waves are a silent killer, particularly in Indian cities, where they are responsible for more deaths than any other natural disaster. Between 2010 and 2022, 10,104 deaths were attributed to heat waves in India. In cities in South Asia, where temperatures are already high and rising due to climate change, heat stress is exacerbated by the urban heat island effect.

Safe and clean drinking water is becoming increasingly difficult to access in Bangladesh. Frequent and intense cyclones, storm surges, and sea-level rise, particularly in the coastal belt, result in water logging, and drive salinity further inland. The poorest and most vulnerable residents in the country are the most impacted as they have to choose between drinking contaminated water and getting sick, or walking several kilometers to get clean water while learning to make do with less.

The urban population in Malawi face cyclones, storm surges, heat stress, extreme precipitation, flooding, landslides, drought, and water scarcity with increasing regularity as climate change escalates. The country recently suffered greatly from the effects of the 2019 Cyclones Idai and Kenneth and the tropical Storm Ana and Cyclone Gombe in 2022. In the capital city of Lilongwe, where 76% of the urban population lives in informal settlements, the storms and cyclones caused tremendous damage – particularly in the informal settlements in the Kaliyeka, Mchesi, Kawale and Mtandire wards.

Community Leaders from Mukuru, the largest informal settlement in Nairobi, showcased some of the early initiatives from their People’s Adaptation Plan to a visiting international delegation on 4th September 2023. The delegation included Ban Ki-moon, 8th Secretary-General of the United Nations and Chair, Global Center on Adaptation (GCA); Professor Patrick Verkooijen, CEO, GCA and Distinguished Chair of The Wangari Maathai Institute for Peace and Environmental Studies; Dan Jørgensen, Minister for Development Cooperation and Global Climate Policy, Denmark; and Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, Minister of State for Development, Francophonie and International Partnerships, France.

Join us for a live Q&A session on the 2023 Local Adaptation Champions Awards.

The GCA Local Adaptation Champions Awards spotlight and reward innovative, exemplary, inspiring, and scalable locally led efforts that address the impacts of climate change and build effective climate resilience among the most vulnerable communities, sections of society, and individuals who are at the frontlines of the greatest existential threat faced by humankind. This year, after the success of 2022, we are relaunching the Awards with new categories as we expand our reach and continue to highlight exceptional locally led efforts around the world

In this conversation with the 2022 Winners of the GCA Local Adaptation Champions Awards at the 2023 Gobeshona Conference, community leaders and changemakers from the Award-winning interventions shared their experience in planning, designing, and executing locally led adaptation efforts.

At the 2023 Gobeshona Conference, we engaged in a conversation with members of the Mukuru community, and the organizations and local government officials that supported their efforts, to learn more about how they worked together to overcome the formidable challenges that they faced while developing the Mukuru People’s Plan.

The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) and Mathematica convened a roundtable discussion at the 2023 Gobeshona Conference on data and information needs for Locally Led Adaptation (LLA), and its related challenges and opportunities.

Acknowledging Mukuru’s unique developmental and political challenges, planning partners adopted an unconventional planning framework. Enabled by the SPA declaration, it prioritized immediate needs and incremental, iterative improvements. It also adopted alternatives to conventional planning standards to minimize the displacement of Mukuru residents without sacrificing security, health or resilience considerations.

The interdependent, multisectoral challenges in informal settlements like Mukuru require integrated planning. Improvements in no one sector alone can solve them. It is crucial to develop sectoral plans in tandem, working together across disciplines.

A high-level overview of the Mukuru Special Planning Area (SPA). The Mukuru approach has taught us that improving climate resilience in informal settlements requires the urgent coordination of several key strategies. National and city leaders should take up this approach to building climate resilience and upgrading informal settlements. Key concepts include: the promise of and need for upgrading as a climate resilience strategy in rapidly urbanizing Africa; the need to put communities at the center of planning; and the crucial role of local governments and locally-led action for upgrading and resilience.

Starting in 2017, residents of Mukuru — one of the largest informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya — undertook an ambitious, ground-breaking participatory upgrading process known as the Mukuru Special Planning Area (SPA). This is the Mukuru story, as told by Jane Weru, Executive Director of the Akiba Mashinani Trust and one of its central champions and stewards; and Dorise Moseti, a community mobilization champion from Mukuru.

Like informal settlements in cities across Africa, Mukuru is vulnerable to climate hazards like extreme rainfall, floods, water- and vector-borne diseases, extreme heat, fires, and water scarcity. This is due to its precarious location, poor infrastructure, and high levels of poverty. Residents also have little say in decision-making processes. As a result, Mukuru lacks infrastructure and resources to deal with climate-related risks. Across Africa, climate resilience in informal settlements requires urgent attention. Locally-led planning efforts under the SPA have addressed existing gaps in service provision. These investments have reduced residents’ climate vulnerability. The SPA serves as an important model for upgrading at scale to build climate resilience in informal settlements.

Living Climate Change was broadcast on BBC Global News in October 2021. Short films created by BBC Media Action teams in Nepal, Bangladesh and Kenya share the untold stories of people living at the forefront of climate change, ahead of world leaders meeting in Glasgow at the UN climate conference, COP26.

Watch this presentation from Dr Duncan Green, Professor in Practice, London School of Economics and Senior Strategic Adviser at Oxfam GB during the media training on Locally Led Adaptation

Watch Prof. Saleemul Huq speak about Locally Led Adaptation during the Training for Journalists organized by GCA.

Prof. Dr. Patrick Verkooijen, GCA CEO, visited Mongla, a secondary port city in Bangladesh, where GCA and BRAC are piloting locally led urban planning approaches to accelerate and scale up the creation of climate-resilient, migrant-friendly towns across Bangladesh. 

The activities of the Global Hub on Locally Led Adaptation (LLA) were launched on 11th December 2022 by H.E. Sheikh Hasina, Honorable Prime Minister of Bangladesh, in an event reinforcing the Government of Bangladesh’s global leadership on LLA.