Climate Change, Urban Ecosystems and Environmental Governance: Strategies for Sustainable and Resilient Cities

Abstract

The climate issue is twofold centred on cities. They are the greatest contributors to emissions that accelerate warming and they focus the population and resources that are endangered by warming. That dual exposure is the beginning point in this paper and it poses a more difficult question than one can reasonably have with a typical survey. It is not merely the issue of what climate change does to urban ecosystems that are problematic, but why the instruments of managing urban ecologies continue to fail to match the magnitude of the challenge. It bases its argument on the numbers provided by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, UN-Habitat, and some recent peer-reviewed literature, labeling the reaction to climate change in urban areas as being ambitious and lacking in coordination. Medellin green corridors and other examples of nature based interventions demonstrate that urban green areas can be used to quantifiably cool the city. However, their advantages are not equally spread and their form of governance is disregarded in a fragmented polycentric system of municipal networks, ministries of the national governments and private actors which are not accountable to each other. The discussion has come to the conclusion that it is no longer the knowledge or even technology that would be the decisive constraint on the action taken to improve the urban climate. It is the structure of governing: who governs, who funds and who cools off the first. Keywords: Urban Heat Island; urban climate governance; nature based solutions; climate justice; polycentric governance; green gentrification