Lessons from self-assessments within urban climate resilience programs

TY - JOUR

T1 - Lessons from self-assessments within urban climate resilience programs

AU - Henceroth, Justin

AU - Friend, Richard M.

AU - Thinphanga, Pakamas

AU - Van Gai Tran, Phong

AU - Nghiem, Tuyen Phuong

PY - 2015/2/9

Y1 - 2015/2/9

N2 - Purpose – This paper aims to review and develop lessons learned from the United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction Local Government Self Assessment Tool (LGSAT) experience in four cities. The capacity to understand, learn from and respond to or reorganize in the face of change is at the core of urban resilience to disasters, climate change and major shocks. Self assessments, like the LGSAT, can be used to engage city stakeholders in critically assessing and understanding their capacity according to a set of standards of resilience. Design/methodology/approach – City stakeholders in four cities, Hat Yai and Udon Thani, Thailand and Hue and Lao Cai, Vietnam, completed the LGSAT in an open multi-stakeholder process as part of urban climate resilience programs. Findings – Completing the LGSAT provided important and valuable information about institutional capacity that is important for disaster risk reduction and climate change efforts. Multi-stakeholder processes allowed for greater and more sustained dialogue among groups that may not have a chance to interact regularly and helped build trust and relationships that contribute to climate resilience and disaster risk reduction efforts. Originality/value – Further, the inclusion of multiple viewpoints allowed for more nuanced and novel consideration of issues and in multiple cities led to new projects that focused on building institutional and agent capacity. The LGSAT process relied on facilitation that was able to guide discussion, ensure safe spaces for dialogue and address stakeholder questions. Finally, while the tool was applied to questions of climate change in this process, there is still room to improve the tool to more adequately and directly address issues of climate change risk.

AB - Purpose – This paper aims to review and develop lessons learned from the United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction Local Government Self Assessment Tool (LGSAT) experience in four cities. The capacity to understand, learn from and respond to or reorganize in the face of change is at the core of urban resilience to disasters, climate change and major shocks. Self assessments, like the LGSAT, can be used to engage city stakeholders in critically assessing and understanding their capacity according to a set of standards of resilience. Design/methodology/approach – City stakeholders in four cities, Hat Yai and Udon Thani, Thailand and Hue and Lao Cai, Vietnam, completed the LGSAT in an open multi-stakeholder process as part of urban climate resilience programs. Findings – Completing the LGSAT provided important and valuable information about institutional capacity that is important for disaster risk reduction and climate change efforts. Multi-stakeholder processes allowed for greater and more sustained dialogue among groups that may not have a chance to interact regularly and helped build trust and relationships that contribute to climate resilience and disaster risk reduction efforts. Originality/value – Further, the inclusion of multiple viewpoints allowed for more nuanced and novel consideration of issues and in multiple cities led to new projects that focused on building institutional and agent capacity. The LGSAT process relied on facilitation that was able to guide discussion, ensure safe spaces for dialogue and address stakeholder questions. Finally, while the tool was applied to questions of climate change in this process, there is still room to improve the tool to more adequately and directly address issues of climate change risk.

KW - Climate change

KW - Participatory approaches

KW - Resilience

KW - Stakeholders

KW - United nations

KW - Vulnerability

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84928806342&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1108/IJDRBE-08-2014-0060

DO - 10.1108/IJDRBE-08-2014-0060

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84928806342

SN - 1759-5908

VL - 6

SP - 86

EP - 101

JO - International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment

JF - International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment

IS - 1

ER -