Chennai, India
Chennai, formerly known as Madras is the Gateway to Southern India. As the capital of Tamil Nadu, Chennai is the center of India’s fourth largest urban agglomeration with about 7 million inhabitants. Run and managed by the Greater Chennai Corporation since 1688, Chennai has emerged as a significant cultural and economic site that stands at the forefront of engaging climate change on the subcontinent. Exposure to high temperatures and regular flooding issues associated with the monsoon season have led both administrators as well as citizens to take a great interest in climate policies. Different climate finance initiatives and actors such as Cities fit for Climate Change, C40 or ICLEI have engaged the city previously and have built local momentum to tackle climate change issues. Most recently the foundation of the Tamil Nadu Green Climate Corporation and with it the Governing Council on Climate Change have formalized new responsibilities and tasks that aim to implement climate measures within the city. The Green Climate Fund is also utilized to advance several projects. At this dynamic moment in the city, where political weight is put behind the advancement of certain projects, we aim to identify how these different initiatives interlink and work on top, besides and with one another to facilitate urban transformations for a more sustainable future.
Rajkot, India
Rajkot, situated in the Indian state of Gujarat, is with its 2 million inhabitants one of the smaller cities within India. Nonetheless, it is one of the fastest growing cities on the subcontinent. As a primarily industrial city, it is an important economic center in the Saurashtra region. Subject to monsoon rainfalls and high-heat in the summer, it is exposed to several climate risks. It is part of the CapaCities program, funded by the Swiss Government, which aims to increase climate action and create integrated climate-resilient planning based on innovative financial mechanisms. The program has successfully executed multiple smaller trial projects based on solar panel installations and groundwater recharge systems, as well as establishing a project pipeline for larger bankable projects. It is an interesting case of how a secondary city is interacting with a global climate finance initiative and how it is implementing structural changes in its administration to allow for the realization of aforementioned projects. This process is largely occurring in tandem with the provision of technical assistance and capacity building measures that aim to institutionalize introduced changes.
Juárez has geographical, environmental and social conditions that make it a site of interest for an array of development and climate change organisations’ initiatives, especially those focused on urban resilience. It is one of the most important border cities in Mexico, its population suffers from extreme weather conditions almost all year round, and the city is constantly subject to floods and droughts. During the last decade of the previous century, Juárez was the scene of drug-related violence and the highest rate of femicides. It also had a high level of unemployment due to the closure of industries because of the global economic crisis. Its geographical proximity to the United States makes it prone to interest from bilateral initiatives, especially those promoting green infrastructures, such as those coming from NADBank and other US government agencies, but also from global initiatives, such as those of the IDB and UN Agencies. The recently created Resilience Coordination in the municipality, stemming from the Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities initiative, stands out as one of the local governance adjustments coming from these initiatives. Their engagement will allow us to investigate how they intervene in local government to strengthen the further implementation of climate adaptation measures and ‘green’ development at the local level.
Juarez, Mexico
Hermosillo,
Mexico
Due to a large number of actions implemented for adaptation to climate change, the achievement of several SDGs and its sustained economic development, Hermosillo is considered by the Mexican Institute of Competitiveness one of the most sustainable cities in the country. Given its geographical location close to the USA, many of these achievements have originated from bilateral initiatives, with the participation of the NADBank standing out. The Municipal Institute of Planning (IMPLAN), a local government agency, has fostered many of these initiatives' goals through plans and programmes binding or not to the local policy. Nonetheless, although the number of initiatives within the city (e.g. IDB's Emergent and Sustainable Cities; ICLEI; Bloomers Philantrophies' city network; WRI's City-Fix-Lab Challenge) and the municipality's persistence in carrying them out, not all of their goals has been implemented due to several reasons including financial and fiscal conditions, political momentum and social dissent. In this context, we employ this city case study to track the scope of these initiatives and their attempts to implement several climate adaptation measures and ‘green’ infrastructure development, such as capacity building, policy and legal changes.