Title: Speaker Series 2022 #9 | نقشه راه تاب آوری: برنامه ریزی شهرها و سازگاری با تغییرات آب و هوا

برای تحقق اهداف اقلیمی خود و پاسخ به چالش‌های تاب‌آوری شهری، شهرها فرآیندی تکراری و مشارکتی را برای پیش‌نویس اسناد برنامه‌ریزی استراتژیک برای ایجاد مسیری برای اقدام اقلیمی انجام داده‌اند. این نقشه‌های راه اغلب نتیجه رایزنی‌ها و تعامل گسترده با جوامع مختلف و ذینفعان در یک شهر، از جمله دولت، تجارت و جامعه مدنی است. هدف آنها شناسایی خطرات و چالش های ناشی از خطرات آب و هوایی و پیشنهاد اقدامات کاهشی و سازگاری است که شهر می تواند برای مقابله با آنها انجام دهد. نهمین جلسه Cities on Frontline 2022 که به طور مشترک توسط شبکه شهرهای تاب آور و برنامه تاب آوری شهر سازماندهی شد، بر برنامه ریزی شهرها و سازگاری با تغییرات اقلیمی از طریق اجرای نقشه راه تاب آوری متمرکز شد و به ذینفعان شهر اجازه داد مستقیماً از مقاماتی که شرکت کرده اند بشنوند. در این فرآیند، برای درک چالش‌های خاص شهرهایشان، و ببینید که چه گام‌هایی برای سازگاری برمی‌دارند. سخنرانان برجسته: -الیزابت گروبر، مدیر بخش موسسات مالی بین‌المللی در وزارت دارایی فدرال اتریش – یوهانس لوتر، رئیس بخش شهری و تحرک در نوآوری شهری وین – جیمز کوام منسا، مدرس ارشد در بخش عمومی مدیریت و مدیریت خدمات بهداشتی دانشکده بازرگانی دانشگاه غنا و مشاور ارشد سابق تاب آوری شهر آکرا فصل ها: ۰:۰۰ مقدمه ۴:۵۸ سخنان مقدماتی از الیزابت گروبر ۱۰:۲۰ برنامه ریزی تاب آوری در وین ۲۵:۲۲ تاب آوری آکرا استراتژی ۴۰:۵۴ پرسش و پاسخ

قسمتي از متن فيلم: Foreign Speaker series this is the ninth in the row of the series and we are organizing this through the city resilience program of the World Bank and the resilient cities Network and today we are the topic is a road map to resilience cities planning and adapting to climate change let me give

You my name is I work for the World Bank let me give you the rock the ground rules so the purpose of these seminars is to have an open and honest learning conversation calls are not on the record and we ask that you do not attribute any comments

Unless you have the person’s express permission to do so we can help you obtain this permission if if you need need it today we have 375 registered participants and to facilitate the discussion we ask that you write your questions uh with the help of the Q a function of WebEx

And please note that the recording of this session as the presentations will be posted online by next week so thank you very much Lauren on thank you so much Barger for the introduction and it’s great to be here with all of you I’m Lauren surkin the executive director of the resilient

Cities Network and today we’re going to be speaking about uh road maps to resilience and how cities are planning and adapting to climate change just in the last few months we’ve seen amazing heat waves uh all over South Asia here in Europe as well um and floods hitting Australia and many

Other areas so it’s clear that no matter what we are doing in terms of climate change mitigation today there are many impacts of climate change and many of those intersecting impacts of climate change that we’ll have to deal with no matter what and we know that cities are

On the front lines of that action we’ll be hearing more from that from our speakers today so I will keep that introduction very brief so that we can jump into the discussion I will introduce three speakers that we will have um it’s really my pleasure to introduce Elizabeth Gruber who’s the director of

The department for international financial institutions at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance and Dr Gruber is there at the Ministry of Finance before she was a senior advisor responsible for the World Bank crew portfolio working with multilateral development finance and previous to that was the alternate executive director at the inter-american

Development Bank in Washington D.C she graduated with a degree in Business Administration and holds a doctorate in development economics from Vienna University we’re so glad to have you with us Dr group and we’re looking forward to hearing from you next we’ll have two City panelists who are going to bring us practice from

Their diversities uh we are going to have James Kwame uh Mensa who’s a senior lecturer at the Department of Public Administration health services at the University of Ghana business school and he was formerly the chief resilience officer uh in the the city of Accra um in uh in his previous career he was

Serving on uh the the Metropolitan across government assembly and he played roles in terms of Economic Development as well as a major role in the development of across resilience strategy and we were glad to work with you on that James his research Publications you can find them in many journals

Um and you will see that he’s also worked with undp Delbert group and chair power adventures we will also hear today from a city panelists coming to us from Vienna so Johannes litter is the head of department for urban mobility and urban Innovation and he’s a researcher and a

Political consultant in the field of Urban Development he’s been doing that uh since 1999 designing managing and moderating different dialogues on Urban process um he was for many years the deputy CEO at Europa Forum Vine and the Center for Urban dialogue for European policy based in Vienna and the CEO of a multilateral

Called the centrope agency Dr litter studied political science at the University of Vienna and the Vienna Institute of advanced studies again welcome to all of our speakers so now without further Ado I’m going to turn the floor over to Dr Elizabeth Cooper who will speak to us about cities

Adapting and planning for climate change thank thank you Lauren for your kind words um I also will do some more introductive remarks because I’m I’m not the complete expert because I’m not the complete expedient on this topic we invited actually an expert from the Administration co-hosting and co-organizing this event

Also with the city of Vienna so it’s my pleasure to only welcome you today but this city is on the front line event or webinar on behalf of the Austria Ministry of Finance that can also thank the World Bank in particular and the city resilience program uh and also the whole network

Actually for organizing this webinar and understand this is a series of webinars already and we’re very pleased now that we take an active role in this uh in this webinar series actually for the first time uh this time it’s also known it’s a known fact actually that more and more people so to

Say live in cities so studies suggest that by 2050 70 of the world’s population will live in cities are at the same time cities are very exposed of climate change and the anticipated increase in that in natural disaster is also something that we all have to cope

With uh this uh is a small background actually to explain a little bit this this topic of today’s webinar is very timely and also uh that it’s a very it’s a topic that the Minister of Finance we are very very interested of that so the topic announcement resilience city

Planning for climate change is of course a very particularly important one in fact the topic of Urban Development and resilient has been a long-standing key priority for us in the also Ministry of Finance our ministry cooperates with various International uh institutions on that topic and among others of course also with the wrong

Thing but also with regional development Banks and other funds that cooperate and and try to contribute to global economic development in that context of this cooperation we have defined a set of automatic priorities where we see a particular need so to say so today’s webinar touches upon two of these priority areas

Which are Urban Development and climate change and of course a combination of of these two very important uh topics so a part of these priorities we have been supporting the city resilience program by the World Bank which is organizing today’s webinar and for quite some time already

So the particular one behind that we see in the city resilience program is its unique capacity so to say to support cities in planning for resilience and mobilization capital for resilient future while building also and this is very important for us our Partnerships we’re also proud to mention that the

City resilience program has engaged with more than 140 cities in 55 countries since this is inception in 2017. as one of these activities the program provides cities with analytical tools to analyze and plan for the resilience like the so-called city scan another activity is the organization of course of workshops which directly link

Cities with Finance to implement the resilient agenda and yet another activity is the contribution to Global Knowledge exchange from the urban resilience like today’s webinar I personally look very much forward today to this exchange on resilience building strategies and the implementation of icts it is my view

Exciting to have it as also an expert and some expert actually who will share the experiences with the city of Vienna and who will provide us Insight also on the city of Archer until approaches to planning and adapting the climate change so I think this is an extremely valuable

Exchange of actually two cities uh two City Experts coming from two different environments so I’m sure we will learn a lot and hear a lot today and learn a lot and hopefully so exchange a lot today just let me finish by two small remarks um cities uh recently for again

Um so to say um and however given the heat waves which we have just started in June this year and energy prices that are the occupied uh they still needs to also to be done a lot in the end actually to adapt to the challenges of

Um this being said I’m very pleased to hand over to the two expert anomalies so share the experience and again I’d like to thank you and the organizers organizing today’s session so thank you very much and I hand over to you thank you so much Elizabeth it’s really

A pleasure to welcome you to cities on the front line again thank you for being here for sharing with our community that has now been gathering for more than two years together um we are very very excited to welcome as you mentioned the the world’s most livable City apparently that has just

Been awarded Vienna to share with us some of their experiences uh and how you are adapting and planning for climate change so Johannes I’m going to turn the the screen and the microphone over to you thank you so much thanks a lot thanks for having me today

For for the invitation it’s my pleasure to be with you today and and um to share it works out there we go um first I have to say that um other than uh Akron we had a talk already with James a short one yesterday Vienna is not having

Um a silenced resilience strategy of its own but in view of um recent developments the question of of resilience for urban systems is of course very high on the agenda of of Viennese uh politics and administration and we try to incorporate to integrate the questions of resilience uh in in all

Strategies and all action plans that we have in Indiana that will try to explain how we do that in order to start with the obvious um of course crisis has become something like a permanent condition in recent years and I’m I’ve just started yesterday to to list a few crises that

Have a global impact uh of the 21st century starting with 9 11 and and the the worldwide Financial economic crisis of the years 2008 nine and the following years today we’re coping with the corona crisis the pandemic uh we have some some uh large crisis that are in particular

Affecting uh Europe like the Euro crisis the migration crisis of the year 2015 and following the brexit with UK leaving the United the European Union and of course and then perhaps above all the the eminent uh climate crisis which means that there is um we we have to cope uh with conditions of

Of uh volatility where it’s quite difficult to foresee uh all aspects of development today uh and and have to prepare for for the unforeseen um this is just a a very short notice about what we believe what what virtues or capacities cities need to have to to do

That to to prepare for the unforeseen FS Pirates this is possible uh and uh cope with uh shocks and stresses short-term shocks as well as long-term stresses uh that that put pressure on Urban systems on the one hand of course you need robustness and this is particularly true for for urban infrastructures um

And the the way you you invest in in those infrastructures helps you um to prepare in order to not to be negatively affected in in uh or only barely be negative effects it’s uh to buy by shocks and stresses at the same time you need um learning aptitudes and and

Adaptability this means monitoring your own processes uh recognizing where the shortcomings are drawing your conclusions and and reshaping your processes and and uh systems and being able to to react with the existing resources in in order to minimize harm uh at the same time of course there is a necessity to

Um adapt through Innovation so all cities need to invest in in innovativeness uh in in research um and um there we go and finally um to still keep control and keep capacity to act and make decisions even under those volatile conditions now what we did in Vienna only recently

Is a very small survey about the question of um what challenges lie ahead of us and this is a survey where you can on the one hand see um those challenges that are seen as most likely this is the one axis where it breeds and creates version I’m sorry

That I could not uh translate that in this chart and the other question was and which of those most likely uh um threads would have the most severe impacts on Urban systems and this is of course a survey among Vietnamese experts you can see that on the left hand

Corner there is that there are the one um uh challenges that that are not seen as most severe which are in Vienna for example strikes and revolves and those grouping in the upper corner on the right hand side are those that were where you where we

See uh the most dangerous for the future and you can see it’s climate change it’s all questions of uh environmental stress uh on on systems combined with social crisis with the economy with the economic crisis with uh unemployment with inequality and and we believe that the the um there is a strong interdependence

Between those ecological uh and economic aspects when we speak about um the environmental stresses um what is most important for Vienna of course is uh is heat uh Vienna is becoming uh um a city where where we have a strong um problems with uh growing problems with

With Urban heat island effects and in particular this is a problem for for the vulnerable groups so for the most young and old one for the homeless and for the sick um just have to stop sharing my screen because my presentation obviously has been kind of locked and I’m trying to do that

Again so here we go again and I hope you can see that um and and what you can see is the uh again this this is not surprising this is um temperatures rising in Vienna on the left hand side you can see the long term um the deviation from long-term average

Temperatures uh it’s an graphic that you can that doesn’t need much explanation on the right hand side you can see um okay scenarios for the future where you can see that even to the year 2100 um temperatures will rise even more this is the number of of days with a minimum

Temperature of 20 degrees um so this is this puts of course stress on the seedling so what we did in Vienna is um try to to find a double Solution on uh on this CBS situation and one part of this uh of this is a long-term response is our Smart City strategy

Which is um a strategy for the Horizon of 2040 where we have developed goals the most important one is the is the goal of climate neutrality by 2040 but we have developed uh goals for all areas of climate um mitigation and climate adaptation and secondly there is uh we have set up

A roadmap which is kind of our path to climate neutrality and and our path to climate sensitivity um where we have defined the most important measures and and instruments and uh activities to be said and we try to implement this and to achieve this um by um by by innovation in governance tools

Which is for example a new climate budget budget and by measures and um the approaches that we on we at the same time try to reduce the the effects of urban systems on on climate change by reducing CO2 emissions in all areas um the heating and cooling system and

The and the mobility system being the the most important ones and at the same time try to set our goals in uh you know all questions of climate adaptation speaking of climate adaptation you can see here and I hope you still can um the goals that we are setting in the

In the Smart City strategy and this um starts with the question of how to protect the vulnerable groups as as it already put it and and how to then um reshape our uh the green spaces in the city the Open Spaces and and and public spaces in the city how to design

Our buildings and our urban development areas in a way that they are influencing climate change not in a negatively but uh wherever possible even in a positive way uh how to deal with um rainwater management and and so on in the climate roadmap this is translated into concrete measures and

Again we start here with health and well-being uh with with measures that are that are on a long-term basis trying to to protect the the population uh and then we we go step by step with with the big ecosystems natural environments uh and and questions of development and

Planning uh of uh of green spaces of public space and finally by providing um investment in infrastructures and services of General needs that are important so this is the the long-term approach the the other one is the is the short-term response on on the threads lying ahead

And this is what so-called Vienna heat action plan uh on the left hand side you can see a map that is trying to combine the the climatic effects of the climate crisis or where is Vienna becoming more and more hot uh with social um aspects like low-income groups people

Are most that are most vulnerable people that can’t leave their home because of certain disabilities and and other questions and the in the in the climate um action plan there is again uh we’re combining um the planning for the preparation of the summer with concrete protection actions uh during the summer and then

Specially measures uh during the heat waves and for each of those measures uh we are defining um not only who’s who’s the target group and what are the concrete actions but who’s in who is in charge who’s responsible for each action um do we have the budget available to

Have do we have the capacities available and what is most important uh every year after December those or all those measures are evaluated again uh and we try to we try to check what has worked out where did we find difficulties where do we have measures that need to be

Optimized and so on and another an important aspect of this climate action about this heat uh action plan is the focus on processes what you can see on the right hand side is a scheme uh of what we call the communication Cascade which starts with the weather Services uh that have to inform

Um certain communicators certain certain um multiplicators of developing heat waves as soon as the as they are detected and then we have those those multiplicators uh in in this upper row um that are informing the health sector the child care sector the nursery sector and Within These sectors there is the

Information flow goes on and all those single institutions like schools like kindergartens like Nursery homes or hospitals then might take their their own measures for protecting their people so be the kids or the sick and and so on and by combining these rather long-term measures with the short-term term

Protection processes uh we hoped that that um to reach a certain degree of resilience of course both is quite new uh the the um the action the the Smart City strategy has just been um adopted by Indiana city council the the climate roadmap has just been adopted and and

The the this action plan that I’m showing is the most recent one we will see after this summer how things are developing we try to to establish an evaluation and monitoring process for all of these instruments so that we can develop this as a learning and learning

Tool uh and um optimize it after each of those evaluations um steps so that’s it for a moment I have to apologize that I had some troubles with the presentation I just I still hope that you that you um could see most of my slides and I’m looking forward to to

The debate afterwards thank you thank you so much Giannis I think you gave the participants a lot to think about with both the long-term planning and the priorities and in terms of short-terms communication and activating communities um there will be a lot of time for discussion coming up after James’s

Presentation but for now I want to say thank you and we’re going to turn the floor over to James to hear about what’s happening in a very different City on a very different scale James there’s probably uh many similarities in terms of how you have been framing adaptation uh in in Accra

But perhaps how you activate um climate resilience could be different so over to you James looking forward to hearing from you now thank you Lauren and thank you Johannes for your presentation very insightful one I want to say I’m very happy to be part of this program and to give a

Presentation about the Accra resilience strategy I want to start by saying that the urban population is growing right so if you look at the trend of the population growth uh worldwide Africa and even within Ghana and Accra in particular if we take Accra we could see that at the eve of Independence the

Population of Accra was around 190 000. fast forward to 2019 population has hit 2.7 million and it is estimated that by 2050 the population of Accra will grow up to um 10.5 million this population growth actually comes with opportunities and challenges as well so cities are urbanizing with a lot of people

And these people comes with a lot of opportunities our city present a lot of opportunities however there are also challenges therefore it depends on how the city is able to leverage on this population to be for great to give it an A positive um I mean profile so in terms of Accra

We have noticed certain kind of shock certain kind of traces as far back as 1939 Accra experience an earthquake and then there are other shocks and other stresses that has happened along the line but these are the major ones that I want to highlight to 1999 that we

Experience an earthquake in Accra fast forward to June 10th June 10 is popular in Ghana June 10 is popular in Ghana because of the twin problem that happened I mean you tell 2015 because of the twin problem that happened because there was a heavy rainfall and that resulted in a

Fire outbreak in a full station killing thousands of people that day and this day is never forgotten in the history of Ghana then in November 2012 there was also a building collapse building on that day when I had it on the news I had to rush home immediately

Because my sister attend school around this area and these school children often comes to it’s a it’s a shopping mall Malcolm it’s a shopping mall that collapsed and these school children often come there during lunch time they come there to buy some toffees and some snacks so I was actually afraid and

Was so stressed that my sister could be part of the people who were trapped under this build so we could realize that in all these shocks challenges stresses the approach to managing them has been reactive they happen and then we have to find a way of managing them so the city thoughts it

Wise that no this is not enough we need to be proactive in how we respond to some of these challenges of the city therefore the city actually applied to join the resilience cities program so in December 2014 Accra was officially I mean officially Acts or joined the city

Resilience program then in April 2015 um there was a workshop to set the agenda as to how we go partner and come out with a strategy that is going to deal with uh I mean helping to deal with the shocks and stresses and the challenges of the city so

۲۰۱۶ there was a bit of a change of power in Ghana and if you know how our political system works the president eventually chooses most of the people who lead so that means that after the 2016 elections and the change of power then the president has to nominate a new

Person so in March 2017 the new mayor was appointed to office a new mayor was appointed to the office then between this 2016 to 2017 there was a lot of engagements with um with actors with stakeholders of the city so that we could actually begin the process of coming out with a resilience

Track taking then between February to December 2018 the phase two commences which was actually about the design the partnership and the various strategies that could help us to be able to mitigate the challenges the stresses and the shocks in the city so in March 2018 the city actually released a preliminary

Assessment report of the challenges of the city then fast forward to March 2019 the resilience strategy was to God okay so I want to take us through the development phase the process and here I want to stress more on stakeholder engagement stakeholder engagement is very very important in the development of a

Resilience strategy especially if you take the contest of Ghana where there are several stakeholders with various powers so if these people are not actually involved in the development of this strategy its implementation becomes very difficult so there was serious attempt to engage all stakeholders including Civil Society organization including development Partners public institutions

Private institutions and the ordinary citizen the vulnerable citizens who are affected on daily basis with these shocks and stresses in the city so this engagement close to 2 500 people over 2 000 people were engaged to be able to solicit their views of the city and this led to the

Identification of the shocks and stresses in Accra then also we try to pick perceptions and um expectations of all these stakeholders and this lead led to the development of the preliminary assessment strategy and this therefore led to the Discovery areas so some areas we discovered some

New areas that were not even thought of were discovered in this process and this led to the prioritization because a number of initiatives number of actions that we thought could help but we need to prioritize get ones and those that have long-term effects and I mean on this resilience of the city so

Engagement collaboration is very very important in the development of a city strategy in the resilience strategy we identify the top shocks and the top shocks in Accra are flooding infrastructure and building collapse which I have Illustrated that there was a and consistently we keep getting news of building collapse

So this was very very important that is included in the resilient strategy and the issues of disease outbreak especially during the rainy season so this is a rainy season in Ghana so we experience a lot of disease outbreak in the city and of course fires fires most of the buildings most of the

Dwellings are informed in nature and crowded our markets are crowded so we often have issues of fire outbreak then lastly earthquake earthquake has apart from the 1989 earthquake we never experienced any but there are signs of earthquake and earthquake a z zones have actually been earmarked in

Ghana here I think about three years ago we had a bit of a trouble where there was some breakages in the landscape but we have not actually experienced it in recent time but we know that this is a shock that could happen and then cause a lot of

Um shocks to the city and it of course a high cost to the city then there were other stresses other stresses of the city such as High Cost of Living it is very very expensive to live in the city of Accra compared to the cost of goods and

Services compared to how much people end on daily basis is very very high then we talk of issues of poor Waste Management waste has been a very big issue management of waste and therefore the city of Accra is involved with a lot of ways and this is what is leading to this

Issue of flooding as well the ways the plastic in the city is so overwhelming to the extent that we actually need to be sure we address this challenge in Accra then issues of insufficient Transportation if you actually know Accra well we don’t have our public buyers or transportation system is not

All that resilient we have the Metro Mass and then along the line we had the rapid bus system which is eventually collapsed so issues of Transportation has been very uh stressful to the people of Accra and then the issue of poor sanitation leading to water scarcity we are often

Stressed with the issue of water less than 20 percent of the city of Accra is covered with um treated water from the Ghana uh water company so most people actually buy water from water vendors some people have to sink a bowl or others had to harvest rain other stick Rings water from

Um some sources that are actually infected with diseases so we identify this as the top shocks and the top stresses of the city so the the vision of the resilient strategy was to make Accra a smart sustainable and resilient City that anticipate and plan for unexpected shocks stresses rather

Than reacts to them so we want to shift from um I mean reacting to distance when they have been to rather anticipating being proactive anticipate and plan for them right so there resilient City the Accra residency actually identified five main pillars and this pillars are emanate from the

Shocks and the stresses the first pillar is urban mobility and transportation the second pillar had to do with creating um environmentally sustainable City the third pillar is about citizen engagement and accountability then the fourth pillar is about management of floods waste and sanitation and then the fish

Filler has to do with the infamous sector um Accra is dominated by the informal sector and close to 80 percent or more and a living from the informal sector which means that we need to pay attention to this sector because that is the anchor of the city right moving forward we realize that

Collaboration is very very important in City resilience and in management of a city therefore we laid a very strong emphasis on collaboration collaboration we try to collaborate with ngos civil society organizations International Development Partners public agencies private agencies all of them we also realize that resilience issues do not have a boundary

For instance in Accra we had the other river which often is the cause of most of our flooding because the other River always overflow and spread and causes flooding but the source of this odor river is actually from a different region it has a sauce all the way from the

Eastern region of Ghana and therefore if you don’t collaborate because when it rains there it may not rain in Accra it will rain in the Eastern region and will have the effect in Accra so this means that we need to collaborate with such people and I’m happy there’s a project

Funded by the World Bank the garage project that is the greater Accra resilient and integrated development project 200 million dollars from the World Bank to be able to deal with this order Basin issue so the aim of this project is to ensure that there’s an improve flood risk it also to ensure

That there’s proper Waste Management in the city and some infrastructure upgrade such as drainage systems right so the aim of this project is actually to ensure that some reservoirs are created along the other Basin so that in Peak Seasons Peak rainy Seasons like uh uh June July August water can be

Actually stuck in the reservoirs so that in the dry season the water is released so that the city doesn’t get flooded so I would like to end my presentation here and wait for the questions that will follow thank you so much uh thank you James and thanks and thank

You uh Johannes as well so you know these are wonderful presentation so let me start the the question and answer session by posing a question to James uh that you you mentioned that you know in the in the Ghanaian system when when the political when when there

Is an election there is another party that comes to power there is a change in administration so and this happens in across many of our uh you know people who are participating in this uh go through go through the same situation so how do you ensure that a plan that was

Made under one Administration continues to be followed so that that because you can’t just go back to the drawing board thank you please go ahead but thank you thank you thank you so much um so we realized this and this is a this is one of the

Challenges of um this country Ghana a change in administration and abandoned born a non-continuation of project that is started by a previous government this is the biggest one of the biggest challenge and if you come to Ghana today you will see thousands of infrastructure stuck in the bush stuck in the villages

With non-cons continuation so we realize this and aspect as expect what we did was to tie this resilient strategy to the immediate and development strategy of the city right so every four years the city is supposed to come out with a million time development strategy that should be used

For the management of the city for four years so what we did was to align to align the resilience strategy to the medium-10 development strategy so that its implementation will be smooth the um and then the other thing is that we also ensure that the administrators the

Workers in the city these are not political appointees the head is the political appointee but the others are not political appointee so they were fully involved in the process so that they can ensure continuity thank you so much thank you James Lauren thanks and thanks James for the answer I

Actually wanted to ask a similar but perhaps um more specific question to this time that we’re living in right now both to Johannes and to Elizabeth um you know we’re experiencing an unprecedented um stresses in Europe due to conflict that has effect on energy Supply and food supply

Um how do you think that that has impacted the political will to invest in climate change adaptation and resilience and do do you think that that will um really increase the investment in this work in the future thank you Elizabeth do you want to start or should I could give a go

Maybe you’ll start and like okay yeah I have think a little bit about it let’s start with a remark uh following up to James because what what you said James is exactly what I I would have answered to the the question of how to ensure that there is um continuity in

Implementation even with changing uh governments it’s the same in Vienna although the conditions are different that we try to align every strategy every program that we have um to our Smart City strategy which is our sustainability and climate strategy so that uh be it the tourism strategy or

The uh the strategy for for the the urban development plan um or um the economic strategy all are aligned with the smart city and and sustainable strategy and we hope that by involving as many stakeholders as possible that are on on in in the administration and in the public

Institutions and and and even in in um in companies uh we try to create a momentum which is kept High even in terms of different government constellations the other question is what you were just asking Lauren about the question of energy Supply right now um I would hope

Um that we can combine those those two strategies that that are currently followed the one is providing security of energy provision by um getting what you can in terms of of energy provision in on a short short term and still creating the awareness that on on a long-term basis it’s it’s

Absolutely necessary to create a large share of independence by um investing in renewable energies and in in Austria we have the good situation that when it comes to electricity we have a very high share of renewable energy in in the electricity provision but the difficulties lie in in Heating and

Cooling where we are mostly dependent in particular Indiana from from Russian gas and try to also hear keep the momentum of investing in renewable in solar energy in geothermal energy um in in order on the one hand to reach climate goals and on the other hand to

To uh to reduce the dependency from from imported energy maybe very briefly if I may compliment from the Minister of Finance perspective um which is always concentrating on the financial aspects of the center of the budget there are implications um we live currently in a very difficult situation because we

Of course did not anticipate uh half a year ago and that we will have a multi-crisis environment and that will face a high inflation and unexpected High inflation in Europe and all these combined with very high uh energy uh costs and So currently uh this this is a

Huge challenges where we need to need to adapt and we need actually to think in in the short term uh implication and adaptation measures and then also medium term and long-term adaptation and and mitigation measures so I I do not foresee for the medium and long term

Some huge negative impacts on our on our adaptation goals and our goals to uh to to achieve a sustainable pass in our in our energy uh Provisions but in the short term of course we need to adapt we are also is highly also dependent on the Imports of of Russian gas

And of course we need to we need to think very quickly in alternate Alternatives so this has a kind of a positive and a negative side on it a very positive side is that this is increasing the push actually to to change our Energy Mix to a more sustainable and hopefully also Greener

Energy Mix but on the other hand we need to think also in in shorter term measures and unfortunately our minister of ecology and climate uh she just had needed to announce actually that we need to rethink of of using also uh gas and and even oil maybe to yourself into some

Sort of consumption consumption needs to fulfill actually some need Security in particular industry has um so this is of course are the downsides but I I believe that on a medium term in the long term uh we all think that we need to to keep on on track in becoming in becoming a

Sustainable and uh and uh uh yeah leading to zero emissions at some point I wanted to follow up with a question perhaps uh about sharing and about sharing practices that are happening on the ground um we we talk a lot about strategies and the priorities within those strategies

And the importance of communicating risk and vulnerability and empowering communities to respond to that could you give us an example James and Accra and Johannes in Vienna of a specific kind of resilience building project that’s strengthening the ability of the communities in your cities to respond to climate impacts that you think

Um could be helpful for those listening in today to perhaps think about adapting and creating a similar kind of project in their cities um because you you mentioned um the aspect of um sharing and they and their belief um um sharing also in in terms of um uh the

Sharing economy is is one of those approaches that that we are following and which is um both providing top down possibilities of sharing as well as supporting uh bottom-up initiatives of sharing and um this starts from Mobility aspects we are now experimenting not only with car sharing and bike sharing

Instruments but also with um uh ride sharing like like carpooling which is quite an old concept but but a new one when it comes to Modern urban transport in at least Indiana it’s it’s yeah it’s um we are again in a pilot stage um in in experimenting with the question

Of how can we better share mobility issues and of course the the aspect of sharing is also something that is very much uh resource saving uh and protecting in many other fields for example when it comes to to spaces uh co-working spaces joint um kitchens and Community areas in in in

Living in in housing Estates um we have by far not reached the ceiling um when it comes to thinking of how can we protect our resources how can we reduce our our energy consumption by sharing the resources that that we have in a in a proper and and and smart way and

Um yes there are a lot of of um pilot actions and experiments running and I and I hope that those will be uh successful thank you um so in the case of Ghana we started with green spaces so public spaces um abundant species we started with grilling those pieces to

Mitigate the impact of climate change and then we also embarked on the support to waste informal with workers informal waste workers and when I say informal waste workers we have former companies that actually manage waste but along the line what happened was that there were a lot of ways in informal

Settlements or places people may cause slums that’s these formal waste companies with big class cannot assess they’re focusing a lot of uh flooding and a lot of Waste Management problems so we started by bringing these people to the table informal ways collectors and registering them they use these tricycles

They can navigate and go through all the informal settlements to bring out this with the important thing about this is that it did not only create jobs for most people who migrate from the northern part of the country to the cities to come and look for non-existing

Jobs but it also helped to deal with the issues of flooding issues of the disease and issues of uh I mean outbreak of diseases and waste management problems so these are a few that we try to Pilot and I’m happy to announce that the waste management project actually won Bloomberg award in

The U.S for being one of the Innovative projects that has been implemented to have a twin effect of not only providing just but also mitigating the effect of climate change and flooding in the city of Accra thank you hi Lauren can I pose one question that’s that’s very interesting that comes from

The participants and it’s to both of you is that in terms of the government budget in terms of prioritizing the government budget for resilience actions are there any clearing trade-offs with development projects that have been uh that were delayed or stopped so you know the balance between where do you spend your

Money on on a development project or on a resilience project and that trade-off so some examples from there please your honest I start with the general answered which is um what we’re trying to implement in Vienna is what we call a climate budget so in each of the the yearly budgets of

The city of Vienna all those measures have to be have to be highlighted that have a positive climate impact by reducing CO2 emissions by reducing material consumption or whatever and we have a new um unit uh right below the CEO of the city Administration that has to then to

Check whether the sum of all those measures uh is um enough is sufficient to reach our climate goals so this is that means that um our climate goals and our our climate action programs are somehow translated into into this into the city budget uh which I believe is important in in order

To to really get them on on the ground the other thing because you mentioned that is uh of course what we are witnessing in Vienna today is um that there are a lot of projects that are now reassessed um in terms of what is the what is the also negative climate

Impact and we have uh large Road programs uh for example in Indiana um that have closing closing the major road ring around the city in order to to reduce the Transit Transit traffic in in the city which are now reassessed and stopped um because um there is a a strong feeling that um

Some the way those those roads are built would would cause more uh CO2 emissions that are absolutely necessary and we’re currently in the midst of this this discussions uh whether um those roads are not being built or built in a completely different form um ensuring the accessibility of new

Urban districts that are that are built on the one hand but on the other hand reducing the environmental impact of those those infrastructure buildings uh and and this is something which um which is of course most political question where we have we when we have uh also a

Lot of conflicts about that but a discussion that is necessary to be to be uh LED in in in in times thank you I just want to add to uh what Johannes has just said uh it is pretty forward in Ghana in terms of budgeting

So what is not budgeted for you can not uh take that action so the good thing is that you need to align your climate strategy you need to align your resilience strategy to the middle term development plan so every city is given the opportunity what we call the Metropolitan Municipal service

In Ghana they’re giving opportunity to come out with their own middle term development plan their priorities so therefore you ensure that your priorities are in line with the resilience attribute so funding becomes so easy if it is not tied to it funding becomes very difficult so

Um if you look at the Accra resilience strategy you notice that it is still being implemented so in the involvement of all the stakeholders especially the public servants who are actually permanent employees until they retire in the local government or I mean the city these people were involved in the process so

They are fully aware of the resilient strategy and they utilize it so any cycle of the middle term development plan they try to ensure that all activities in the middle term the world we have in the Brazilian strategy are mainstreamed into the medium-term development plan so the funding becomes

Easy so that is how we actually try to ensure that there’s no constraint on their budget thank you unfortunately I think we might have to end it there we are at the top of the hour um I I want to say that the examples and the knowledge that you’ve both shared

Has been really meaningful and I’m sure that we could actually go on for quite a bit longer on this topic because there’s so much complexity in terms of adapting a city as a system to the different challenges that come from climate change um that I hope we can continue this

Conversation if there are questions that haven’t been answered during this session we will share them with you as our panelists and and we hope that we can share back your answers uh with those in the cities on the front line Community but for now I really want to thank

Um everyone for coming for voting with their with their sign-ins today to be on the cities on the front lines series and to listen to Elizabeth uh to to James Johannes um and and to hopefully learn more so that you can help your cities and communities better prepare for the

Impacts of climate change and be on behalf of both the World Bank and and resilient cities Network again uh thank you for being here and we’ll see you in a couple of weeks for the next cities on the front line thank you so much thank you for inviting

Me and it’s a pleasure to be here thank you so thank you yes bye-bye thank you bye

ID: 7qkSJL7iH14
Time: 1658247187
Date: 2022-07-19 20:43:07
Duration: 01:01:14

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