Going beyond Santiago: A regional learning network for climate change adaptation in Latin American megacities

Abstract

Adaptation to climate change is a highly context-specific field of political action. Not only do the features and impacts of local climate change vary from one area to another, political, economic and social contexts also generate diversity in terms of urgency and priority of concrete adaptation measures. In Latin America, metropolitan regions are the focus of demographic change and economic activity, concentrating high levels of poverty and consequently vulnerability to the risks produced by climate change. Hence, the need for specific climate change adaptation plans, policies and measures was discussed in a Regional Learning Network initiated within the context of an international research project. This chapter summarizes the results of three workshops designed to address the expected features and impacts of climate change in six Latin American megacities and, focusing on adaptation, to examine how climate change policy is currently defined and implemented. In conclusion, it discusses concrete measures. In all of the cities under review, steps have been taken to institutionalize climate change response on an urban scale-albeit the approaches adopted and experiences gained are quite different. The measures in question prove more successful if linked to strategic goals or national urban policies, a shrewd move that produces co-benefits. The potential of these elements of climate change adaptation to pave the way for more sustainable cities without the obvious link to climate change indicates that ascertaining the exact dimension of climate change in the urban centres is not a high priority.