The project ‘IMAGINE adaptation’ addresses the urgent need to evaluate adaptation in urban areas and understand progress across governance levels.
Urban areas are already experiencing the impacts of climate change in the form of extreme temperatures, sea-level rise, storm surges, or droughts. By 2050, 68% of the global population will live in towns and cities, an increase of over 2.5 million. There is growing international awareness of the need for urban adaptation, for example, over 10,300 local governments have already committed to adapt to climate change through the Global Covenant of Mayors (GCoM).
However, adaptation is not progressing as expected. Only 18% of the global cities included in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) database have developed adaptation plans. Although larger cities seem to be hotspots for action, more than half of larger coastal cities worldwide do not have plans in place. When there are plans, evidence of implementation and understanding of how the proposed adaptation actions reduce specific risks is lacking. Likewise there is a general lack of means to evaluate urban adaptation, combined with unclear goals and metrics to measure adaptation outcomes.
The project ‘IMAGINE adaptation’ addresses the urgent need to evaluate adaptation in urban areas and understand progress across governance levels. It argues that the current focus on policy progress can be a useful first step, but it is not indicative of effective adaptation. A broader understanding of success is required, one that goes beyond technical definitions and considers equity, justice, and maladaptive issues.
To enable evaluation and learning from diverse understandings of adaptation, ‘IMAGINE adaptation’ will gather expert and local views to reformulate the concept of adaptation success. The project will then explore the trends and needs regarding monitoring and evaluation and how these may enable or hinder adaptation. The findings will be used to inform the development of a comparative case study research across 12 urban areas worldwide.
Through its innovative approach ‘IMAGINE adaptation’ will pioneer new ways to enable urban adaptation through the processes of evaluation and learning, and contribute to global discussions on how the evaluation of local progress can inform global goals for adaptation.
Radio Collaboration: Climate Change and the 21st Century
The first quarter of the 21st Century is nearly over. What have we achieved so far? What are the challenges that we are going to face over the next 25 years?
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“We need to rethink urbanism”
Marta Olazabal gave an interview (in Spanish) to the local Radio Euskadi this past weekend.
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What is limiting how we imagine adaptation?
We are happy to tell you that our new open-access review paper is out now in the journal Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability.
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Cities need more than green fixes to climate change.
Sean Goodwin recently gave an interview (in Spanish) for Equipamento y Servicios Municipales on the potential for green infrastructure in cities.
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Using intersectionality to localise the GGA
We are happy to share our viewpoint published in the Special Issue “Navigating the Nexus: Intersectional Climate Justice in Urban Adaptation Planning” of the journal Cities. This opinion article has been written by Ana Terra Amorim-Maia and Marta Olazabal.
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Wondering how to evaluate justice in climate adaptation projects at the city level?
Our colleague and collaborator Maria Ruiz de Gopegui asked herself that in her PhD research.
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Urban adaptation: disrupting imaginaries and practices
Vanesa Castan-Broto, Marta Olazabal and Gina Ziervogel have guest edited a quite special special issue in the fantastic journal Buildings and Cities. The special issue aims to enlarge the range of adaptation narratives grounded in experiences from cities worldwide.
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Reflecting on our recent workshop: Disentangling Successful Adaptation Using Theory of Change
Last week, the IMAGINE Adaptation hosted an international workshop on “Disentangling successful adaptation using theory of change” in Bergen, Norway. Our aim was to create a collaborative space for rethinking and identifying the changes needed for effective climate adaptation.
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IMAGINE Adaptation at The Nature of the Cities Festival
Our session "Imagining Adaptation to Climate Change through Art" explored how the intersection of science and the arts can catalyse alternative imaginaries of climate adaptation in urban environments.
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First Expert Board Meeting
Last week, on April 17, IMAGINE Adaptation held the first meeting with our board of experts after the kick off.
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