The climate change phenomenon has global GHG contributions and implications; yet there is a growing and unequivocal consensus that the 2°C global warming challenge can be dealt with concerted local actions. At the same time, local governments in Asia-Pacific cities face triple challenge of addressing local economic development goals to improving standards of living, abatement of air-pollution and GHG emissions and protecting their citizens from extreme climate events. There are some crucial knowledge gaps that impede and delay local action, notably non availability of reliable empirical information on: (a) Short, mid & long-term climate vulnerability scenarios at sub-national level (b) How variedly do different societies contribute to climate change their GHG structures, and (c) What useful climate actions are local governments taking, across the globe. This necessitates into developing smart tools having capability to integrate such wide-ranging and complex data, process it for city governments to undertake evidence-based decisions on future climate initiatives.
Starting from five countries in the Asia-Pacific region i.e. India, Japan, China, Thailand and Australia, this project aimed to create a collaborative research network of experts in preparing an Integrated Climate Action Planning (ICLAP) tool. ICLAP is a decision-making tool for 49 Asia Pacific settlements with 5 million+ population that enables them in taking evidence based climate actions. It adopts an advanced methodology of integrating 3 different knowledge domains/ analytics: (a) Spatial: Downscaling global/ regional climate scenarios to forecast local climate variability (50 km x 50 km) for 2030 & 2050, (b) Statistical: Meta-analysis of 49 five million-plus cities in Asia to forecast demographics, economy, energy & GHGs, (see Annexure for complete list) and (c) Bibliometric: Systematic review of climate interventions-mitigation and adaptation from city case studies world-wide (from Web of Science/ Google scholar database).
The ICLAP methodology involves local stakeholders including urban agencies, professionals, universities and scholars in needs assessment, ideating, testing/ trials and gaining feedback on the tool through several formal meetings, workshops and conferences and training outcomes across collaborating cities in the region. The findings not only suggest future development pathways and discreet 41 potential urban climate solutions (identified from 5635 global case studies), but the project is useful in guiding national urban policies along with promoting international climate research cooperation. The project culminates with 10 publications (1 ISBN book, 3 peer-reviewed journal papers, 2 policy briefs, 4 proceedings); 4 international results conference and joint/ hybrid training workshops involving 5 countries and over 110+ urban professionals and scholars trained to use smart ICLAP tool, along with a strong commitment to expand its reach in practice-working with more local agencies in enhancing ICLAP’s on-ground application), hierarchically- (including smaller towns within the Asia-Pacific region and geographically- in cities from other countries/ continents.
