Procesos de operaciones de Banca Electrónica

It is neither wrong nor unexplainable why rural areas are at the foreground of CBA practice and discussion. For the most part rural communities interact more directly with the natural environment than urban communities because of their location, and their livelihoods are more dependent upon and therefore acutely sensitive to the quality  and  availability  of  natural  resources.    Nonetheless,  “little attention has been given to urban areas”   in   the   realm   of   CBA   and   there   is   an   urgent   need   for   more practice and research on adaptation to climate change among the urban poor in cities of low- and middle-income nations (Jabeen et al., 2010, p. 2; Moser & Satterthwaite, 2008, p. 32). On the one hand, as Sub-sections 1.2.1 to 1.2.3 highlight, rapid urbanisation and climate change impacts in cities of low- and middle-income nations are likely to exacerbate current poverty and vulnerabilities by worsening and increasing the multiple risks that the urban poor already live with. On the other hand,

the dense concentration of people and built environment in cities can provide the potential for effective adaptation, improved resilience, and the opportunity to meet broader development needs (Reid et al., 2010).

There is little discourse on CBA practice within the field of architecture and from this literature review no explicitly urban CBA projects that work with poor settlement dwellers in low- and middle-income nations to develop community-led adaptive strategies, with the exception of Cavite City in the Philippines, have been found.

Instead two types of programmes have been identified. The first type is citywide climate change programmes that work with communities (including urban poor communities) to identify local vulnerabilities within the urban fabric, and feed this information into adaptive and resilience-building strategies, which are implemented at the municipal level or through more top-down means. In contrast, the second type is development programmes and research work, which focus at the community-level and the urban poor. These either indirectly reduce vulnerability and build adaptive capacity to current and future climate risks through community-based development, for example slum-upgrading; or directly address the research and methodology of assessing the adaptive capacities of the urban poor. As such, neither are outright CBA although they address different elements of CBA (such as poverty, vulnerability assessment, endogenous adaptive capacity) and thus impart valuable lessons, which are discussed under Section 3.5. Examples of these two types of programmes are discussed in greater detail below.

In addition to these two types of programmes, Vernacular Architecture is identified and discussed below – not as a form of CBA – but as a potentially valuable contribution to the practice of urban CBA in relation to housing design.

City-Level Planning

The majority of articles and reports about adaptation in urban areas of low- and middle-income nations relate to vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning that

overlaps with disaster mitigation planning at the municipal level and not at the community level. The ‘Climate   Resilient   Cities:   A   Primer   on   Reducing   Vulnerability   to   Disasters’   by Prasad, Ranghieri, Trohanis, Kessler, and Sinha (2009)³⁰ describes good practice cities in Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, China and New Mexico that have implemented adaptation plans such as fireproofing urban development, storm and flood control, afforestation, and dike and levee building and strengthening. There are however a couple of programmes that aim to build the resilience of urban areas to climate change, which also pay attention to the experience of the urban poor and, as part of the vulnerability assessment phase, engage with these communities using participatory methods. Two examples, which are discussed here and are relevant for Asia, are the ‘Capacity  Strengthening  of  Least  Developed   Countries  for  Adaptation  to  Climate  Change’  (CLACC)  and  the  ‘Asian  Cities  Climate   Change  Resilience  Network’  (ACCCRN) programmes.

Established in 2003, CLACC works with 15 countries (12 in Africa and 3 in South Asia) and supports the official National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPA) process by focusing on NGOs, which it sees as strategically located to interact with both government and local levels (CLACC, 2009). In 2008 CLACC partners with SouthSouthNorth (SSN, South Africa) developed the Community-Based Adaptation in Africa (CBAA) project, which leads both rural and urban programmes (Ibid.).

However, driven by recognition that climate change will be felt especially strong in towns and cities of low-income nations,   CLACC’s   own   research   shifted   between   2007-2010 to concentrate on urban areas and climate change³¹ (Reid et al., 2010).

Outcomes from this research demonstrated the need for cities to adapt to climate change not just because of the risks to the poor, but also because of the resultant economic costs. It concludes that building urban resilience requires improving urban

30 For more information visit www.worldbank.org/eap/climatecities, accessed 18 April 2011.

31 Out of this CLACC developed a programme to assess vulnerability in urban areas involving mapping and stakeholder meetings. According to Reid, Dodman, Janssen and Huq (2010) the cities selected included a variety of physical settings, secondary urban centres, and capitals & major cities.

infrastructure, more effective pro-poor structures of governance, and increasing capacity of individuals and communities to address these new challenges (Reid et al., 2010). Furthermore it purports that national and local government play vital roles in providing infrastructure, in disaster preparedness and response, and in facilitating the ability of low-income groups to access safe housing in safe sites, meanwhile NGOs and CBOs can play strategic roles and engage in key development challenges (Ibid.).

ACCCRN on the other hand started five years later in 2008. ACCCRN operates in ten cities of four Asian countries: India, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. The aim of  the  network  is  to  incorporate  “the  existing  principles  and  best  practices  from  urban   development  and  management,  climate  adaptation,  and  DRR…  to  support  poor  and   vulnerable Asian urban communities and systems to deal with current and future climate change  related  threats  in  a  realistic  and  actionable  way”  (ACCCRN, 2010a, p.

3). It takes the threads of local-level action, poverty, vulnerability and climate variability   and   weaves   them   together   into   the   “complex   tapestry   of   climate   change   resilience”   (Ibid., p. 4). The ACCCRN process involves four phases: city scoping and selection, city-level engagement and capacity development, implementation of urban resilience interventions, and replication and outreach. Pilot projects, which respond to the vulnerability assessment data, have been identified and are starting to be implemented in Vietnam and India. In Vietnam these projects include strengthening housing constructions to increase resilience to floods and planting mangrove corridors to stabilise the dunes in Quy Nhon; and in India, they include an architectural competition for flood-resistant and low-income group housing, and risk zoning and development planning against flooding in Gorakhphur, and a volunteer-based water supply availability tracking system in Indor (ACCCRN, 2010b, pp. 6-7).

Overall ACCCRN vulnerability assessments identify vulnerabilities that relate to flooding and water logging, drought and water shortages, heat stress, saline intrusion, and soil erosion near coasts or rivers. Therefore these represent adaptation

programmes that constitute elements of CBA, but are not outright CBA programmes.

Although they involve urban poor communities, for example in their vulnerability assessments, the implementation and scope of projects are typically at the city level and beyond individual communities.

Community-Level Planning

References in the literature to community-level planning of CBA in urban areas relates to the built environment, in particular housing settlements of the poor. This is an   area   with   little   “explicit”   CBA   practice   nevertheless   authors   and   development   practitioners are encouraging attention toward the effects of climate change upon urban poor communities (Dodman, 2009; Moser & Satterthwaite, 2008; Wamsler, 2010). A case of CBA in Cavite City, Philippines was shared at the Second International Workshop on CBA in 2007³². This documents the risks associated with climate variability and sea-level rise upon the peninsular city of Cavite, and identifies autonomous adaptive strategies that are being implemented with positive outcomes.

These strategies include: building houses on stilts, reinforcing the physical structure of housing, moving to safer places during calamities, placing sandbags alone the shoreline, borrowing money, and engaging in alternative income-generating activities. It also identifies government-planned adaptive strategies including shoreline protection measures and resettlement, which it states are expensive and inadequate. The case of CBA in Cavite led to consultation workshops, key informant interviews, and focus-group discussions with communities to develop adaptation strategies. Of note, strategies proposed by communities turned out to be largely non-structural, capacity-enhancing measures. (Satterthwaite et al., 2007, pp. 63-64)

With the exception of Cavite city, no more explicit CBA case studies have been found. The following papers that are discussed below therefore illustrate the

32 The source of this case study is: Faustino, R. (2007) Mainstreaming Adaptation Towards Integrated Coastal Management: The Case of Cavite City, Philippines. Presentation by Dr Ramon Faustino Jr, Assistant Director, Conrado Benitez Institute for Sustainability, Philippines, at the Community Based Adaptation Workshop, Dhaka, 24–

27 February.

literature surrounding climate change adaptation and the settlement of urban poor communities and refer to related research and lessons for CBA rather than explicit CBA practice. This research is introduced here whereas the lessons gleaned for CBA are   compiled   with   other   studies   in   Section   3.5   under   ‘Lessons   for   CBA from research’.  

Aligned to the CBA principle that it is important to identify and build upon existing local autonomous adaptation strategies, in 2009 Jabeen, Johnson and Allen (2010) carried out empirical research with BRAC University in Korail – the largest informal settlement in Dhaka, Bangladesh and a low-lying and flood prone area of the city – to examine the household and community coping strategies used by low-income urban households. With a focus on existing environmental hazards like flooding and heat, they  aimed  to  provide  “fruitful  ground  to  explore the existing ‘built-in’ resilience of a poor urban settlement that would normally be considered extremely vulnerable and at risk”  and  to  contribute  understanding  about  urban  coping  strategies  at  the  grassroots   and how these can inform local adaptation planning (Jabeen et al., 2010, p. 2).

Another research to extract lessons to inform CBA practice is documented in ‘Victims to victors, disasters to opportunities. Community-driven responses to climate change in  the  Philippines’ by Dodman, Mitlin and Co Rayos (2010). This research examines the  experience  of  the  Homeless  People’s  Federation  of  the  Philippines  Incorporated   (HPFPI) – which is one of the case study organizations in this research – in responding to disasters through community-led methods. Dodman and others build upon the claim that projects which explicitly represent good examples of CBA in urban areas are  the  best  “slum  and  squatter”  upgrading  programmes because although they “focus   on   addressing   ‘everyday’ hazards and protection against extreme weather”, “addressing   climate   change   is   often   simply   an   extension   to   this”  

(Satterthwaite et al., 2007, p. 62). This   is   illustrated   by   HPFPI’s   three   main   objectives, which are to: mobilise low-income communities in areas of high risk from

natural disasters; assist in voluntary resettlement and post-relocation activities; and intervene in disaster risk management and post-disaster reconstruction processes through community-led initiatives (Dodman et al., 2010).

Two final papers on the topic of asset vulnerability offer lessons to CBA based on their research with urban poor communities on issues of vulnerability to climate change. The first paper by Moser and Satterthwaite develops an asset vulnerability framework in order to conceptualise the role that individual and household assets of the urban poor play in increasing adaptive capacity to climate change (2008). The second paper by Moser and Stein provides conceptual and methodological guidelines for carrying out an Urban Participatory Climate Change Adaptation Appraisal (PCCAA) (2010). They draw upon case studies carried out with poor urban communities living in Mombasa, Kenya and Estelí, Nicaragua, which illustrate the application of this tool and its findings.

Vernacular Architecture

Vernacular Architecture relates architectural design to local or regional environmental conditions, including the prevailing climate, and thus responds to geo-hazards, solar radiation, temperature, changes in temperature, rainfall, humidity and air quality/movement (Bilow, 2012). And in the tropics, vernacular architecture design variables that relate to a hot and humid climate include: ventilation, insulation, shade, and passive/artificial cooling (Moody, 2009). It cannot be considered a form of CBA itself because of (1) its specific attention to architectural building design and not the broader non-physical elements of CBA, like socio-economic vulnerabilities and adaptive capacity, and similarly (2) its response to historic and current climate rather that unprecedented changes in future climate. Nevertheless vernacular architecture offers to inform the practice of CBA within the context of settlement development planning in relation to how local or regional architectural housing design can respond and provide solutions to climate conditions.

For examples of vernacular architecture we can look to areas where old buildings and traditional building practices remain and also to historical buildings and arguably contemporary informal settlements within cities where the urban poor become their own architects to build homes in response to local conditions (de Maat, 2009).

Research by Jabeen and others (2010) in Korail slum offers some insight into this, as well as an abundance of research into how vernacular (traditional) architecture informs modern building design³³.

It is outside the scope of this research (which looks into how settlement development programmes in formal urban poor communities manifest CBA) to study lessons from vernacular architecture for socialized housing design, but its potential contribution to CBA practice must be acknowledged and more research is encouraged on its contributions framed by future climate change (see Sub-section 9.3.2).