Institutionalizing climate change adaptation at municipal and state level in Chetumal and Quintana Roo, Mexico

Abstract

This paper is a report on one of three related case studies in Latin America and shows the progress in the city of Chetumal, and the larger state of which it is the capital (Quintana Roo), in disaster response, especially with regard to cyclones. It also shows the progress in land use and ecological planning through the development of certain tools, which have changed the approach from one of prohibiting action to suggesting alternatives. Rather than stopping development, the focus has been on taking full account of its impacts and trying to make development compatible with environmental protection. There has also been progress in ecosystem conservation and water management, coordinated between different levels of government and different stakeholders. While much of this has taken place within the formal framework set by government, participatory processes have increased civil society awareness and commitment to environmental issues, and its capacity to participate and take a position, especially during the planning stages.

Ten years after Copenhagen: Reimagining climate change governance in urban areas

“…To some extent, research conducted during the wave of urban optimism prioritized the identification of parameters to explain successful urban climate governance, which resulted in recommendations for collaboration (Pitt & Bassett, 2013 ), integration across sectors (Kithiia & Dowling, 2010 ; Puppim de Oliveira, 2009 ; Yung & Chan, 2012 ), cooperation across levels of government (Jones, 2012 ; Leck & Simon, 2013 ) and the establishment of long‐term goals and regulative frameworks (Wheeler, 2008 ). During the wave of urban pragmatism , these ideas have consolidated into consensus regarding the need for urban climate governance to be participatory, attuned to bottom‐up dynamics, strengthened in terms of monitoring and extended time‐frames, holistic, and integrated across sectors, scales, administrative boundaries and realms of knowledge (Barton, 2013 ; Chu, Schenk, & Patterson, 2018 ; Dulal & Akbar, 2013 ; Echebarria, Barrutia, Eletxigerra, Hartmann, & Apaolaza, 2018 ; Gouldson et al, 2016 ; Hardoy, Hernández, Pacheco, & Sierra, 2014 ; Hardoy & Velásquez Barrero, 2014 ; Nguyen, Davidson, & Gleeson, 2018 ; Rosendo, Celliers, & Mechisso, 2018 ; Serrao‐Neumann, Renouf, Kenway, & Low Choy, 2017 ; Swart et al, 2014 ; Torabi, Dedekorkut‐Howes, & Howes, 2017 ; Tu, 2018 ; Yasmin, Farrelly, & Rogers, 2018 ). Interest has grown on identifying effective mechanisms for policy management, such as, for example, delivering flexible policies (Daniere, Drummond, NaRanong, & Tran, 2016 ; Radhakrishnan, Pathirana, Ashley, Gersonius, & Zevenbergen, 2018 ; Torabi, Dedekorkut‐Howes, & Howes, 2018 ) and mainstreaming climate concerns into other policy sectors (Di Giulio, Bedran‐Martins, Vasconcellos, Ribeiro, & Lemos, 2018 ; Koch, 2018 ; Sharma & Singh, 2016 ) (although an argument for the need to deliver policies with narrow scope has been made recently, Lyles, Berke, & Overstreet, 2018 ).…”

Participatory urban planning for climate change adaptation in coastal cities: lessons from a pilot experience in Maputo, Mozambique

“…Research on climate risk has paid attention to cities in coastal areas both because of their exposure to sea level rise, flooding and cyclones and because they are often inhabited by vulnerable populations [15][16][17]. Urban planning is most often seen as a means to evaluate and address the complicated interactions between climate change mitigation and adaptation that emerge in coastal areas [18][19][20] The characteristics of coastal areas from Hat Yai in Thailand to Cartagena in Colombia have also provided spaces to experiment with participatory and community-based adaptation [21][22][23][24]. This requires understanding the specific strategies that local people, over time, have developed to deal with the ongoing risks likely to be exacerbated by climate change [25,26].…”

Precipitation variability, trends and regions in Poland: Temporal and spatial distribution in the years 1951–2018

“…Recognizing the degree of Pr variability is essential for climate risk management (Marković et al 2014;Šebenik, Brilly and Šraj 2017;Młyński, Cebulska and Wałęga 2018;Stefanova et al 2019;Ziernicka-Wojtaszek and Kopcińska 2020). Floods resulting from sudden atmospheric precipitation are one of the biggest climatic threats to cities (Pedrozo-Acuña et al 2017;Szewrański et al 2018;Olsson et al 2019), therefore determination of precipitation trends can be useful when planning adaptation measures to climate change for urban and rural areas (Hardoy et al 2014;Reckien et al 2015;Chu, Anguelovski and Roberts 2017). Knowledge of precipitation variability in a multi-year and spatial perspective requires continuous updating, so research studies are conducted anew for the changing climatic conditions in various regions of the world.…”