Editing IPCC:AR6/WGII/Chapter-6 (section)

== 6.4 Enabling Conditions for Adaptation Action in Urban Areas, Settlements and Infrastructure ==

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This section assesses the effectiveness of efforts to create enabling conditions for adaptation. New policy innovations such as National Urban Policies are emerging to address the multi-level governance demands of climate change ( [[#UN-Habitat--2020|UN-Habitat, 2020]] ; [[#Kinyanjui--2020|Kinyanjui, 2020]] ). There is no one-size-fits-all approach to deliver adaptation that will fit every case, because the local conditions of implementation bear a strong influence on adaptation’s feasibility and impacts (Archer et al., 2014). Ways to foster adequate enabling conditions for adaptation are well-documented ( [[#IPCC--2018|IPCC, 2018]] Ch.4). These often include integrated planning, multi-agency working and multi-scale and sector action. Existing techniques can be shared and new innovations taken up (Maxwell et al., 2018).

Adaptation in urban areas and settlements can be ''incremental'' (when it addresses the causes of problems but without fundamentally changing the social and political structures that drive it, for example through planning or new regulations), ''reformist'' (when it changes the features that cause problems but without fundamentally changing the structures) or ''transformative'' (when it addresses fundamental systems attributes and outcomes such as reducing inequality in political and socioeconomic structures or enhancing well-being [Mendizabal et al., 2018; [[#Rosenzweig--2018|Rosenzweig and Solecki, 2018]] ] which change the situation completely) (Heikkinen, Ylä-Anttila and Juhola, 2019; [[#Roberts--2020|Roberts and Pelling, 2020]] ; O’Brien, Selboe and Hayward, 2018). In the context of the SGDs mission to leave-no-one behind, transformative adaptation addresses fundamental systems’ functions to enable enhanced social justice and socio-ecological well-being. Incremental adaptation actions seek to maintain the essence and integrity of a system or process at a given scale (see Annex II: Glossary). Adaptation that seeks only to defend existing development status will not contribute to enhanced well-being and is not transformative, even if fundamental infrastructure engineering or legislative systems are changed to maintain the status quo in the face of increasing risk (Mendizabal et al., 2018).

City populations and non-state actors, together with local and regional governments, can play an essential role in creating enabling conditions for action, including, for example, civil society mobilising concerns of marginalised voices and future generations, as indicated in the worldwide student mobilisations against climate change ( [[#Wood--2019|Wood, 2019]] ; Maor, Tosun and Jordan, 2017; Cloutier, Papin and Bizier, 2018; Prendergast et al., 2021), which may then be prioritised by local and regional governments. National governments also play a crucial role, for example in facilitating resources and finance for urban adaptation actions, alongside financial organisations and the business sector (see [[#6.4.5|Section 6.4.5]] ). This section starts assessing adaptation experiences in cities, settlements and infrastructures since the AR5, before reviewing evidence of how to foster enabling conditions for adaptation through institutionalisation, governance capacity, finance, evaluation and social learning.

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=== 6.4.1 Adaptation Experiences in Cities, Settlements and Infrastructures ===

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Since AR5, there is increasing evidence that successful adaptation to climate change is context-specific and responsive to the particular needs of urban locations. This section assesses the contributions of key urban actors, local government, civil society and the local private sector, in enabling adaptation. Wider influences from national government cross cut this and are discussed with the role of international agencies, and finance which is assessed in [[#6.4.5|Section 6.4.5]] .

The literature on the governance of adaptation has grown since the AR5, though with few cases from cities and settlements in the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and former USSR countries. Potential reasons for the continued lack of studies in these areas include the centralised character of decision making systems in countries in these regions and the early stage of adaptation planning in these urban areas ( [[#Clar--2019|Clar, 2019]] ; [[#Mitchell--2019|Mitchell and Laycock, 2019]] ; Olazabal et al., 2019a).

Flexible institutions that allow for both top-down and bottom-up action can bring capacities together from across levels of government and actors within a settlement (Sharifi and Yamagata, 2017). Predominant planning and capacity-building strategies, however, lack the flexibility to address the needs of a rapidly changing environment (Carter et al., 2015; [[#Dhar--2017|Dhar and Khirfan, 2017]] ; Juhola, 2016). Efforts to adapt to new challenges may have to speed up. This is especially true in urban areas and settlements with lower levels of development and experiencing rapid urbanisation, growing inequality and exposure to multiple hazards ( [[#Dulal--2019|Dulal, 2019]] ; Grafakos et al., 2019; Solecki et al., 2018). Even within cities that share similar characteristics, there are considerable differences in the level of investment in adaptation (Georgeson et al., 2016). There is also a danger that uncoordinated actions for climate change mitigation and adaptation may constrain future adaptation opportunities or create maladaptation (Juhola et al., 2016). The evidence emerging since the AR5 suggests that institutional change can be accelerated by closer collaboration between the diverse actors and deployment of the diverse approaches that can deliver adaptation.

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==== 6.4.1.1 Experiences of Adaptation Action in Sub-national Governments ====

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The assessment of cases of local adaptation demonstrates that most urban adaptation is led by local governments (although the local government is also a heterogeneous category and local governance arrangements may vary across administrative and political contexts) ( ''high confidence'' ) (Amundsen et al., 2018; Lesnikowski et al., 2021). Local government reform at different levels can improve local adaptation, whether this is by strengthening specific teams or building cross-departmental linkages ( ''high confidence'' ) (Paterson et al., 2017; [[#Shi--2019|Shi, 2019]] ; [[#Wamsler--2018|Wamsler and Raggers, 2018]] ). Adaptation success often depends on having political champions driving the adaptation agenda alongside measures such as access to a knowledge base, resources at hand, political stability and the presence of dense social networks that can be supported through local government reform (Pasquini et al., 2015). Aligning adaptation objectives with other potential benefits of sustainable development also supports adaptation. Specifically, policies and plans that link adaptation to the objectives of Agenda 2030 supports action at the local level ( [[#UN-Habitat--2016b|UN-Habitat, 2016b]] ). Showing the economic benefits of adaptation is a strategy for local institutions to gain support for adaptation action. For example, local governments in Surat, Indore and Bhubaneswar in India linked adaptation to local development needs in experiments that facilitated accessing human and finance resources, at the local, national and international levels ( [[#Chu--2016|Chu, 2016]] ). However, linking adaptation to co-benefits may also divide efforts and reduce the effectiveness of adaptation actions. For example, urban land use planning and management in Ambo town, Ethiopia, resulted in the implementation of urban greening projects, but these projects did not directly address the climate-related disaster risks affecting the settlement, including urban flooding, water stress, water shortages, increased urban heat, wind and dust storms (Ogato et al., 2017).

Multi-level governance measures that support local governments can foster robust adaptation approaches and address risks and vulnerabilities across scales ( ''high confidence'' ) (Westman, Broto and Huang, 2019; Hardoy et al., 2014; [[#Romero-Lankao--2015|Romero-Lankao and Hardoy, 2015]] ). Effective action by local government requires national government’s support ( ''medium confidence'' ). For example, [[#Araos--2017|Araos et al. (2017)]] documents the case of Dhaka, Bangladesh, where a national plan prioritises measures for protecting coasts and agricultural production. In this context, the local government has minimal access to human and financial resources. Without national support, the local government struggles to coordinate action among different stakeholders. National urban adaptation directives can influence municipal governments’ action and planning, but evidence suggests that national policy alone is not sufficient to deliver action on the ground without understanding local conditions ( ''high confidence'' ) (Archer et al., 2014; Lehmann et al., 2015).

There are barriers for municipal adaptation plans to deliver effective adaptation outcomes and implemented actions often diverge from plans (see [[#6.4.6|Section 6.4.6]] ). For example, a comparison of adaptation plans and budget expenditures of six metropolitan cities in South Korea between 2012 and 2016 showed that the implementation of adaptation programmes diverged substantially from the original plans, both in terms of total and sector-specific spending ( [[#Lee--2018|Lee and Kim, 2018]] ). Often, a focus on institutional change and reform limits attention to more practical aspects of adaptation that improve communities’ resilience (Castán Broto and Westman, 2020). Adaptation actions, even where financed effectively, do not always deliver positive outcomes ( ''high confidence'' ) (Reckien et al., 2015; [[#Woodruff--2016|Woodruff and Stults, 2016]] ; [[#Uittenbroek--2016|Uittenbroek, 2016]] ; Aguiar et al., 2018; Reckien et al., 2018a; Olazabal et al., 2019b; Campello Torres et al., 2021) (see also [[#6.4.7|Section 6.4.7]] ).

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==== 6.4.1.2 The Role of Non-State Actors in Local Adaptation ====

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There are multiple actors, other than local governments, that can deliver adaptation action, including businesses, not for profit organisations and trade unions ( ''high confidence'' ) (Giordano et al., 2020; Eakin et al., 2021). Empirical evidence since the AR5 highlights the role of communities, universities, the private sector and transnational networks in adaptation (Hunter et al., 2020; Bäckstrand et al., 2017). Non-state actors are particularly important in enabling adaptation by linking government agencies with low-income and marginalised communities, including those living in informal settlements (Kuyper, Linnér and Schroeder, 2018; [[#Khosla--2019|Khosla and Bhardwaj, 2019]] ).

Since AR5, civil society and private actors have emerged as core knowledge holders and drivers of experimentation, even succeeding in changing public policy in the process (Klein, Juhola and Landauer, 2017; [[#McKnight--2016|McKnight and Linnenluecke, 2016]] ; [[#Mees--2017|Mees, 2017]] ). Previous IPCC Assessment Reports noted that civil society actors enable local risk awareness, sensitisation and adaptive capacity, and generate locally based innovation (e.g., through community based adaptation programmes).

Community based adaptation includes a range of initiatives that put communities at the centre of planning for adaptation, often led by communities themselves ( [[#Reid--2016|Reid, 2016]] ). Community based adaptation is a comprehensive and effective strategy to deliver resilience at a human scale (Trogal et al., 2018; Greenwalt et al., 2020). Many community based responses to climate impacts represent coping strategies developed within households with a small effect on adaptation capacities beyond incremental improvements. Residents adopt private coping strategies to reduce exposure to and the impacts of heat, floods, flash floods, landslides, storms and diseases on their lives ( [[#Hambati--2018|Hambati and Yengoh, 2018]] ). These coping strategies include the construction of physical protection against flooding, reforestation, the construction of terraces, flood diversion measures and interventions to protect houses (such as raised doorsteps or use of sandbags and adoption of building techniques for making homes resilient to storms and landslides), ventilation of houses, urban agriculture and redefinition of daily practices and livelihoods (Navarro et al., 2020; [[#Malabayabas--2017|Malabayabas and Baconguis, 2017]] ; [[#Apreda--2016|Apreda, 2016]] ; [[#de%20Andrade--2020|de Andrade and Szlafsztein, 2020]] ; [[#Sahay--2018|Sahay, 2018]] ; Bausch, Eakin and Lerner, 2018).

Individual coping strategies are generally ineffective in reducing extreme risks and they rarely address the underlying structural causes of vulnerability ( ''high confidence'' ) ( [[#Sahay--2018|Sahay, 2018]] ; Rözer et al., 2016; Jay et al., 2021). Expending resources on private coping strategies in some cases may divert resources and capacity for wider community adaptation efforts ( [[#de%20Andrade--2020|de Andrade and Szlafsztein, 2020]] ). However, individual coping strategies can provide foundations for the implementation of collaborative action in communities, building on people’s experiences, in ways which may have a longer-term, durable impact on developing resilience ( ''high confidence'' ) (McEwen et al., 2018). Community based adaptation can be effective at different scales, whether this is to manage transboundary issues (Limthongsakul, Nitivattananon and Arifwidodo, 2017), support the replication of local solutions (Danière et al., 2016), increase the uptake of adaptation measures (Liang et al., 2017) or inform the design of more effective policies for resilience (Berquist, Daniere and Drummond, 2015; [[#Odemerho--2015|Odemerho, 2015]] ). Community action may be mediated by NGOs or third sector organisations who play a coordinating or enabling role, particularly where other local government mechanisms are absent.

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==== 6.4.1.3 The Role of the Private Sector in Local Adaptation ====

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There is weak evidence of private sector involvement in urban adaptation ( [[#Pauw--2015|Pauw, 2015]] ; [[#Heurkens--2016|Heurkens, 2016]] ). The absence of private sector investment in adaptation is particularly visible in rapidly urbanising countries (Nagendra et al., 2018). Business continuity describing private sector preparedness notes that firms underestimate the impacts of climate risks on their business models (Goldstein et al., 2019; [[#Forino--2021|Forino and von Meding, 2021]] ; [[#Korber--2017|Korber and McNaughton, 2017]] ; Crick et al., 2018b). There is little research on how businesses can play a leading role in urban adaptation (Klein et al., 2018). A global assessment of the private sector’s role in urban adaptation using data from 402 cities shows that most adaptation projects focus on the public sector and do not address private sector concerns or local people’s participation (Klein et al., 2018). Recorded private sector action is recognised through partnerships and participation ( [[#Peterson--2017|Peterson and Hughes, 2017]] ; [[#Hughes--2018|Hughes and Peterson, 2018]] ). There are a few examples of studies of private sector-led adaptation action which adopts a national focus (Crick et al., 2018a; Crick et al., 2018b). This lack of evidence contrasts with a well-developed body of literature on private sector-led mitigation (Averchenkova et al., 2016).

Businesses have an essential role in urban adaptation actions, through the collective formulation of adaptation strategies, the provision of critical adaptive interventions and collaboration in partnerships. Businesses in the property sector, such as real estate developers, are on the frontline of climate change impacts but display differing attitudes toward climate adaptation. A study of property businesses in cities in Australia (Taylor et al., 2012) showed that speeding up planning approval processes facilitated adaptation actions, and joint private–public decision-making was the preferred mode of governance for responding to climate concerns. Property businesses in cities in Sweden had a limited and reactive engagement in climate issues and resisted regulation ( [[#Storbjörk--2018|Storbjörk et al., 2018]] ). Corporate, private sector interventions in urban risk reduction more broadly remain limited, with a mix of public and private responsibility for planning, implementing and maintaining adaptations in the built environment, and yet limited engagement of private sector actors in providing healthcare measures for heat prevention ( ''medium confidence'' ) ( [[#Mees--2017|Mees, 2017]] ).

There is little published literature documenting the heterogeneity of business and the private sector’s responses to climate impacts (Linnenluecke, Birt and Griffiths, 2015; Doh, Tashman and Benischke, 2019). Firms have varying abilities to introduce climate adaptation measures related to staff availability, levels of awareness, perceptions of responsibility and duration of contracts (short-term projects implies less interest in adaptation outcomes) (Shearer et al., 2016). The impact of COVID-19 has serious but uncertain implications for both access to finances for sustainable development by LMICs and sub-national governments, and the possibility of stimulating maladaptive infrastructure and policy responses (OECD, 2020; Sovacool, Del Rio and Griffiths, 2020). The response of businesses to disasters influences the resilience in the communities in which they operate ( [[#McKnight--2016|McKnight and Linnenluecke, 2016]] ; [[#Linnenluecke--2017|Linnenluecke and McKnight, 2017]] ). However, at the same time there is a growing literature that warns against the conflict interests that businesses may have in their adaptation strategies. For example, real estate responses to flooding have led to processes of climate gentrification, whereby lower income populations are displaced toward higher risk areas which stablishes racialised and class-based patterns of inequality of exposure to risk, with hard evidence rapidly growing specially in US cities (Keenan, Hill and Gumber, 2018a; Shokry, Connolly and Anguelovski, 2020; [[#De%20Koning--2020|De Koning and Filatova, 2020]] ; Aune, Gesch and Smith, 2020). Private-sector participation in adaptation solutions depend on having mechanisms to enable transparency and open reporting on the nature of support and the solutions proposed. For example, businesses adopting ‘community-centric’ disaster management strategies can assist local recovery efforts by protecting employment, provision of emergency supplies and participation in reparations ( [[#McKnight--2016|McKnight and Linnenluecke, 2016]] ). Private sector actors engaged in community climate responses can play a role in funding and managing programmes that address public health and education concerns. The potential of ecopreneurship, social enterprises, cooperatives and other sustainability-oriented business models (Schaltegger, Hansen and Lüdeke-Freund, 2016; Lopes et al., 2020; Battaglia, Gragnani and Annesi, 2020) for urban adaptation remains under-explored in the literature on urban climate governance.

The private sector also constitutes a key stakeholder group involved in collaborative processes to develop adaptation strategies. The inclusion of private sector actors in deliberative policy-making processes in urban adaptation can lead to higher procedural legitimacy levels, as witnessed in Rotterdam’s case (Mees, Driessen and Runhaar, 2014). Rotterdam has created an institutional environment that favours eco-innovation ( [[#Huang-Lachmann--2016|Huang-Lachmann and Lovett, 2016]] ). The municipal government works directly with the private sector to enhance protection against flooding constructing a marketing strategy around a ‘floating city’ concept. A ‘floating housing’ market has expanded, with benefits for the local real estate and construction industries and knowledge-exporting businesses that provide consultation expertise, delta technologies and architectural models. Nevertheless, these new trends raise new governance challenges to deliver adaptation.

There are obstacles associated with reconciling private sector interests with public priorities and justice agendas in local climate programmes. The involvement of the private sector in adaptation actions may lead to the appropriation of land and natural resources, and to the exclusion of vulnerable populations (Anguelovski et al., 2016; [[#Rumbach--2017|Rumbach, 2017]] ; [[#Scoppetta--2016|Scoppetta, 2016]] ) (see also [[#6.4.4|Section 6.4.4.2]] ). Navigating the inclusion of businesses in urban planning processes requires local authorities to engage in ongoing negotiations, to reflect on constantly shifting power balances and to move delicately between the role of regulator and facilitator in the process of defining and maintaining long-term objectives (Storbjörk, Hjerpe and Glaas, 2019b; Storbjörk, Hjerpe and Glaas, 2019a).

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==== 6.4.1.4 Partnerships for Adaptation ====

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Multi-level governance remains an influential paradigm that recognises government institutions’ influence at different scales and the diversification of actors intervening in public issues from the private sector and civil society ( ''robust evidence'' , ''high agreement'' ). Establishing linkages between multiple organisations can help deliver coordinated action. Multi-level governance includes mechanisms for multiple actors to engage in local adaptation strategies through collaborative processes of planning, learning, experimentation, capacity building, construction of coalitions and communication channels ( [[#Barton--2013|Barton, 2013]] ; [[#Jaglin--2013|Jaglin, 2013]] ; Reed et al., 2015; Restemeyer, van den Brink and Woltjer, 2017; Melica et al., 2018). Many of these studies directly focus on institutional arrangements that facilitate interaction between communities and civil society, experts, government representatives, firms and international organisations. Box 6.5 demonstrates the decisive role that community activists can play in building resilience over long periods.

Institutional fragmentation reduces the capacity to deliver adaptation ( [[#Den%20Uyl--2018|Den Uyl and Russel, 2018]] ) Multi-level governance shows a commitment to tackling fragmented and complex policy issues through collaboration between national governments and non-state actors, as explained in the 2030 Development Agenda, especially SDG17 (‘Revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development’). Multi-level governance is particularly important to deliver adaptation at the metropolitan scale, that require coordinating actions across different institutions in inter-municipal institutions ( [[#Lundqvist--2016|Lundqvist, 2016]] ). Gaps in knowledge remain regarding the effectiveness of multi-level governance actions in different contexts and the extent to which multi-level governance strategies transfer the brunt of responsibility for adaptation action to less-resourced local governments (Hale et al., 2021).

Public–private partnerships are increasingly relevant for collaborative development of urban adaptation (Klein et al., 2018). Partnerships can deliver infrastructure, coordinate policy and support learning. The main limitation of partnerships is scale, as partnership action is usually limited to discrete projects or objectives. Partnerships tend to be linked to reactive (rather than proactive) adaptation projects and the deviation of objectives away from adaptation concerns (Harman, Taylor and Lane, 2015). Partnerships can support capacity building in public and private organisations and facilitate networking efforts that extend beyond the private sector to communities and NGOs (Bauer and Steurer, 2014; Castán Broto et al., 2015). Public actors can benefit from the private sector’s innovation and implementation capacity, and businesses can de-risk investments. Still, partnerships can also strengthen the ideologies of growth and managerialism within the operations of the local government (Taylor et al., 2012). Reconciling divergent norms and routines within public and private organisations remains one of the challenges to establishing successful public–private partnerships for adaptation ( [[#Lund--2018|Lund, 2018]] ). Administrative and political culture influences the nature of interactions between public and private sector actors in urban adaptation agendas (Bauer and Steurer, 2014), with negative consequences such as the imposition of vertical chains of commands on horizontal collaborations, and the need to formalise contractual relations ( [[#Klein--2018|Klein and Juhola, 2018]] ).

Local authorities are an important enabling actor that can guide the private sector and communities to take responsibility for creating policy and regulatory environments that encourage private sector participation aligned with the SDGs’ equity and ecological sustainability principles ( ''high confidence'' ). For example, Frantzeskaki et al. (2014) report a port relocation project in the Netherlands where sustainability principles drove private sector participation. Klein et al. (2017) cite examples from two cities—Helsinki and Copenhagen, where local authorities have shifted adaptation responsibilities to private actors through regulation and public problem ownership. In Mombasa, private companies provide green infrastructure to match local government requirements, in what has frequently been cited as an example of NBS ( [[#Kithiia--2010|Kithiia and Dowling, 2010]] ; [[#Kitha--2011|Kitha and Lyth, 2011]] ).

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==== 6.4.1.5 Trans-national Municipal Networks ====

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Since the late 1990s, transnational municipal networks (TMNs) have increased awareness of climate change and served as a bridge for cities to access critical financial resources from private and philanthropic sources ( [[#Rashidi--2018|Rashidi and Patt, 2018]] ; [[#Fünfgeld--2015|Fünfgeld, 2015]] ). Recently, TMNs have taken on more programmatic functions, working with cities to strategise, plan and incrementally improve their organisation functions in the face of climate change. For example, the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities program (2014–2019) provided a two-year salary for a Chief Resilience Officer (CRO) to be situated in a municipal authority to bridge silos, incentivise change and develop development strategies for resilience ( [[#Bellinson--2019|Bellinson and Chu, 2019]] ; [[#Spaans--2017|Spaans and Waterhout, 2017]] ). In these cases, external actors have enabled broad organisation change, resource mobilisation pathways and alternative forms of agenda-setting in cities (Chu, 2018; [[#Hakelberg--2014|Hakelberg, 2014]] ) (see also Case Study 6.2, Semarang).

A range of TMNs also support and encourage cities and settlements to plan and implement adaptation actions. ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability has developed protocols and implemented projects for member cities. The C40 Climate Leadership Group has facilitated the coordination of both local governments and business actors at a global scale ( [[#Gordon--2020|Gordon, 2020]] ). Policy coordination has been central to the signatories of the Covenant of Mayors (Domorenok et al., 2020). Such networks can encourage the sharing of information about appropriate practices between urban areas; contribute to goal setting; support experimentation and development of new policy instruments; enhance stakeholder engagement; institutionalise climate agendas; and encourage policy integration across governance levels and sectors ( [[#Bellinson--2019|Bellinson and Chu, 2019]] ; Busch, Bendlin and Fenton, 2018; [[#Fünfgeld--2015|Fünfgeld, 2015]] ; [[#Busch--2015|Busch, 2015]] ; [[#Papin--2019|Papin, 2019]] ; [[#Rashidi--2018|Rashidi and Patt, 2018]] ). However, participation in TMNs is biased toward cities in the Global North (Bansard, Pattberg and Widerberg, 2017; [[#Haupt--2019|Haupt and Coppola, 2019]] ). A recent comparative study of 337 cities found out that cities that participation in TNMs are more likely to take adaptation action and that being part of multiple networks leads to higher levels of adaptation planning (Heikkinen et al., 2020).

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'''Box 6.5 | Building Water Resilience in Urban Areas through Community Action and Activism'''
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In Bengaluru, India, communities have traditionally managed a network of water tanks of immense ecological importance. However, in the last half-century, urban development has increasingly threatened this blue network ( [[#Unnikrishnan--2015|Unnikrishnan and Nagendra, 2015]] ). Today’s Bengaluru depends on long-distance water transfers that create political conflict and a dense network of private boreholes that are depleting the city’s water resources. The restoration of the existing community managed water tanks network offers a more sustainable and socially just alternative for managing water resources.

Unnikrishnan et al. (2018) have documented how the colonial and postcolonial history of water management in Bengaluru shapes the water infrastructure and provision systems today. Water access inequalities can be traced to the patterns of spatial development developed by colonial policies. Records from the sixth century onwards show how city rulers invested in an interconnected, community managed network of tanks and open wells, regularly recharged through harvested rainwater. The water system was changed at the end of the 18th century, as first the colonial state, then the post-independence government of Karnataka took responsibility for water management. Ideas of modernist planning influenced the development of new water infrastructure and piped networks, including the first piped infrastructure, bringing water from sources 30 km away, including the Hesaraghatta and then the TG Halli reservoirs. The old network of tanks gradually deteriorated as tanks became disused, polluted or built over. More prolonged and costly water transfers took place in the post-colonial period, delivering water from the Cauvery River in a massive engineering project with a high energetic cost and enmeshed in inter-state conflicts over water use ( [[#Castán%20Broto--2019|Castán Broto and Sudhira, 2019]] ). Scarcity is still a problem in Bengaluru. The citizen response has been an activist movement to reclaim the city’s tanks, accompanied by a plea to reconsider current water uses within the city, including actions to protect and rejuvenate water wells ( [[#Nagendra--2016|Nagendra, 2016]] ). Unnikrishnan et al. (2018) document different actions led by citizen-led collectives, including projects for lake rejuvenation, filtering technologies to treat sewage, recovering the value of lakes through a share of photos and art projects, and involvement of local knowledge in-tank restoration. Those efforts suggest an untapped potential to deliver adaptive green spaces through the recovery of Bengaluru’s tanks.

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=== 6.4.2 Institutional Change to Deliver Adaptation in Cities, Settlements and Infrastructure ===

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The main barriers to urban climate adaptation, and strategies to address them, relate to institutional change ( ''high confidence'' ) (see Table 6.7). Institutions include legislative and policy frameworks and guidelines intended to direct the action of government, civil society and private sector organisations and extend into informal and customary practices that shape individual behaviour. Many of the barriers that inhibit institutions acting in ways that can support action for inclusive and sustainable adaptation have historical roots, grounded in complex political and social relations and can be reinforcing (Table 6.7). Overcoming these barriers requires coordinating the activities of multiple actors who can facilitate institutional and political change (Eisenack et al., 2014).

'''Table 6.7 |''' Barriers to climate adaptation

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Examples of barriers to climate adaptation

! Institutional changes to overcome those barriers

! Examples

! Evidence

|-
| Lack of financial resources

| Strategic combination of municipal, regional and national level funds

Access to multiple financing mechanisms

| In European countries, large cities tend to fund their own adaptation, while smaller settlements depend on regional or national funding

| [[#Aguiar--2018|Aguiar et al. (2018)]] ;

[[#Moser--2019|Moser et al. (2019)]]

|-
| Lack of human resources and capacities

| Development of formal and informal partnerships, cooperative agreements and inter-agency arrangements

| International cooperation programmes for adaptation in urban areas in the Global South are most likely to succeed if they can align their objectives with local priorities and capacities

| [[#UN-Habitat--2016b|UN-Habitat (2016b)]]

|-
| Political commitment and willingness to act

| Use of policy windows and extreme events to generate interest and create lasting responses

| In Germany, responses to flooding were strongly shaped by public perceptions of safety during the electoral cycle, leading to inadequate responses

| [[#Gawel--2018|Gawel et al. (2018)]] ; [[#Di%20Giulio--2018|Di Giulio et al. (2018)]]

|-
| Uncertainty about future impacts and dynamic interactions

| Develop institutional arrangements that acknowledge and reduce uncertainty

Facilitate the development of bottom-up initiatives that relate directly to the context of action

| Power plant operators and the federal state of Baden-Württemberg negotiated the minimum power plant concept (‘Mindestkraftwerkskonzept’, MPP), a contract to establish more predictable and workable procedures for curtailment in the event of severe heatwaves

| [[#Eisenack--2016|Eisenack (2016)]] ;

[[#Thaler--2019|Thaler et al. (2019)]]

|-
| Institutional fragmentation and unclear responsibilities

| Evaluation of existing institutions to diagnose miscoordination

Creation of policy networks that address emerging interdependences

| In settlements in Languedoc, France, decentralisation adds complexity to the ongoing challenges of population growth and climate change

| [[#Therville--2019|Therville et al. (2019)]]

|-
| Legal issues and regulations

| Address the legal hurdles to create frameworks that allow for experimental action

| Policymakers in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA, reported that minor changes could have a definitive influence in delivering regulatory changes to support adaptation action

In the Netherlands, a lack of climate change adaptation policy for cultural heritage hamper adaptation of cultural heritage to current and projected climate risks

| Ekstrom and Moser (2014);

[[#Fatorić--2020|Fatorić and Biesbroek (2020)]]

|-
| Competition of adaptation with other policy agendas and polarisation

| Prioritisation and development of synergies across sectors

Mainstreaming adaptation into other sectors

| In European cities, for example, urban planning is strongly correlated with water management strategies

| [[#Aguiar--2018|Aguiar et al. (2018)]] ;

Sieber, Biesbroek and de Block (2018)

|-
| Lack of data, knowledge generation capacity and knowledge exchange

| Mobilise multiple strategies for the use of climate information in local decision making

Involve a wide range of stakeholders, with different values and knowledge, in decision making

| In Scotland, Hungary and Portugal, local decision makers use high-end climate change (HECC) scenarios, but most often as background data

Sharing knowledge alongside the supply chain favours adaptation for both multinationals and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)

| [[#Lourenço--2019|Lourenço et al. (2019)]] ;

[[#Herrmann--2017|Herrmann and Guenther (2017)]] ;

Gotgelf, Roggero and Eisenack (2020);

[[#Wamsler--2017|Wamsler (2017)]]

|}

Institutional change is needed to open new options for inclusive and sustainable adaptation and to integrate adaptation and mitigation ( ''robust evidence, high agreement'' ) (see also [[#6.3.5|Section 6.3.5]] ).

Institutional change refers to processes that aim to shift existing norms and practices within organisations to deliver more effective action for adaptation. Institutional change at the local level can be achieved with diverse strategies (Patterson, de Voogt and Sapiains, 2019). Table 6.7 illustrates various instruments that enable the institutionalisation of climate adaptation concerns into policy and planning. As Table 6.7 shows, institutional change is often used as synonymous with mainstreaming. Both terms refer to the integration of climate adaptation concerns into other areas of work and as part of practical routines and arguments (Chu, Anguelovski and Carmin, 2016; [[#Storbjörk--2015|Storbjörk and Uggla, 2015]] ; Runhaar et al., 2018; Uittenbroek et al., 2014). Early assessments understood mainstreaming as activities that integrate climate adaptation into long-range and sectoral plans ( [[#Anguelovski--2011|Anguelovski and Carmin, 2011]] ; [[#Aylett--2015|Aylett, 2015]] ). Since then, efforts to mainstream climate adaptation have grown into agendas around the community and economic development (Ayers et al., 2014), climate mitigation (Göpfert, Wamsler and Lang, 2019), spatial and infrastructure planning (Anguelovski, Chu and Carmin, 2014), urban finance (Musah-Surugu et al., 2018; Keenan, Chu and Peterson, 2019), public health (Araos et al., 2015), environmental management ( [[#Wamsler--2015|Wamsler, 2015]] ; Kabisch et al., 2016) and multi-level decision making ( [[#Ojea--2015|Ojea, 2015]] ; [[#Visseren-Hamakers--2015|Visseren-Hamakers, 2015]] ). Such efforts require various degrees of regulatory or programmatic action to integrate adaptation with other concerns ( [[#Wamsler--2016|Wamsler and Pauleit, 2016]] ). However, institutional change has a broader remit than mainstreaming adaptation, as it may include, for example, changing the organisations already dealing with climate adaptation and make them more effective including changes in inputs, procedures and options (Patterson, de Voogt and Sapiains, 2019).

<div id="6.4.2.1" class="h3-container"></div>

<span id="input-driven-institutional-change"></span>
==== 6.4.2.1 Input-Driven Institutional Change ====

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Input-driven institutional change creates incentives to deliver adaptation action. An input view focuses on the intrinsic capacities of a given organisation. Input indicators are often referred to as political capital ( [[#Rosenzweig--2018|Rosenzweig and Solecki, 2018]] ; [[#Diederichs--2016|Diederichs and Roberts, 2016]] ), existing or endogenous resources (Moloney and [[#Fünfgeld--2015|Fünfgeld, 2015]] ; [[#Wamsler--2014|Wamsler and Brink, 2014]] ), or local drivers for adaptation (Dilling et al., 2017). ReResearch conducted across two municipalities in Western Cape, South Africa, showed the importance of a dedicated environmental champion, access to a knowledge base, the availability of resources, political stability and the presence of dense social networks (Pasquini et al., 2015). Research from São Paulo, Brazil, showed how intrinsic political capacities and contextual factors, such as the political ideology of elected officials, shaped opportunities for embedding adaptation into ongoing urban agendas (Di Giulio et al., 2018).

Networks, interactions and actor coalitions shape options for institutional change. [[#Aylett--2015|Aylett (2015)]] noted the importance of internal networks between municipal departments, including informal communication channels, cultivating personal contacts and trust between the person or team responsible for climate planning and staff within other local government agencies. Internal networks can facilitate the commitment of local elected officials ( [[#Hughes--2015|Hughes, 2015]] ), support higher municipal expenditures per capita and foster perceptions that climate adaptation is needed (Shi, Chu and Debats, 2015). Collective decision-making can integrate multiple types of information with moral concerns and provide key rationales that enable adaptation action ( [[#Carlson--2015|Carlson and McCormick, 2015]] ). In urban areas in Africa, research on internal networks has also investigated how informal arrangements shape action possibilities (Satterthwaite et al., 2020). For example, in Zimbabwe, informal, traditional and civil society institutions are core arenas for issue discussion because of lower public sector capacities (Mubaya and Mafongoya, 2017). In Durban, South Africa, local governments rely considerably on shadow systems and informal spaces of information and knowledge exchange across their operations to introduce and sustain new ideas ( [[#Leck--2015|Leck and Roberts, 2015]] ). In the metropolitan area of Styria, Austria, informal cooperation has supported the development of rural–urban partnerships for the formulation of common goals (Oedl-Wieser et al., 2020). In Arkansas, USA, informal governance structures support planning to manage wildfires (Miller, Vos and Lindquist, 2017).

Cities can leverage input-driven institutional change even without national support for climate change adaptation or mitigation. For example, where cities have defined policymaking and budget raising powers, city level political leadership can support adaptation action going beyond national policy (Hamin, Gurran and Emlinger, 2014; Shi, Chu and Debats, 2015; [[#Carlson--2015|Carlson and McCormick, 2015]] ). Examples include the Surat Climate Change Trust in Surat, India ( [[#Chu--2016|Chu, 2016]] ) and Initiative for Urban Climate Change and Environment in Semarang, Indonesia ( [[#Taylor--2015|Taylor and Lassa, 2015]] ). In Saint Louis, Senegal, support from national and state-level actors enabled local institutional change (Vedeld et al., 2016). Processual levers may be also mobilised in situations of political instability (which disrupts patterns in champions and networks), clientelism (which can cause environmental projects to be discontinued) (Pasquini et al., 2015) or in contexts where there are high political and socioeconomic inequalities (Harris, Chu and Ziervogel, 2018; Chu, Anguelovski and Carmin, 2016).

<div id="6.4.2.2" class="h3-container"></div>

<span id="output-driven-institutional-change"></span>
==== 6.4.2.2 Output-Driven Institutional Change ====

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Output-driven institutional change is shaped by organisational products such as strategies, plans, policies and evaluative metrics ( [[#Patterson--2019|Patterson and Huitema, 2019]] ; [[#Bellinson--2019|Bellinson and Chu, 2019]] ) (See Table 6.8). There are numerous examples of institutional change through planning outcomes. For example, Manizales, Colombia has included climate adaptation into long-established environmental policy (Biomanizales) and a local environmental action plan (Bioplan), which follows on from a long coherent trajectory of climate change policy (Hardoy and Velásquez Barrero, 2014). A significant number of North American cities have integrated adaptation into long-range plans, while fewer cities integrate adaptation in sustainable development plans or sectoral plans ( [[#Aylett--2015|Aylett, 2015]] ). Canadian cities are more likely to have a plan specifically focused on adaptation rather than having adaptation integrated into municipal long-range planning ( [[#Aylett--2015|Aylett, 2015]] ). In the European Union, adaptation plans depended on national climate legislation or, in fewer cases, the influence of an international climate network (Reckien et al., 2018b). A comparative report from the Covenant of Mayors, however, suggests that the adaptation pillar needs development to demonstrate the effectiveness of adaptation responses and their integration with mitigation goals (Bertoldi et al., 2020). Municipalities in Sweden have been called ‘pre-reactive’ because adequate strategic guidelines are in place to frame the accessibility, aesthetics and adaptability of waterfront developments ( [[#Storbjörk--2015|Storbjörk and Uggla, 2015]] ). Some Asian cities also report high output effectiveness, where they are more likely to indicate senior local government officials’ performance management contracts, the budgeting procedures of local government agencies and the procedures that local government agencies use for budgeting infrastructure spending ( [[#Aylett--2015|Aylett, 2015]] ). Despite this evidence, there is a gap in understanding the general trends of planning and institutional change in Africa, Asia, East Europe and the Middle East.

Institutional change processes are complex, contested and sporadic (Patterson, de Voogt and Sapiains, 2019). Such processes are often inhibited by unclear planning mandates, conflicting development priorities, lack of leadership and resource and capacity shortfalls (Anguelovski et al. 2014). There is no one size fits all approach to institutional change, which works ''in situ'' , and benefits from clearly defined plans and an incremental approach to revising new elements and addressing gaps or failures ( [[#Beunen--2017|Beunen et al., 2017]] ). A longitudinal view of institutional change allows for assessing actors and dynamics involved in integrating adaptation into the sectoral agendas or governance arrangements mentioned above ( [[#Patterson--2019|Patterson and Huitema, 2019]] ).

'''Table 6.8 |''' Examples of institutional and policy instruments to enable adaptation

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Objective

! Type of instrument

! Description

! Examples

! Assessment

|-
| rowspan="4"| Policy

| Information instruments

| A diverse range of activities such as training, research and development, and awareness campaigns to produce and share information

| Urban-LEDS II Capacity Building Workshop for cities in Laos arranged for local government by ICLEI Southeast Asia Secretariat and UN-Habitat (UN-Habitat, 2019)

| Information instruments tend to be low-cost and low-risk options, but their impact is unpredictable and the effects may be uneven ( [[#Henstra--2016|Henstra, 2016]] ). In the example of the workshops in Laos (UN-Habitat, 2019), the result was to map vulnerable sectors and build capacity for mainstreaming

|-
| Voluntary instruments

| Practices such as codes, labelling, management standards or audits, voluntarily, that can provide incentives for adaptation

| Singapore’s National Water Agency’s Voluntary Water Efficiency Labelling Scheme (Voluntary WELS) ( [[#Tortajada--2013|Tortajada and Joshi, 2013]] )

| A problem with voluntary instruments is that implementation varies. Uptake is likely to be more common among organisations self-identifying as ‘champions’ and less effective among other actors to bring about far-reaching change (Haug et al., 2010)

|-
| Economic instruments

| Taxes or subsidies can be used to promote adaptive activities

| US Office for Coastal Management NOAA Coastal Resilience Grants Program ( [[#NOOA--2019|NOOA, 2019]] )

| Economic incentives can be effective as they ‘engage local stakeholders and provide price signals that stimulate individual adaptation’ ( [[#Filatova--2014|Filatova, 2014]] ). However, uptake of incentives may be low (Sadink, 2013; [[#Henstra--2016|Henstra, 2016]] ) and resource intensiveness and potential regressive effects (equity impacts) must be considered ( [[#Henstra--2016|Henstra, 2016]] )

|-
| Regulatory instruments

| These include a range of mandatory requirements through controls, bans, quotas, licensing, standards often applied when a specific outcome is required

| Building codes to enhance structural stability for storm resilience in Moore, Oklahoma (US) (Ramseyer, Holliday and Floyd, 2016)

| Regulatory instruments can be effective in changing and institutionalising adaptation behaviours (Nilsson, Gerger Swartling and Eckerberg, 2012; [[#Henstra--2016|Henstra, 2016]] ), but outcomes depend on the strength of implementation (e.g., monitoring, transparency, mechanisms for accountability)

|-
| rowspan="3"| Process

| Visioning

| Events that bring together different stakeholders to produce a city vision

| Rotterdam Resilient City participatory processes to create resilience strategies (Resilient Rotterdam, 2016)

| There may be challenges in translating complex climate science into understandable and meaningful forms (Sheppard et al., 2011) and creating inclusive processes that allow for co-creation of visions, for example, by involving new digital platforms ( [[#Baibarac--2019|Baibarac and Petrescu, 2019]] )

|-
| Baseline studies

| Focus on understanding the current conditions in a neighbourhood or city from an interdisciplinary perspective

| ''Flood Risks, Climate''

''Change Impacts''

''and Adaptation Benefits''

''in Mumbai,'' an OECD assessment study (Hallegatte, Ranger and Bhattacharya, 2010)

| Baseline studies can be mobilised to track the progress of adaptation actions in multiple sectors over time. In the example of the study in Mumbai (Hallegatte, Ranger and Bhattacharya, 2010), the analysis includes different climate scenarios and quantification of how adaptation could reduce economic loss

|-
| Development priorities

| Specific methods to ensure an open definition of multiple priorities and contrasting values that will inform the planning process

| Participatory housing upgrading through the Baan Mankong Program in Bangkok (Thailand) (Berquist, Daniere and Drummond, 2015)

| Participatory planning can help navigate which action to take to build resilience and, at the same time address prioritised social concerns (Cloutier et al., 2015). As with all participatory processes, issues of recognition, access/inclusion and potential capture of the process by actors in power must be considered

|-
| rowspan="4"| Planning

| Profiles

| Develop a common understanding of how different sectors interact with adaptation and the governance capacity

| New York City Panel on Climate Change 2019 Report (Nycpcc, 2019)

| As with baseline studies, the development of profiles can inform plans for adaptation action, which considers social priorities and synergies across various sectors. Multiple forms of knowledge should be considered in the development of profiles (Codjoe, Owusu and Burkett, 2014)

|-
| Risk assessment

| This includes a range of instruments to evaluate the impact of risk

| Climate risk assessment for Buenos Aires, conducted by the World Bank (Mehrota et al., 2009)

| Risk assessments can be a useful starting point for adaptation. However, assessments do not directly prescribe adaptation options but must be seen as the basis for debate (Yuen, Jovicich and Preston, 2013). A common challenge is a lack of data at the city level (Maragno, Dalla Fontana and Musco, 2020; Cloutier et al., 2015)

|-
| Impact assessment tools

| Tools such as strategic impact assessments or sustainability assessments provide a means to assess the impact of specific policies and programmes concerning adaptive capacity

| Economic Impact Assessment

of Climate Change in Key

Sectors in Nepal ( [[#Government%20of%20Nepal--2014|Government of Nepal, 2014]] )

| Embedding climate risks into impact assessment tools (either mandatory or voluntary) builds resilience by integrating climate objectives into plans and specific projects ( [[#Richardson--2012|Richardson and Otero, 2012]] ), and they are seen as a legitimate tool in many contexts ( [[#Runhaar--2016|Runhaar, 2016]] )

|-
| Monitoring systems and indicators

| Systems to take measurements at regular intervals to specify progress against objectives and revise the planning process

| Climate Change Adaptation Indicators for London ( [[#London%20climate%20change%20partnership--2018|London climate change partnership, 2018]] )

| Monitoring systems are essential to make sure that formal objectives are met. However, many urban climate adaptations do not have monitoring and evaluation components ( [[#Woodruff--2016|Woodruff and Stults, 2016]] ) and there is no standard set of indicators to monitor adaptation or resilience (Brown, Shaker and Das, 2018; [[#Ford--2016|Ford and Berrang-Ford, 2016]] )

|-
| Management

| Budgets and audits

| Methods for the periodic revision of adaptation plans and policies

| Helsinki metropolitan area climate change adaptation monitoring strategy ( [[#HSY--2018|HSY, 2018]] )

| As with monitoring, budgets and audits can be incorporated into the adaptation planning process to ensure reflexivity and accountability. Low levels of implementation and monitoring of adaptation plans suggest that the uptake may be low (although the evidence is limited)

|}

<div id="6.4.3" class="h2-container"></div>

<span id="solution-spaces-to-address-the-policy-action-gap"></span>
=== 6.4.3 Solution Spaces to Address the ‘Policy Action Gap’ ===

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A policy action gap arises when administrative, communication, financial and other organisational blockages and inertia interrupt implementation of policy, the intent of political leadership and delivery of adaptation interventions on the ground (Ampaire et al., 2017; [[#Bell--2018|Bell, 2018]] ; [[#Shi--2019|Shi, 2019]] ). Political and policy confidence are key enabling conditions for adaptation decision making. As the AR5 already acknowledged, political inaction can arise where there is ''low confidence'' that adaptation actions can deliver a safer future for all (Chan et al., 2015a). For example, in some administrative jurisdictions (most of them local governments), calls by social movements for the adoption of Climate Emergency Declarations were addressed, however, practical outcomes in terms of adaptation have been limited, and may have foreclosed other future local actions (Nissen et al., 2020; Ruiz Campillo, Castán Broto and Westman, 2020) and raised concerns about maladaptation ( [[#Long--2019|Long and Rice, 2019]] ). Political inaction for climate justice is particularly visible in contexts of informality ( [[#Ziervogel--2020|Ziervogel, 2020]] ). Studies of city and local authority decision-making in South America (Di Giulio et al., 2019), Asia (Araos et al., 2017) and Europe (Lesnikowski et al., 2021) indicate that where there is insufficient political will (that is lack of prioritisation of the issue and inadequate allocation of resources including staffing and finance) and lack of inclusive, coordinated leadership, it can be difficult to overcome inaction, generating a policy action gap.

Multiple actors contribute to deliver climate change adaptation (Chan et al., 2015a; Bäckstrand et al., 2017). There are also multiple scales of action, from the provision of local services to large infrastructures of national or even international significance. Figure 6.5 provides an insight into the challenges that shape the policy action gap and a range of strategies that can help bridge policy action gaps. Effective adaptation governance will depend on the compound impact of the actions of multiple agents operating at different scales ( ''medium confidence'' , ''medium agreement'' ) (Di Giulio et al., 2019; Hale et al., 2021; Zwierzchowska et al., 2019).

<div id="_idContainer026" class="Figure"></div>

[[File:8a62cabd69f2a6256bad120819f9d5d3 IPCC_AR6_WGII_Figure_6_005.png]]

'''Figure 6.5 |''' '''Solution spaces for the policy action gap.''' The categories in the outer circle represent the tension that shape the policy action gap. On the one hand, there is a tension between the need to deliver action at scale (multi-level) and the need to mobilise the capacities in a given place (place-bound). On the other hand, there is a tension between the need to facilitate collaborations among multiple actors (multi-actor) and the fundamental impact that leadership can have in actor-led initiatives (actor-led). These two tensions interact creating different possibilities for transformative adaptation. The inner ring represents different areas of intervention that configure the solution space to tackle the policy action gap and that bridge these two tensions.

<div id="6.4.3.1" class="h3-container"></div>

<span id="delivers-on-the-needs-of-the-most-vulnerable"></span>
==== 6.4.3.1 Delivers on the Needs of the Most Vulnerable ====

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Success in urban adaptation is most often understood as requiring measurable outcomes and evaluation (see also [[#6.4.6|Section 6.4.6]] ). However, many adaptation outcomes are not measurable ( ''medium evidence'' , ''medium agreement'' ) (Béné et al., 2018). Adaptation action solely focused on action tends to ignore areas in the city for which there is no existing data even though actions in these areas may play an essential role in shaping resilience and its limits. Informal settlements and informal economies, which are integral in managing urban resources for effective climate adaptation, are not routinely included in formal urban and national monitoring( [[#Guibrunet--2016|Guibrunet and Castán Broto, 2016]] ). The resulting understanding and monitoring of city needs, capacities and actions that feed into policy is incomplete. The innovation, as well as particular concerns and capacities of the informal sector, which is often highly gendered, are not always measured ( [[#Brown--2016|Brown and McGranahan, 2016]] ). An emphasis on measurable adaptation outcomes may lead to prioritising techno-economic measures to adaptation at the local level. Technocratic approaches to environmental policy continue to shape local sustainability politics ( [[#Bulkeley--2015|Bulkeley, 2015]] ). The deployment of such technocratic approaches at the local scale is detrimental for democratic and collaborative practices ( [[#Metzger--2020|Metzger and Lindblad, 2020]] ). For example, while China has received praise in terms of delivering urban policies that put climate change at its core, thus suggesting its role providing leadership in climate change debates (Liu et al., 2014; [[#Wang--2015|Wang and He, 2015]] ; [[#Fu--2017|Fu and Zhang, 2017]] ), other analyses suggest that processes of planning should take greater account of certain groups and interests ( [[#Westman--2018|Westman and Broto, 2018]] ). Urban sustainability policy may, as a result, fail to deliver collaborative social and environmental objectives, and this is maladaptive in terms of CRD.

<div id="6.4.3.2" class="h3-container"></div>

<span id="moves-from-mainstreaming-to-transformative-adaptation"></span>
==== 6.4.3.2 Moves from Mainstreaming to Transformative Adaptation ====

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Two forms of mainstreaming are usually found in urban policy: incorporating climate adaptation into different sectors or incorporating climate adaptation in holistic sustainability or resilience plans, linking climate adaptation objectives with other social and development objectives (Reckien et al., 2019; Fainstein, 2018). The integration of climate adaptation in local policies in cities and settlements has often been seen as maintaining business-as-usual and not always aligned with transformative efforts to address structural drivers of vulnerability ( ''high confidence'' ). For example, mainstream actions that seek to advance other development objectives, as explained above, may reduce adaptation to ‘low-hanging fruits’, which may maintain business-as-usual practices without any fundamental transformation of the social, institutional and economic systems that drive vulnerabilities (Aylett, 2014). However, as explained above, mainstreaming can also generate wider processes of institutional change ( [[#6.4.2|Section 6.4.2]] ). Mainstream strategies may help to demonstrate how policy and frameworks can produce practical outcomes on the ground ( [[#Biesbroek--2020|Biesbroek and Delaney, 2020]] ). However, previous experiences in other sectors, such as gender mainstreaming, have shown the limitations of the mainstreaming approach, particularly in terms of addressing the structural drivers of inequality and vulnerability, and in achieving justice for those who suffer most ( [[#Moser--2017|Moser, 2017]] ). Local governments in particular, can link mainstreaming efforts with specific strategies that support justice in adaptation, including redistribution efforts to address vulnerabilities (see [[#6.3.2|Section 6.3.2]] ), representation in local institution and deliberative processes, and recognition of the conditions for self-realisation, including personal and collective safety (Agyeman et al., 2016; [[#Castán%20Broto--2017|Castán Broto and Westman, 2017]] ; [[#Castán%20Broto--2019|Castán Broto and Westman, 2019]] ; [[#Hess--2021|Hess and McKane, 2021]] ).

<div id="6.4.3.3" class="h3-container"></div>

<span id="facilitates-coordination-across-separate-actors-and-interests"></span>
==== 6.4.3.3 Facilitates Coordination Across Separate Actors and Interests ====

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Coordination of adaptation policy goals cuts across cities to integrate them into international processes of climate policy formulation; coordination in cities produces effective collective outcomes, cementation of common standards and methodologies for climate action (e.g., emission inventories) ( ''high agreement'' , ''medium evidence'' ) ( [[#Gordon--2017|Gordon and Johnson, 2017]] ; [[#Hsu--2021|Hsu and Rauber, 2021]] ). A collective global response has become a significant concern in international climate policy (Chan et al., 2015a). The UNFCCC has adopted a role as an orchestrator, including providing framework for city governments ( [[#Bäckstrand--2017|Bäckstrand and Kuyper, 2017]] ). Within cities, coordination can arise from active programming; for example, in Rotterdam and New York City, local authorities adopted long-term objectives and conditions for action, bringing together a multiplicity of actors across sectors to orient contributions, share knowledge and coordinate actions (Hölscher et al., 2019). Where national politics is supportive, coordination between city and national government is an asset ( [[#Chan--2019|Chan and Amling, 2019]] ; [[#Inch--2019|Inch, 2019]] ). The use of social media and digital mechanisms for coordination with public interest is ambiguous: in China, Weibo has facilitated an expansion of public engagement, although it remains top down and dominated by a few influencial actors (Liu and Zhao, 2017; [[#Yang--2021|Yang and Stoddart, 2021]] ). The pilot project #OurChangingClimate is one example of engaging youth with an understanding of their communities and their resilience or vulnerability to climate change (Napawan, Simpson and Snyder, 2017).

<div id="6.4.3.4" class="h3-container"></div>

<span id="enables-the-co-production-of-adaptation-strategies-with-citizens"></span>
==== 6.4.3.4 Enables the Co-production of Adaptation Strategies with Citizens ====

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Co-production can advance urban sustainability and social justice in cities and settlements to provide infrastructure adapted to the human scale and advancing SDGs ( ''medium confidence'' ) ( [[#McGranahan--2015|McGranahan, 2015]] ; [[#McGranahan--2016|McGranahan and Mitlin, 2016]] ; Chowdhury, Jahan and Rahman, 2017; [[#Moretto--2017|Moretto and Ranzato, 2017]] ; Nastiti et al., 2017). Co-production involves the active involvement of citizens and citizens’ organisation in iterative public service planning and delivery, and has become increasingly central in climate change responses alongside other bottom-up, community-led strategies (Bremer et al., 2019; Vasconcelos, Santos and Pacheco, 2013).

Co-production builds on public participation that brings together diverse sets of citizen interests, values and ideas to inform change and solve problems relating to a collective adaptation challenge (Archer et al., 2014; Bisaro, Roggero and Villamayor-Tomas, 2018; [[#Sarzynski--2015|Sarzynski, 2015]] ), and is increasingly important in environmental policy more widely ( [[#McGranahan--2015|McGranahan, 2015]] ; [[#Moretto--2017|Moretto and Ranzato, 2017]] ). For example, in three cities across the Czech Republic, stakeholder participation exercises were used to prioritise climate change risks, provide impetus and opportunity for knowledge co-production, and support adaptation planning (Krkoška Lorencová et al., 2018). In municipalities in Malaysia, stakeholders and citizens are active in the adaptation policy cycle ( [[#Palermo--2020|Palermo and Hernandez, 2020]] ). In Quebec, Canada, citizens collaborated with the municipal authority to bring together climate science and ‘ordinary’ urban management and design solutions (Cloutier et al., 2015). Service co-production enables integrating multiple actors in the management and delivery of public services ( [[#Pestoff--2013|Pestoff and Brandsen, 2013]] ; Pestoff, Brandsen and Verschuere, 2013). Civil society-driven, co-productive approaches can pioneer new forms of institutional relations and practices filling gaps where the public sector is absent or retreating (Frantzeskaki et al., 2016).

A co-production approach to climate change governance addresses the increasing public interest on climate change (Davies, Broto and Hügel, 2021). Youth movements such as Forum for Future have joined forces with other environmental and Indigenous organisations to lobby governments and institutions to action ( [[#Kenis--2021|Kenis, 2021]] ; [[#Fisher--2021|Fisher and Nasrin, 2021]] ; [[#Davies--2021|]] [[#Davies--2021|Davies and Hügel, 2021]] ; [[#Hayward--2021|Hayward, 2021]] ). These movements have built momentum moving local governments and other institutions to declare a climate emergency and have supported the creation of new forums where climate change can be addressed collectively, such as citizens’ assemblies. In the UK, for example, initial scepticism has led to the proliferation of citizen-centric Climate Assemblies at the local level (Sandover, Moseley and Devine-Wright, 2021).

Cooperative governance models provide insights for designing forms of participatory and collaborative planning through which communities and state actors can identify concrete actions and resources to improve services and mitigate structural vulnerabilities to disasters (Castán Broto et al., 2015). Experiences of co-production of sanitation services show how co-production may improve outcomes, while at the same time opening up avenues for grassroots organisations to claim political influence ( [[#McGranahan--2016|McGranahan and Mitlin, 2016]] ). Co-production may change institutions in response to external interventions ( [[#Das--2016|Das, 2016]] ). Although there are drawbacks in terms of the extent to which co-production can be used to legitimise unfair interventions within a given context, co-production may also be a tool for improving the accountability of dominant groups to vulnerable sectors of the population (Nastiti et al., 2017). There are limitations to co-production. The city of Barcelona, Spain, used co-production methodologies to develop the Barcelona Climate Plan. However, policymakers and civil servants were reluctant to use lay knowledge from participants and political deadlines constrained the time dedicated to deliberation (Satorras et al., 2020).

<div id="6.4.3.5" class="h3-container"></div>

<span id="addresses-inequalities-through-intersectional-perspectives"></span>
==== 6.4.3.5 Addresses Inequalities through Intersectional Perspectives ====

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Inclusive and sustainable adaptation can address the causes of systemic vulnerability ( ''medium evidence'' , ''high agreement'' ). This points to the fundamental requirements of adaptation action in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Climate justice theories draw on the environmental justice movement experiences at the local level ( [[#Bickerstaff--2012|Bickerstaff, 2012]] ; Bickerstaff, Walker and Bulkeley, 2013; Perez et al., 2015; Hall, Hards and Bulkeley, 2013). Slogans such as ‘leave no one behind’ embedded in international policy for cities and settlements recognise the connection between systems of oppression and exclusion that reproduce and perpetuate urban inequality and the delivery of urban services and security ( [[#Kabeer--2016|Kabeer, 2016]] ; [[#Stuart--2016|Stuart and Woodroffe, 2016]] ).

Intersectional strategies of action seek to consider the multiple forms of structural oppression experienced at the local level ( [[#Grunenfelder--2015|Grunenfelder and Schurr, 2015]] ) and, in the context of adaptation, explain how they produce or exacerbate vulnerabilities. For example, intersectionality ties with the idea of how multiple deprivations shape access to services (from sanitation to health and education) and the exposition to environmental risks ( [[#Sicotte--2014|Sicotte, 2014]] ; [[#Lau--2016|Lau and Scales, 2016]] ; [[#Van%20Aelst--2016|Van Aelst and Holvoet, 2016]] ; Lievanos and Horne, 2017; [[#Raza--2017|Raza, 2017]] ; [[#Yon--2017|Yon and Nadimpalli, 2017]] ; [[#European%20Environment%20Agency--2020|European Environment Agency, 2020]] ) (see Box 6.6 on the participation of women in local decision making bodies). For example, fisherwomen in the western coast of India rely on a complex arrangement of relationships around categories of class, caste and gender that shapes their possibilities to draw political resources to maintain their livelihoods and, hence, influence the dynamics of transformation ( [[#Thara--2016|Thara, 2016]] ). Intersectionality is central to build resilience across communities, rather than in particular areas ( [[#Khosla--2010|Khosla and Masaud, 2010]] ; Reckien et al., 2017). Including intersectionality deliberately in partnerships with communities can empower socially excluded groups and highlight justice issues while aligning agendas with local development priorities (Castán Broto et al., 2015a). Despite the ''high confidence'' on the growing importance of intersectionality concerns in the delivery of just environmental policies, there is ''limited evidence'' of its explicit inclusion in adaptation policies.

<div id="box-6.6" class="h2-container box-container"></div>

'''Box 6.6 | Invisible Women: Lack of Women’s Participation in Urban Authorities'''
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Women are under-represented internationally in governance structures ( [[#Prihatini--2019|Prihatini, 2019]] ; [[#Gonzalez-Eiras--2018|Gonzalez-Eiras and Sanz, 2018]] ; [[#Rashkova--2017|Rashkova and Zankina, 2017]] ; Koyuncu and Sumbas). This situation is reflected in urban authorities where participation by those who identify as women is low (Williams, Devika and Aandahl, 2015; [[#Kivoi--2014|Kivoi, 2014]] ). [[#Das--2014|Das (2014)]] reports deep-rooted economic inequalities are barriers for women’s participation in Indore, India, and that women’s collective empowerment could increase their bargaining power within households as well as in the community and state. [[#Kivoi--2014|Kivoi (2014)]] draws a similar conclusion presenting experiences from Kenya. The big question is how to make women more visible in the urban governance process?

What are the barriers women face and how do we increase their participation so that urban governance become more inclusive? Escalante and Valdivia (2015) show the participatory tools that can be used at different stages of planning for women’s empowerment using bottom-up planning models. Using these tools makes planning processes more inclusive. Araujo and Tejedo-Romero (2016) show from Spanish local councils that women’s political representation in municipalities has a positive influence on the level of transparency, increasing information transparency and reducing information asymmetry. In Myanmar, [[#Minoletti--2014|Minoletti (2014)]] increased levels of women’s participation in urban authorities helped to improve the quality of governance such as reducing corruption and conflicts, and improving service delivery.

People traditionally excluded from climate change governance, such as children, are also more likely to have their needs and priorities considered in urban planning for adaptation where there are national advocacy bodies, for example, Commissions for Future, or Children’s commissions ( [[#Nordström--2019|Nordström and Wales, 2019]] ; Watts et al., 2019; [[#Hayward--2021|Hayward, 2021]] ). An emphasis on procedural justice in decision-making has potential to produce transformational outcomes where these are defined as significantly reducing inequality ( [[#Holland--2017|Holland, 2017]] ). In this light, emerging evidence suggests transformative adaptation is more likely to occur if people have the agency to influence decisions and enact change ( [[#Archer--2015|Archer and Dodman, 2015]] ). Cities are also more likely to build and develop infrastructure that serves the needs of disadvantaged groups when urban climate governance encourages wider community participation and inclusion ( [[#Ziervogel--2019a|Ziervogel, 2019a]] ; Hölscher et al., 2019; Anguelovski et al., 2016). This can help to stimulate innovation, shift power relations and address diverse needs (Martel and Sutherland, 2019; Chu, Schenk and Patterson, 2018). Experiments in including marginalised groups in adaptation planning are starting to emerge in places such as Quito (Ecuador), Lima (Peru), Manizales (Colombia) and Surat (India), where disadvantaged youth, informal settlers and other vulnerable communities are included in discussions of short-/long-term adaptation needs and fair distribution of adaptation resources (Chu, Anguelovski and Carmin, 2016; Sara, Pfeffer and Baud, 2017; Hardoy and Velásquez Barrero, 2014). These processes can also support citizens to manage risks as they encounter them in their everyday life (Ziervogel et al., 2017).

To respond to urban injustices, attention needs to be paid to both the local level and to broader system-wide governance issues (that are unpacked further in [[#6.4|Section 6.4]] ). At the local level, it is important to understand who is most vulnerable to climate risk, which is likely to be related to class, race, gender, ability and age ( [[#Wilby--2012|Wilby and Keenan, 2012]] ; [[#Ranganathan--2019|Ranganathan and Bratman, 2019]] ; Thomas, Cretney and Hayward, 2019). Factors such as age and levels of ability, as well as those pursuing outdoor livelihoods, have a direct link to higher vulnerability to heat stress (Conry et al., 2015). In least-developed countries, less than 60% of the urban population have access to piped water which impacts on health and well-being, and emphasises the importance of alternative resources for these households (World Health Organization, Nations and Fund, 2017).

<div id="6.4.3.6" class="h3-container"></div>

<span id="supports-visionary-and-imaginative-design"></span>
==== 6.4.3.6 Supports Visionary and Imaginative Design ====

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The failure to deliver inclusive and sustainable adaptation contributes to a collective inability to mobilise the power of creative community vision ( ''medium evidence'' , ''high agreement'' ). Urban design plays a central role to support creative adaptation strategies (Box 6.7). Much adaptation action repeats previous experiences. However, the potential for building resilience to deliver adaptation, especially transformative adaptation, requires an articulation of collective visions of the future and the imagination of new or alternative urban futures (Glaas et al., 2018), including through design and deliberate engagement with cultural artefacts, technologies and performances ( [[#Jordan--2020|Jordan, 2020]] ). Social movements can be powerful sources of such alternative visions of the future, as exemplified by recent Youth Climate Strikes and Extinction Rebellion ( ''limited evidence'' , ''medium agreement'' ). Community protest such as Youth Climate Strikes have influenced urban climate policy agendas including the declaration of climate emergency in municipalities worldwide, fostering a new debate on climate change, although their impact on local policy is ambiguous (Davidson et al., 2020; Thomas, Cretney and Hayward, 2019; Prendergast et al., 2021; Ruiz Campillo, Castán Broto and Westman, 2020). Social movements on climate mitigation, such as the Transition Movement and Transition Towns ( [[#Feola--2014|Feola and Nunes, 2014]] ), and school strikes may serve as an example for mobilisations more specifically about climate adaptation and the way new, networked, grassroots citizen activism and community organisations can encourage urban institutional change ( [[#Gunningham--2019|Gunningham, 2019]] ; Jordan et al., 2018; Wahlström et al., 2019). Other strategies such as cultural production and exhibitions may also have an impact (Stripple, Nikoleris and Hildingsson, 2021).

<div id="box-6.7" class="h2-container box-container"></div>

'''Box 6.7 | The Role of Urban Design in Local Adaptation'''
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Since AR5, there has been a growing literature about the role of urban design, creating new opportunities for both incremental and transformative adaptive responses to climate change ( ''medium evidence'' , ''high agreement'' ). For example, some of these creative design approaches compliment and extend regulatory and land use planning approaches such as form-based codes and established certifications such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design–Neighbourhood Design (LEED-ND) ( [[#Garde--2018|Garde, 2018]] ; [[#Garde--2017|Garde and Hoff, 2017]] ) and the USA’s Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) ( [[#Valente--2014|Valente, 2014]] ). Emphasis on sufficiency has also influenced urban design, for example, with the mobilisation of ‘doughnut’ economics that emphasise both a social foundation and an environmental ceiling, for example Amsterdam ( [[#Raworth--2017|Raworth, 2017]] ). However, such cases are rare, substantial public investment is often required ( ''high confidence'' , ''high agreement'' ) (see also [[#6.4.7|Section 6.4.7]] on finance and insurance). Other approaches underscore innovation and creativity, at the essence of which are context-specific interventions that draw on a compendium of urban design principles such as indeterminacy (to accommodate climate uncertainty), polyvalency and diversity, and harmony with nature ( [[#Dhar--2017|Dhar and Khirfan, 2017]] ). Creative interventions include the daylighting of buried streams to create climate adaptive public realms (Khirfan et al., 2020; Khirfan, Mohtat and Peck, 2020). For example, the demolition of a major expressway and the restoration of the Cheonggyecheon Stream reorganised downtown Seoul, South Korea, and significantly contributed to climate change adaptation through stormwater management and reducing the urban heat island effect ( [[#Kim--2019|Kim and Jung, 2019]] ). Biomimicry and ecological infrastructure are design features that governance bodies can use to reshape space and contribute to place making ( [[#Santos%20Nouri--2017|Santos Nouri and Costa, 2017]] ; Prior et al., 2018). For example, urban metabolism and local ecological knowledge has constituted the essence of urban design interventions on the Island of Tobago in ways that capitalise on the contiguous relationship between ecosystems (e.g., the mangrove forest) and human actions (rainwater harvesting and grey water management) ( [[#Khirfan--2016|Khirfan and Zhang, 2016]] ). While lack of funding or design capacity, restrictive planning regulations, inequality and competing urban agendas can create barriers for the implementation of creative design solutions. Transition architecture movements are also driving local urban adaptation experiments and exploring ways local learning can be scaled up ( [[#Tubridy--2020|Tubridy, 2020]] ; [[#Irwin--2019|Irwin, 2019]] ).

<div id="6.4.4" class="h2-container"></div>

<span id="limits-of-adaptation-capacity-at-the-institutional-level"></span>
=== 6.4.4 Limits of Adaptation Capacity at the Institutional Level ===

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In delivering adaptation in cities, settlements and infrastructure, however, there is a need to understand and measure the adaptive capacity and limits to manage future risks in communities, institutions and organisations (Filho et al., 2019). However efforts to track urban adaptation lack consistent methods, metrics and data gathering (Olazabal et al., 2019b). The scale of complex, cascading challenges, limited finance and governance capacity, combined with the impacts of growing social inequality and sustainable development priorities can result in both soft and hard limits on cities government’s capacity to adapt to climate change ( [[#Chanza--2018|Chanza, 2018]] ; Sanchez Rodriguez, Ürge-Vorsatz and Barau, 2018; Lehmann et al., 2015; Di Giulio et al., 2018). Hard limits to adaptation are identified when it is unfeasible to avoid severe risks, while soft limits exist when technological and socioeconomic options are not immediately deployable ( [[#IPCC--2014|IPCC, 2014]] ). In urban contexts, soft limits may become hard limits when large numbers of people are unable to avoid severe climate-related risks of loss and damage (Mechler et al., 2020). Climate change-related loss and damage that are intangible also require more caution in assessment processes ( [[#Roberts--2018|Roberts and Pelling, 2018]] ; Andrei et al., 2015; Barnett et al., 2016; [[#Thomas--2018|Thomas and Benjamin, 2018]] ). Incorporating Indigenous knowledge can identify people-oriented and place-specific scenarios, leading to development of urban adaptation policies that foster identity, dignity, self-determination and better collective decision making/capacity to act ( [[#McShane--2017|McShane, 2017]] ; [[#Preston--2017|Preston, 2017]] ), and are also sensitive to the local context and limits of community adaptation ( [[#Makondo--2018|Makondo and Thomas, 2018]] ).

Urban transformations represent forms of adaptation that challenge the principles in which a society is established (Pelling, O’Brien and Matyas, 2015) and can be deployed to go beyond the existing limits of development justice and climate change adaptation capacity. While not all adaptation will be transformative, transformative capacities support both ongoing adaptation efforts and the broader systemic change processes that align adaptation efforts with decarbonisation requirements and the delivery of SDGs. ‘Urban transformative capacity’ focuses on understanding what elements of a system to respond to external changing conditions in a manner that transforms the system toward a more sustainable state (Ziervogel, Cowen and Ziniades, 2016). The capacities required to deliver adaptation action in cities and settlements are ‘transformative capacities’, because they move away from thinking of adaptation as an adjustment to a changing external environment to think instead of it as a reconfiguration of infrastructures and institutions to build resilience in the surrounding environment ( [[#Pelling--2010|Pelling, 2010]] ; [[#Matyas--2015|Matyas and Pelling, 2015]] ). Reflective and iterative learning is integral to fostering transformative capacity (c.f. Luederitz et al., 2017). Transformative capacity extends across multiple agency levels or geographical locations, as well as various domains (Wilson et al., 2013; Olsson, Bodin and Folke, 2010; Keeler et al., 2019b). The components of transformative capacity in cities and settlements can be grouped into three categories (see Table 6.9): (1) agency and forms of interaction, (2) development processes and (3) relational dimensions (Wolfram, 2016). Alongside different forms of technical expertise, there is a need to broaden the interventions of disadvantaged populations in urban sustainability (Wolfram, Borgström and Farrelly, 2019).

Table 6.9 presents a defined framework of ideas that local institutions, mostly local governments, can put into practice to improve their adaptive capacity. Enabling transformative capacity requires novel governance arrangements based on broad participation, a diversity of actor networks, socially embedded leadership and empowerment of communities, alongside an understanding of the system dynamics, which refers to system awareness, collective visions, practical experimentation, reflexivity, capacity building, institutional mainstreaming and the multiple levels of agency or scales (Ziervogel, Cowen and Ziniades, 2016; [[#Ziervogel--2019a|Ziervogel, 2019a]] ; [[#Wolfram--2019|Wolfram, 2019]] ; [[#Hölscher--2020|Hölscher and Frantzeskaki, 2020]] ; Castán Broto et al., 2018). Many of the transformative capacity components are already visible in local adaptation actions, but many efforts emphasise one element at the expense of others without delivering a systemic perspective. In particular, measures to facilitate the empowerment of communities, reflexivity and social learning are rare but often point toward heightened capacities for transformative, alongside incremental, adaptation (Castán Broto et al., 2018). Transformative capacity frameworks may foster inclusive governance to deliver risk management that works for the poor in countries such as South Africa ( [[#Ziervogel--2019a|Ziervogel, 2019a]] ).

'''Table 6.9 |''' Components of urban transformative capacity with broader relevance for multiple forms of adaptation (Wolfram, 2016).

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! colspan="2"| Component

! Manifests in…

|-
| rowspan="6"| '''Agency and interaction'''

| '''Inclusive, multiform urban governance (C1)'''

Participation/inclusiveness (C1.1)

| Citizens and/or civil society organisations participating directly in planning and/or decision making processes.

|-
| Diverse governance modes / Networks (C1.2)

| Different and various stakeholders working together and building connections between sectors in different manners.

|-
| Sustained intermediaries and hybridization (C1.3)

| An intermediary positioned between the stakeholders of a project.

|-
| '''Transformative leadership (C2)'''

| Leadership acting as a collaborative driving force in an initiative.

|-
| '''Empowered communities (C3)'''

'''Social needs (C3.1)'''

| Either analysing or addressing social needs.

|-
| Autonomous communities (C3.2)

| Integrating into the design of the project different aspects of community empowerment.

|-
| rowspan="7"| '''Development processes'''

| '''System awareness (C4)'''

Baseline analysis and system(s) awareness (C4.1)

| Agendas aiming to tackle sustainability challenges after deliberate analysis of urban systems.

|-
| Recognition of path dependencies (C4.2)

| Explicitly tackling systemic barriers to change.

|-
| '''Foresight (C5)'''

Co-production of knowledge (C5.1)

| Involvement of various and multiple stakeholders in knowledge production processes.

|-
| A collective vision for change (C5.2)

| An explicit future vision shared among stakeholders as a means for motivating partners and fostering commitments.

|-
| Alternative scenarios, future pathways (C5.3)

| Comparative scenarios that evaluate the mutual shaping of social, ecological, economic and technological dimensions.

|-
| '''Experimentation with disruptive solutions (C6)'''

| The deliberate use of experiments or ideas that seek to challenge the existing landscape of established policies, technologies or social practices.

|-
| '''Innovation embedding (C7)'''

Resources for capacity development (C7.1)

| Project stakeholders sharing resources for capacity development outside the project to disseminate and multiply results.

|-
|
| Mainstreaming transformative action (C7.2)

| Attempts to generalise the project operation or results beyond the initial context of an application.

|-
|
| Regulatory frameworks (C7.3)

| A new regulation was established as a result of the project or as part of the project activities.

|-
| rowspan="3"| '''Relational dimensions'''

| '''Reflexivity and social learning (C8)'''

| Stakeholders reflecting on learning and capacity building processes.

|-
| '''Working across human agency levels (C9)'''

| Project activities contributing to capacity development across human agency levels.

|-
| '''Working across levels and scales (C10)'''

| Project activities contributing to building capacity across geographical or political–administrative levels.

|}

<div id="6.4.5" class="h2-container"></div>

<span id="financing-adaptation-in-cities-settlements-and-infrastructures"></span>
=== 6.4.5 Financing Adaptation in Cities, Settlements and Infrastructures ===

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The amount invested in urban adaptation is limited. The Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance tracked USD 3.7 billion of investments in adaptation projects in 2017–2018, of which only 3–5% had an urban component (Richmond et al., 2021). Cities and settlements frequently face barriers of inadequate financing for climate adaptation and mitigation ( [[#Cook--2018|Cook and Chu, 2018]] ). Finance barriers interact with economic barriers and socioeconomic conflicts and need to be considered within an integrated perspective (Hinkel et al., 2018).

Many early leaders in climate adaptation are, therefore, perhaps unsurprisingly, political capitals or financial centres in the Global North with much larger resource envelopes and well-developed fiscal and financing capacities (Westerhoff, Keskitalo and Juhola, 2011; Shi, Chu and Debats, 2015).

The funding required to deliver climate change adaptation will depend on choices made about climate mitigation ( [[#IPCC--2018|IPCC, 2018]] ). Still, the cost of adapting to a global temperature increase of 1.5°C will be a fraction of the cost of adapting to a global temperature increase exceeding 3 o C ( [[#IPCC--2019a|IPCC, 2019a]] ; [[#IPCC--2019b|IPCC, 2019b]] ; Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2018). It will also depend on selected adaptation options, as they have different capital requirements, operating costs and returns on investment (See 6.3). Finally, costs depend on financing sources and mechanisms selected.

Broadly, there are two options for adaptation investment: funding, direct expenditure in preparation for or response to climate change impacts, and financing, the deployment of market-based instruments to attract third-party resources to an adaptation action ( [[#Keenan--2018|Keenan, 2018]] ; Banhalmi-Zakar et al., 2016). Using funding can be a lower-cost strategy, as there is no third party expecting a return on investment. However, using financing can expand the total resources available for adaptation ( [[#White--2019|White and Wahba, 2019]] ).

The choice of funding and financing mechanism is often based on implicit economic world views (Keenan, Chu and Peterson, 2019) or on the technical support available to sub-national governments, such as preparing municipal bonds or contracting for public–private partnerships ( [[#Bisaro--2018|Bisaro and Hinkel, 2018]] ). The urban finance literature has long called for critical interrogation of these choices, as adaptation finance has profound justice implications (Khan et al., 2020). However, the literature on adaptation investments is limited (Harman, Taylor and Lane, 2015; Keenan, Chu and Peterson, 2019). The use of municipal debt such as green bonds, for example, intensify the financial and environmental risks borne primarily by the poor, the working class or people discriminated against because of race, sexual orientation or ability ( [[#Bigger--2019|Bigger and Millington, 2019]] ).

The climate imperative has not yet fundamentally changed urban infrastructure investment ( [[#White--2019|White and Wahba, 2019]] ). Mobilising adaptation investment in urban areas continues to depend on strengthening public finance capacities (particularly evaluating and integrating climate risk into economic decisions) and meeting private investors and lenders’ expectations. Climate change creates new investment risks and physical risks ( [[#Martimort--2016|Martimort and Straub, 2016]] ), and highlights the limitations of current models to account for risk and uncertainty when pricing investments ( [[#Keenan--2018|Keenan, 2018]] ). Private investors and lenders do not seem ready to provide adaptation finance on significantly easier or cheaper terms than conventional finance ( [[#White--2019|White and Wahba, 2019]] ). However, a variety of means for financing climate change adaptation in urban areas exist (Table 6.10).

'''Table 6.10 |''' Finance instruments to deliver adaptation in urban areas. Source: adapted from Richmond et al. (2021) and [[#UN-Habitat--2016b|UN-Habitat (2016b)]]

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Type of finance

! Finance source

! Instruments

! Examples of specific instruments in urban settings

|-
| rowspan="2"| Public

| Municipal government

| Local revenue generation

| Utility fees

Open space funds/land value capture

General obligation bonds

Local property, income and sales taxes

|-
| State/Provincial government

National government

| Grants, incentives, technical assistance funds

| Insurance

Tax advantages

Low-cost project debt

Infrastructure investment funds

Shared taxes

Intergovernmental funding transfers/revenue sharing

|-
| rowspan="2"| Public finance

| National development finance institutions (DFIs)

Bilateral DFIs

Multilateral DFIs

| Grants, project debt (low-cost market rate), technical assistance, risk instruments

| Risk mitigation support of PPP

Project level debt

Project preparation facilities and other technical advisory

Insurance

|-
| Climate funds

| Grants, debt, equity, guarantees

| Dedicated climate fund

|-
| rowspan="8"| Private

| Commercial FIs

| Project debt and equity (market rate), guarantees

| Internal climate risk mitigation

PPP financing

Climate loans

|-
| Private equity (PE)/infrastructure funds

| Project equity (market rate)

| Direct urban infrastructure investments

Corporate equity investment

|-
| Institutional investors

| Project debt and equity (market rate)

| Direct urban infrastructure investment

Corporate debt and equity investments

|-
| Private insurance

| Insurance

| Public and private risk mitigation

Catastrophe bonds

Parametric insurance

|-
| Corporate actors

| Balance sheet financing and project equity (market rate)

| Internal risk mitigation

Leasing

PPP

|-
| Household

| Balance sheet financing

| Internal climate risk mitigation

|-
| Non-profits, philanthropies and foundations

| Grants, technical assistance, donations

| Microfinance

Impact investment

|-
| Communities

| Grants and collective support

| Risk sharing

Upgrading funds

Community development funds

Crowdfunding

|}

<div id="6.4.5.1" class="h3-container"></div>

<span id="urban-adaptation-financing-gap"></span>
==== 6.4.5.1 Urban Adaptation Financing Gap ====

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Cities and settlements in higher-income countries typically have access to funding that could be used to enhance resilience and build adaptive capacity; this includes both the private resources of individual households and firms (which varies significantly within and among cities) and public budgets of different government tiers (see Table 6.10).

Depending on fiscal devolution levels within a country, public revenues may be collected and managed primarily at the national, state, metropolitan or local level. In federal countries, sub-national governments collect an average of 49.4% of public revenues, compared with only 20.7% in unitary countries ( [[#OECD/UCLG--2019|OECD/UCLG, 2019]] ). For example, sub-national revenues represent over a quarter of total public revenues in Belgium, Canada and Denmark, but less than 5% in Greece, Ireland and New Zealand ( [[#OECD/UCLG--2019|OECD/UCLG, 2019]] ). The share of the national revenue transferred to sub-national governments also varies significantly among countries: grants and subsidies account for over three-quarters of sub-national government revenue in Malta, but less than a quarter of sub-national revenue in Iceland ( [[#OECD/UCLG--2019|OECD/UCLG, 2019]] ). A local government’s capacity to collect revenues is further mediated by incomes within a city (which dictates the prospective tax base) and the capacity of civil servants to administer taxes, fees and charges. The result is that metropolitan and local governments’ budgets vary dramatically, across and within countries. For example, per capita municipal budgets vary from USD 1114 in Saskatoon and USD 2682 in Peterborough (Canada), USD 2635 in Leipzig and USD 3638 in Freiburg (Germany), to USD 4907 in Bristol and USD 5612 in Aberdeen (UK) ( [[#Löffler--2016|Löffler, 2016]] ).

Revenue streams are often insufficient relative to the scale of adaptation requirements. For example, Kano, Nigeria, is a large urban area that urgently needs investment in human development and climate resilience but where a fragmented local government has little capacity to finance their climate plans (Mohammed, Hassan and Badamasi, 2019). Many local governments are unable to mobilise funds for adaptation as they face competing priorities, meaning that resources for resilience must be allocated by higher levels of government ( [[#Hughes--2015|Hughes, 2015]] ), which also perceive opportunity costs to adaptation investments. Funding from non-state actors is, therefore, proving important. For example, in the USA, private foundations and non-profit organisations account for 17% and 16%, respectively, of adaptation support in urban areas (Carmin, Nadkarni and Rhie, 2012). However, tapping into these funding sources raises complex questions about accountability and ownership of urban adaptation (Chu, Schenk and Patterson, 2018). Land reclamation may foster real estate markets and mobilise finance for adaptation, as shown in Germany, the Netherlands and the Maldives (Bisaro et al., 2019).

City governments need to anticipate climate shocks and stresses, and design their operating models and investment plans accordingly to ensure financial resilience (Clarvis et al, 2015). Climate risks threaten fiscal models, for example, a drought may disrupt water revenues by reducing total water consumption and incentivising households and firms to invest in independent water storage or supply infrastructure (Simpson et al., 2019). Storm surges and sea level rise may threaten sunk investments in revenue-generating infrastructures such as toll roads or electricity generation and transmission systems. .

<div id="6.4.5.2" class="h3-container"></div>

<span id="barriers-to-adaptation-investments"></span>
==== 6.4.5.2 Barriers to Adaptation Investments ====

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Common sources of adaptation finance might include donor agencies including the Green Climate Fund, sovereign funds (e.g., the Bangladesh Climate Change Resilience Fund) and private finance from commercial banks, investment companies, pension funds and insurance companies (Floater et al., 2017). These capital sources have different risk–return expectations and investment horizons, so they will suit different types and stages of projects. Many sub-national governments in the Global North have access to well-developed domestic, if not global, capital markets to raise and steer finance for urban investment (Banhalmi-Zakar et al., 2016).

However, investments in ''ex ante'' urban climate adaptation may prove less attractive to these financiers than other opportunities because of their long maturities and high risk (Keenan, Chu and Peterson, 2019) (see also Table 6.11). Many generate economic returns primarily through avoided losses from climate impacts, which are difficult to measure and are, in any case, more attractive to funders than financiers ( [[#Kaufman--2014|Kaufman, 2014]] ). ''Ex post'' , insurance already plays a critical role in protecting urban households, firms and other stakeholders from the full economic costs of high-severity, low-frequency events by sharing risk over time and space. Insurance can also be designed to incentivise risk-reducing behaviours and investments (Banhalmi-Zakar et al., 2016; [[#Paddam--2017|Paddam and Wong, 2017]] ). Some researchers suggest that, in urban environments, insurance practices are helping to establish adaptation and risk as a new area of public health and public protection. For example, local governments are using new risk transfer instruments, such as re-insurance and catastrophe bonds, to fund investments in resilience projects and disaster recovery ( [[#Collier--2021|Collier and Cox, 2021]] ). However, the commercial feasibility of private sector insurance depends on more robust estimates of current and future risks, and premiums commensurate with the ability and willingness of consumers to pay. Therefore, ''ex ante'' investments must complement insurance schemes to improve climate modelling and reduce climate risk (Surminski, Bouwer and Linnerooth-Bayer, 2016). The private sector also faces practical barriers to invest in adaptation.

'''Table 6.11 |''' Barriers to finance adaptation in urban areas (Richmond et al., 2021)

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Barrier application to urban adaptation

Barriers to adaptation finance

!
|-
| Poor policy environment

| Municipal policy environment lacks conditions supportive to private adaptation investment (e.g., lack of requirements that private sector organisations operating in cities implement climate risk mitigation strategies or invest in systemic resilience).

|-
| Poor institutional environment

| Legal and regulatory infrastructure in the city lacks clarity of purpose toward addressing urban climate risks (e.g., no limitations on development in high climate risk areas).

|-
| Poor market environment

| Market environment is unsupportive toward adaptation investment (e.g., lack of creditworthy partner municipalities for private sector engagement).

|-
| High cost of projects and unknown value add

| The value or benefit of the technology is uncertain; private sector actors do not sufficiently consider climate risk in decisions; upfront costs of technology are high.

|-
| Lack of technical capacity

| Prospective users of technology do not have technical capacity to implement (e.g., limited or siloed expertise in implementing resilient urban infrastructure solutions).

|-
| Limitations of private insurance

| Insurance has to date largely not been engaged in cities to efficiently transfer risk or incentivise adaptive action and the private insurance industry is facing considerable risk associated with the accelerating impacts of climate change in.

|}

National governments typically determine the fiscal transfers that sub-national governments receive and the taxes, fees and charges they permit to collect (see for example CBO, 2016). Local governments may strengthen their own source revenue collection and management capacities to better exploit these funding streams and improve their balance sheets, but their total budget will be limited to these funding sources (Ahmad et al., 2019). The amount of local public funding available for urban adaptation depends on the relationships across different government levels.

Similarly, mobilising private finance for urban adaptation projects demands robust institutional, fiscal and regulatory frameworks, which are typically national authorities’ responsibility. For local governments to access private finance for adaptation may require national (or in federal countries, state) governments to reform policies and rules governing municipal borrowing, public–private partnerships, land value capture instruments and other financing mechanisms ( [[#Ware--2017|Ware and Banhalmi-Zakar, 2017]] ). Such fiscal reforms tap into fundamental political and policy issues, such as local governments’ autonomy or the tariff-setting powers of national ministries ( [[#Gorelick--2018|Gorelick, 2018]] ; [[#White--2019|White and Wahba, 2019]] ).

Access to private finance can support infrastructure development through private provisioning, public–private partnerships (PPP) and public debt arrangements ( ''high confidence'' ) (see also [[#6.4.1.2|Section 6.4.1.2]] ). Private provisioning attracts coastal adaptation investment when returns are high (e.g., when there is a real estate market associated with it) ( [[#Bisaro--2018|Bisaro and Hinkel, 2018]] ). Public–private partnerships attract investments from dredging and construction companies that involve a large share of operational costs ( [[#Bisaro--2018|Bisaro and Hinkel, 2018]] ). Public debt instruments appear less successful in supporting investment in adaptation infrastructure. Real estate firms focus on adaptation actions if they perceive climate change impacts such as flooding may impact their activity, mostly focusing on adaptation action as a means to gain competitive advantage ( [[#Teicher--2018|Teicher, 2018]] ).

There have been numerous attempts to innovate in climate finance, for example, mobilising community and cooperative forms of finance, or crowdfunding, which have already proven effective in the context of mitigation ( [[#De%20Broeck--2018|De Broeck, 2018]] ). A well-studied instrument in urban environments is land-value capture. Land-value capture refers to communities’ ability to capture the benefit of increased land values that result from public investment or other government actions ( [[#Germán--2020|Germán and Bernstein, 2020]] ). There is considerable potential to mobilise land-value capture for adaptation ( ''limited evidence'' , ''medium agreement'' ), but its potential remains unexplored ( [[#Dunning--2020|Dunning and Lord, 2020]] ). While there are numerous examples of the mobilisation of land-value capture to finance sustainable development action ( [[#Li--2019|Li and Love, 2019]] ; Wang, Samsura and van der Krabben, 2019), there is ''limited evidence'' of its use in climate adaptation (see Case Study 6.2). These innovations are particularly important in contexts where resources are very constrained, such as in the financing of adaptation in African cities (See Box 6.7).

Corruption in urban adaptation and disaster risk management finance is a considerable but little researched challenge observed from all world regions (Sanderson et al., 2021). Corruption generates maladaptation, increasing risk, for example where infrastructure is constructed with faulty design, substandard materials and inadequate maintenance (Kabir et al., 2021). More widely, corruption increases vulnerability and reduces capacity by damaging the body politic, distorting markets and reducing economic growth ( [[#Alexander--2017|Alexander, 2017]] ). The construction and infrastructure industries are repeatedly identified as sources of corruption ( [[#GIACC--2020|GIACC, 2020]] ; [[#Chan--2017|Chan and Owusu, 2017]] ; Sanderson et al., 2021). Corruption and misuse of climate finance is exacerbated by limited public access to information, political considerations in finance decision making and lack of accountability for decisions and actions (Kabir et al., 2021). In construction, Owusu et al. (2019) found causes included too-close relationships, poor professional ethical standards, negative industrial and working conditions, negative role models and inadequate sanctions throughout the phases of construction. Post-disaster response and reconstruction, and periods of surge funding following international or national policy priorities are especially vulnerable to corruption, with increased funding and pressure to lower norms of financial management ( [[#Imperiale--2021|Imperiale and Vanclay, 2021]] ). Mixed delivery mechanisms have been shown to reduce corruption, for example where civil society organisations are involved in project approval stages, although there is also a risk that civil society organisations will themselves become entangled in corruption. International donors have a role to play in working with government and civil society to promote wider scrutiny and transparency of financing processes and project delivery through promoting media and press freedom and legislation for access to information to reduce corruption by enhancing transparency and accountability (Kabir et al., 2021).

Expanding the resource envelope available for adaptation investment is often beyond the authority or competency of city governments. Sovereign and state governments have critical roles to play in providing funding or securing finance for adaptation investments. Such a role is particularly important where the impacts of climate change are distributed inequitably across a country, so that the costs borne by a city may exceed local budgets.

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'''Box 6.8 | Challenges to Investment in Adaptation in African Cities'''
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In Africa, new investment in institutions can support other enabling conditions for climate-resilient urban development ( [[#Robins--2018|Robins, 2018]] ). While several studies reveal the net economic benefit of climate-resilient, low-carbon African cities ( [[#Global%20Commission%20on%20Economy%20and%20Climate--2017|Global Commission on Economy and Climate, 2017]] ), structural impediments remain to the mobilisation of investment for the types of public good infrastructure that would unlock this benefit (Dodman et al., 2017).

Since the 1960s, gross capital formation (sometimes called Gross domestic investment) has been less than 22% in Africa, whilst in East Asian countries, it has risen to 42% (OECD, 2016). Africa faces an estimated 40% infrastructure financing gap, but this gap is almost certainly higher in the continent’s rapidly growing cities (Baker and McKenzie, 2015). Relative poverty, weak or absent local fiscal systems, and contested tenure that prevents land being used as collateral, have restricted investment in African cities (Berrisford, Cirolia and Palmer, 2018; Dodman et al., 2017). Sub-Saharan African countries are reaching the 40% urban threshold at national per capita incomes of around USD 1000 per annum, significantly poorer than South-East Asian and Latin American cities at the same level of urbanisation (Freire, Lall and Leipziger, 2014). Absolute poverty, in conjunction with weak revenue collection and low levels of investment, render conventional infrastructure finance difficult ( [[#Smolka--2013|Smolka, 2013]] ; [[#Global%20Commission%20on%20Economy%20and%20Climate--2017|Global Commission on Economy and Climate, 2017]] ; Berrisford, Cirolia and Palmer, 2018; [[#Cirolia--2019|Cirolia and Mizes, 2019]] ). Sprawled urban development in Africa might make the provision of public services both more energy intensive and three times more expensive than high-density developments ( [[#Collier--2016|Collier and Venables, 2016]] ).

Data on private finance in African cities are inadequate ( [[#OECD--2017|OECD, 2017]] ), but all of Africa secured just 3.5% (USD 46 billion) of global foreign direct investment (FDI), despite a 10.9% increase in 2018 ( [[#UNCTAD--2019|UNCTAD, 2019]] ). Mining and the extraction and processing of fossil fuels accounted for almost a third of greenfield FDI in Africa in 2018 ( [[#UNCTAD--2019|UNCTAD, 2019]] ). The FDI secured by cities has tended to serve an urban elite and has been used to build shopping malls, housing settlements and airlines ( [[#Watson--2015|Watson, 2015]] ). It is also unevenly distributed across the continent and within cities. Five countries; Egypt, South Africa, Congo, Morocco and Ethiopia, accounted for more than half the total FDI in 2018 ( [[#UNCTAD--2019|UNCTAD, 2019]] ), leaving large parts of Africa’s growing cities described by financiers as ‘high risk’ and their citizens deemed ‘unbankable’ (UCLG, 2016).

Private financiers have begun entering public–private partnerships with African cities, often supported by bilateral agreements between the respective countries, including the growing number of Asian and Middle-Eastern countries contributing to infrastructure in African cities ( [[#Cirolia--2019|Cirolia and Rode, 2019]] ). In the absence of enforceable spatial plans and strong urban governance, the risk remains that individual investment projects that are completed will aggregate to create urban systems that are at risk from climate change through the locking-in of inequality, urban sprawl, flooding and greenhouse gas emissions (Dodman et al., 2017; Wachsmuth, Cohen and Angelo, 2016). These risks will constitute a future burden for asset owners, financiers and insurers, and cause a progressive hemorrhaging of economic opportunities in Africa’s urban centres (UCLG, 2016).

Securing climate finance for urban development is contingent upon robust multi-level governance arrangements ( [[#Tait--2017|Tait and Euston-Brown, 2017]] ; [[#OECD/UN-Habitat--2018|OECD/UN-Habitat, 2018]] ). Such investments are needed for cities that do not yet have the balance sheets or rate-paying citizens required to enter financial markets on favourable terms. Similarly, Central Banks have a crucial role in managing the transition risks within cities and limiting the systemic impact of stranded urban assets due to technology shifts or sea level rise ( [[#Safarzyńska--2017|Safarzyńska and van den Bergh, 2017]] ).

New energy, water and sanitation technologies alter the public good nature of urban services and offer novel opportunities for private sector financiers and blended finance. Still, financial sector innovation remains necessary if technological innovation is to be scaled ( [[#Cities%20Climate%20Finance%20Leadership%20Alliance--2015|Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance, 2015]] ; [[#European%20Environment%20Agency--2020|European Environment Agency, 2020]] ). UNEP has cited anecdotal evidence of a ‘quiet revolution’ toward a more developmental and sustainable global finance sector, in part due to global environmental, social and governance requirements, and industry initiatives within the financial and insurance sectors (UNEP, 2015). Scope remains to strengthen Development Finance Institutions programmes, such as the World Bank’s City Creditworthiness Programme and the activities of China’s ExIm Bank, with a bespoke urban climate dimension.

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=== 6.4.6 Monitoring and Evaluation Frameworks for Adaptation Used in Cities, Settlements and Infrastructures ===

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Urban adaptation plans can focus attention on the needs of marginalised or vulnerable communities including the elderly, children and the disabled ( [[#Dahiya--2020|Dahiya and Das, 2020]] ; Yang, Lee and Juhola, 2021). However, monitoring and evaluation (M&amp;E) frameworks for adaptation are far from being fully developed and operationalised both in theory and in practice for cities, settlements and infrastructures. See also [[IPCC:Wg2:Chapter:Chapter-17#17.5|Section 17.5]] for an assessment of monitoring and evaluation in climate adaptation. Despite significant experience on the application in other sectors (e.g., health, water, industry or business) or with other climate change objectives (e.g., emissions reduction), the assessment of adaptation efforts has been to date under-theorised in current urban adaptation literature (Berrang-Ford et al., 2019; Leiter et al., 2019; Olazabal et al., 2019b). There is also limited evaluation of new social innovations of the last two decades, including participatory budgeting, social financing, crowdfunding and low-cost urban infrastructure that can be enabling conditions for transformative urban adaptation ( [[#Dahiya--2020|Dahiya and Das, 2020]] ; Caprotti et al., 2017).

The challenges related to the evaluation of adaptation progress (lack of methods, agreed metrics, data and definitions, including the ambiguity of the concept of ‘adaptation’) have been widely recognised after the Paris Agreement by multiple organisations, including the OECD, the World Bank, the European Environment Agency and the Global Environment Facility (Ford et al., 2015; [[#Magnan--2016|Magnan, 2016]] ; Bours, McGinn and Pringle, 2014). Monitoring and evaluation systems in urban areas will necessarily be incremental and additive, and will have to build on existing indicator systems ( [[#Solecki--2020|Solecki and Rosenzweig, 2020]] ). There is a need to develop practical and efficient frameworks to assess adaptation progress across all levels of public and private decision making. This should include the assessment and consideration of top-down adaptations alongside informal, bottom-up community actions, or corporate-led programmes developed to reduce vulnerabilities and climatic risks and increase resilience ( ''high confidence'' , ''high agreement'' ).

On the one hand, there is a need to guarantee that planned adaptation actions are efficient, just and equitable (Olazabal et al., 2019b), including being able to disaggregate, for example by gendered impacts. On the other hand, there is a need to observe if and how environmental, social and economic vulnerability and climatic risk conditions evolve with time. Surveillance, monitoring and evaluation facilitate adaptation decision making by linking three aspects (Berrang-Ford et al., 2019): (1) changing vulnerabilities and risks, (2) established adaptation goals and targets, and (3) adaptation efforts put in place. The process will help evaluate whether current adaptation efforts are sufficient or adequate, thus enabling the learning process that adaptation action requires (Haasnoot, van’t Klooster and Van Alphen, 2018; Klostermann et al., 2018).

Monitoring and evaluation of government-led urban adaptation in major cities around the globe is largely missing (Araos et al., 2017; Olazabal et al., 2019a). This reveals: (1) a lack of awareness by local adaptation managers about the critical importance of monitoring and evaluation systems in adaptation decision making, (2) inadequacy, irrelevancy or underuse of available monitoring and evaluation resources, or (3) a lack of knowledge, capacity and resources to make monitoring and evaluation work in practice at city scale.

[[#Olazabal--2019b|Olazabal et al. (2019b)]] argue that six components are at least required to make monitoring and evaluation operational for urban adaptation planning: (1) the definition of a context-specific tailored system adapted to existing local institutions, (2) the definition of a responsible party (public authority, department, group or organisation) that will be in charge of monitoring and evaluation system management, (3) the definition and assignation of the appropriate budget over time, (4) the identification of monitoring objectives and indicators, (5) the definition of a method and process to evaluate outcomes of the monitoring process and finally, (6) the reporting process (how and who the outputs will be reported to). [[#Klostermann--2018|Klostermann et al. (2018)]] emphasise the importance of learning through iterative cycles of selection of monitoring objectives, procedures, data collection and evaluation, and inputs to adaptation policy and planning processes (see also discussion of evaluation and learning in [[IPCC:Wg2:Chapter:Chapter-17#17.5.1|Section 17.5.1.7]] ). Yet practical exemplary approaches are still missing.

The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report acknowledged the lack of standard metrics to measure and monitor success in urban adaptation and suggested a list of indicators that could be developed, while also taking note of the localised nature of adaptation (see also (Rufat et al., 2015)). However, predominant approaches are typically not conducted at the appropriate scale to inform adaptation decision-making (Ford et al., 2018). While some scholars advocate the use of a unifying indicator of social vulnerability (Spielman et al., 2020), others propose to develop flexible sets of comparable indicators that can be adjusted to different contexts (Leiter et al., 2019). Risk-based approaches are seen as an alternative in a context where the monitoring of decision-relevant variables in urban climate adaptation planning is essential to link climatic risk assessment and action (Hallegatte and Engle, 2019; Kingsborough, Borgomeo and Hall, 2016; [[#McDermott--2018|McDermott and Surminski, 2018]] ). Because of the need to define normative frameworks for risk evaluation, what is acceptable, for what purpose and for how long (Galarraga et al., 2018), these approaches may offer an opportunity for the generation of a shared understanding on goals and limitations of adaptation ( [[#McDermott--2018|McDermott and Surminski, 2018]] ). However, risk-based indicators may also create a bias toward quantifiable variables that tend to be based on climatic modelling outputs, engineering or financial assessments. Based on this and various examples of urban development projects, Hallegatte and Engle (2019) claim it is important to consider output-based indicators and process-based indicators that talk about government, voice and empowerment. Overall, dozens of indicator-based approaches to assess climate adaptation have been proposed across the scientific and policy literature, especially in the broader framework of (community) resilience assessment tools ( [[#Sharifi--2016|Sharifi, 2016]] ; Feldmeyer et al., 2019), and in different sectors, for example the climate benefits of NBS (Kabisch et al., 2016; Donatti et al., 2020). Although these efforts may help to mainstream the evaluation of adaptation in current city evaluation initiatives, the development of comprehensive monitoring and evaluation systems is lacking.

There is little evidence on how best to make monitoring and evaluation approaches practical at the local scale. Cities worldwide face important social, environmental and economic conflicts related to resource inequality, poverty, environmental pollution and social tensions that coexist with climatic risks. It makes sense to integrate climate change adaptation assessment goals and needs into existing frameworks for the sake of efficiency. This will benefit small urban areas and cities in developing regions that often face data scarcity and may also find available indicators irrelevant to their realities and, thus, be required to adjust them (Simon et al., 2016). Efforts to coordinate frameworks for the assessment of sustainability (e.g., Local Agenda, sustainability appraisals), resilience (e.g., 100 Resilient Cities, new standards for urban resilience), greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reporting (e.g., Global Covenant of Mayors for Energy and Climate) can be deployed to learn about contexts. However, they need to be applied with caution as enforcing external requirements may lead to local tensions during their application (for example Roberts et al., 2020). In a context where adaptation efforts need to be aggregated and evaluated across nations ( [[#Magnan--2016|Magnan, 2016]] ) and their implications on wider objectives such as sustainable development and social justice need to be assessed ( [[#Long--2019|Long and Rice, 2019]] ), urban adaptation monitoring and evaluation can inform national and international processes that enable a global stocktake of adaptation.

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=== 6.4.7 Enabling Transformations ===

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Growing awareness of the interlocking of drivers of urban change and vulnerability has motivated an interest in transformational approaches to adaptation action in cities, settlements and infrastructure. While the idea of transformation has been adopted across the field, there is no consensus about what an urban transformation that addresses adaptation means. There is no one single transformative solution or approach relevant in every case (Chu, Schenk and Patterson, 2018; [[#Shi--2019|Shi, 2019]] ; [[#Goh--2019|Goh, 2019]] ). What constitutes ‘urgent’ and ‘far-reaching’ transformation depends on the local community’s expectations and ideas (Choko et al., 2019).

Transformation is often approached as a process of institutional transformation, akin to the process described in [[#6.4.2|Section 6.4.2]] (see, for example, [[#Duijn--2017|Duijn and van Buuren, 2017]] ). Transformation engages with critiques of adaptation or risk reduction as an individual responsibility ( [[#Sou--2018|Sou, 2018]] ). The idea is to use transformation to focus on coordinating collective efforts (Haque et al, 2014). The coordination of multiple actors is a condition to enable transformative institutions (Torabi et al, 2018) and link adaptation action to development efforts (Chu et al, 2017; [[#Roberts--2013|Roberts and O’Donoghue, 2013]] ). The role of communities and citizens in such an approach to transformation is ambiguous. Sometimes communities and citizens are presented as critical agents of transformation (Limthongsakul et al, 2017). Other times, however, they are simply situated within strong and durable networks that provide the institutional setting to build resilience (Danière et al., 2016). Despite the political nature of transformative approaches and the evidence that transformative approaches rely on protest and political activism, few authors recognise this strategy (but see [[#Bahadur--2014|Bahadur and Tanner, 2014]] ; Chu, Anguelovski and Roberts, 2017; [[#Dierwechter--2013|Dierwechter and Wessells, 2013]] ).

Transformation is also more than a single instance of institutional change. Historical perspectives on transformation enable an understanding of the chain of institutional changes that ultimately lead to significant or far-reaching reconfiguration of infrastructure and service provision (Rojas et al, 2015). Paradigm changes, such as new engagements with nature and green infrastructure, will improve adaptation outcomes (Roberts et al., 2012). Changes of paradigms, however, are not inherently positive and may clash with existing interests or involve trade-offs with other priorities. When care is taken to ensure greater inclusion in urban decision-making, disadvantaged, vulnerable communities are less likely to be disadvantaged. For example, indigenous traditions of nature management provide entry points for the sustainable management of resources, such as seed banks, urban agriculture and the local management of watersheds and floods, may be at odds with conventional structures of expert knowledge ( [[#Cid-Aguayo--2016|Cid-Aguayo, 2016]] ; [[#Chandra--2016|Chandra and Gaganis, 2016]] ). These traditions are vital both because of the solution space that they open in the local context and how they serve to create resilience through collective and intergenerational learning ( [[#Chandra--2016|Chandra and Gaganis, 2016]] ).

While aspects of transformative capacity identified in the literature may facilitate far-reaching change, there is ''limited evidence'' of actual transformations as an outcome of adaptation. While community led resilience agendas may tackle poverty related issues, they struggle to tackle city-wide structural forms of inequality (Chu, Schenk and Patterson, 2018). Processes of shared learning and co-production of knowledge can reinforce existing power dynamics and be limited by technical framings of vulnerability that marginalise political issues (Orleans Reed et al., 2013). These issues are especially acute in relation to land use decisions where short-term fiscal and commercial interests conflict with long-term vulnerability reduction objectives (Brown, Dayal and Rumbaitis Del Rio, 2012). It can be difficult for adaptation actions to target cities’ underlying political–economic structure, such as entrenched political–economic interests, elite influence over decision making or neoliberal planning logics that maintain and reproduce inequality (Chu, Anguelovski and Roberts, 2017). Urban resilience plans may be formulated in disconnection from broader development strategies, which leads to a limited ability to tackle underlying structures of political power and urban development practices ( [[#Weinstein--2019|Weinstein et al., 2019]] ). Evidence from Kolkata demonstrates the limitations of resilience plans to address underlying conditions of vulnerability, including the commodification of hazardous land, under-provision of informal settlements and spatial segregation of the urban poor ( [[#Rumbach--2017|Rumbach, 2017]] ).

Planning for transformative adaptation is more ''likely'' where communities can learn collectively ( ''medium evidence'' , ''medium agreement'' ) (Restemeyer, van den Brink and Woltjer, 2017; Kabisch et al., 2017; Fraser et al., 2017; Putri, Dalimunthe and Prasojo). Greater citizen engagement facilitates implementing specific measures for radical policymaking or the mainstreaming of environmental knowledge into adaptation practices (Reed et al, 2015). Do it yourself (DIY) planning, in which stakeholders focus on creating and improving specific urban spaces they inhabit, has led to urban greening experiments led by civil society that change paradigms of urban and environmental management (Cloutier, Papin and Bizier, 2018). Social learning may occur through combinations of activism and collaboration with and between informal settlement dwellers, as shown in adaptation experiences in informal settlements in Hanoi and Bangkok (Danière et al., 2016).. The adaptation process can benefit from the inclusion of multiple sources of knowledge for social learning, including universities but also communities and citizens (Chu, Schenk and Patterson, 2018). Citizens assemblies are increasingly recognised as spaces for transformative adaptation (Muradova, Walker and Colli, 2020), although their potential influence at different government levels is still not fully understood.

The integration of multiple forms of knowledge leads to social learning ( ''medium evidence'' , ''high agreement'' ). Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge can provide essential insights into community needs and experiences of housing and urban infrastructure to inform climate adaptation, including improper waste disposal, inadequate drainage and poor sanitation, but there is significant variation in community knowledge networks (Roy et al., 2018b; Douglas et al, 2018; [[#Waters--2017|Waters and Adger, 2017]] ). It is important to identify and address barriers to the incorporation of Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge, such as the dominance of scientific knowledge, oppression and/or racism, and fragmentation of knowledge including gender and generational divides (see [[#Burke--2014|Burke and Heynen, 2014]] ; [[#Whyte--2017|Whyte, 2017]] ; [[#Victor--2015|Victor, 2015]] ; Lövbrand et al., 2015; [[#Kelly--2019|Kelly, 2019]] ).The incorporation of Indigenous knowledge in urban decision making requires a constructive dialogue with scientists and urban planners.

Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge have an important role to play in urban planning and management. They can support impact detection and evaluation in urban areas (Codjoe et al, 2014), weather forecasting in urban areas (Magee et al., 2016; [[#Ebhuoma--2019|Ebhuoma and Simatele, 2019]] ), climate change adaptation in urban agriculture ( [[#Wahab--2018|Wahab and Popoola, 2018]] ; Solomon et al., 2016), urban food security (Simatele and Simatele, 2015), planning and managing urban solid waste (Kosoe et al, 2019), urban flood management (Thorn et al, 2015; [[#Jameson--2016|Jameson and Baud, 2016]] ; [[#Hooli--2016|Hooli, 2016]] ), drought perception and coping strategies (Saboohi et al., 2019), and ecological restoration and urban commons management ( [[#Nagendra--2016|Nagendra, 2016]] ; [[#Nagendra--2019|Nagendra and Mundoli, 2019]] ). They can help define baselines for past climate and ecological change, providing a historical perspective on changes in urban commons such as lakes and trees ( [[#Nagendra--2016|Nagendra, 2016]] ), as well as past climatic changes or climate baselines ( [[#Ajayi--2017|Ajayi and Mafongoya, 2017]] ) and shifting baseline syndrome (Fernández-Llamazares et al., 2015; Soga and Gaston, 2018; see Businger et al., 2018 for a review of hurricane history in Hawaiian newspapers; also [[#Wickman--2018|Wickman, 2018]] ). Incorporating Indigenous knowledge and local knowledge can help generate more people-oriented and place-specific approaches, leading to adaptation policies that foster identity, dignity, self-determination and better collective decision making and capacity to act ( [[#Preston--2017|Preston, 2017]] ; [[#McShane--2017|McShane, 2017]] ) (see also [[#6.1|Section 6.1]] ).

Envisioning development alternatives through adaptation as a first step toward transformative adaptation can leverage social learning. Experiences of migration, length of residence and the density of local social-networks impact social learning opportunities and underscore why context-specific social education is vital ( [[#Waters--2017|Waters and Adger, 2017]] ; [[#Karunarathne--2020|Karunarathne and Lee, 2020]] ). Learning across and between communities can be enhanced when care is taken to understand local challenges. Given power relationships, cultural needs and community aspirations, a top-down approach to information sharing is generally less effective than community partnerships and co-created knowledge at surfacing visions and strategies for getting past baked-in, unequal and unsustainable development assumptions and practices ( ''medium evidence'' , ''high agreement'' ) (Clemens et al., 2016; Thi Hong Phuong, Biesbroek and Wals, 2017; [[#Fitzgerald--2016|Fitzgerald and Lenhart, 2016]] ; [[#Fisher--2019|Fisher and Dodman, 2019]] ). Social learning in formal and informal urban contexts is also enhanced when care is taken to ensure multiple stakeholders have opportunities to understand a variety of viewpoints, values, resources and ideals, and that these viewpoints are clearly identified in decision-making (Thi Hong Phuong, Biesbroek and Wals, 2017). However much social learning still happens only after a crisis, for example in urban water adaptation, and new knowledge is often frustrated by the lock in of powerful local institutions and groups (Johannessen et al., 2019). Social learning is, however, only one component of the development of climate-resilient pathways. System perspectives theorise the possibility of tipping points, leverage points or disruptive technologies to challenge the stable regime to create a broader reconfiguration (Chapter 17; O’Neill et al., 2018).

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