In this report, ESCAP explores the future of urbanization in Asia and the Pacific, focusing on the dynamic shifts in the region’s urban landscape. It highlights the region’s demographic transformations, including population ageing, and the persistent challenges of urban poverty and inequality. The analysis covers urban areas of all sizes, …
Flooding poses a significant threat to cities in the global South, due to a combination of factors including unplanned city extensions, prevalent poverty and low adaptive capacity. Depending on the location, physical characteristics, and climate change risk of different urban areas, they can be affected by different types of flooding. …
This report identifies climate resilience solutions for urban poor in Indonesia and their enabling factors, building on national policies and programs and taking into account the priority sectors for climate-resilient development. Climate risk threatens Indonesia’s socioeconomic development, and it is likely to exacerbate the plight of Indonesians living below and …
This book explores the implications of urbanization in South Asia for water (in-) security in the peri-urban spaces of Dhaka and Khulna in Bangladesh, Bengaluru, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune in India, and Kathmandu Valley in Nepal. The book looks into specifically peri-urban water security issues in a context of …
In an already urbanized world, an increasing concentration of people, development assets, infrastructure, socio-economic vulnerabilities and convergence of risks of multiple hues in cities and urban agglomerations underscores the need for an integrated approach towards resilience building. This is evidenced by the fact that cities today account for 55% of …
The Global Urban Competitiveness Report (GUCR) is a cooperative research conducted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and UN-Habitat focusing on sustainable urban competitiveness, urban land and urban finance. Led the project is participated by experts from CASS, UN-Habitat and well-known scholars in relevant fields. Through theoretical research …
The enduring image of a city is a busy population always on the move. Yet, as this assessment by the Centre for Science and Environment shows, mobility in Indian cities is severely hampered by a wide range of constraints: inadequate public transport and lack of access to it, less-than-ideal last-mile …
Shimla tops the list of cities scoring highest on urban Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) index. Coimbatore and Chandigarh were at second and third position in the ranking of urban SDG index launched by NITI Aayog, Nov 23, 2021 In its journey towards localizing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and instituting …
This new report by UNEP and UN-Habitat has identified urbanization as one of five main drivers of environmental change. It has looked at the impact on cities and city residents of related challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution. It has also presented the types of solutions that …
The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating impacts on cities – putting unprecedented pressure on municipal budgets and public services, exacerbating inequalities and revealing their extreme fragility to shocks. At the same time, cities offer among the most promising opportunities to build back better with speed and impact, and the crisis …
Worldwide demand for freshwater resources is continuously increasing to satisfy the need for increasing population and growing economies. Further, both biophysical and social patterns and processes are interacting in ways that increase pressure on water and lead to water scarcity. About one-third of the world’s river basins attend their maximum …
This paper estimates an urban carbon dioxide emissions model using satellite-measured carbon dioxide concentrations from 2014 to 2020, for 1,236 cities in 138 countries. The model incorporates the global trend in carbon dioxide concentration, seasonal fluctuations by hemisphere, and a large set of georeferenced variables that incorporate carbon dioxide–intensive industry …
Climate action offers massive opportunities to reduce social inequalities, but they remain largely untapped. This is a key finding from the review of the impacts of priority climate measures in six systems—industry, energy, transport, cities, agriculture, and forestry. This paper highlights pitfalls to avoid and building blocks for fairer climate …
Urbanization is happening differently today than in the past and occurring most rapidly in places with the fewest resources. Traditional approaches are not able to keep up, leaving billions of people with poor access to basic necessities, dragging down economies and damaging the environment. This synthesis report of the Towards …
Niti Aayog has suggested that urban local bodies (ULBs) could provide land to set up material recovery facilities (MRFs) to be used by various industries to set up infrastructure for efficient plastic waste management. In its handbook on sustainable urban plastic waste management, jointly released with UNDP, it also said …
State Action Plan for Climate Change (SAPCC) seeks to address the commitments of J & K by formulating SAP containing both adaptation & mitigation measures to cope with the climate change impacts as mentioned. The Plan seeks to develop, apply and diffuse technologies (and technology transfer), practices and processes that …
The report highlights the collaborative action already happening between cities, states, regions, business, and national government, using data reported by over 1000 cities, states and regions through the CDP-ICLEI Unified Reporting System. Immediate action is needed to stop global greenhouse gas emissions, avoid new emissions, design resilient infrastructure and switch …
This report focuses on the role of insurance in addressing climate risks in cities. The objectives of the report are to provide a common understanding of the current role of the insurance sector in the urban space related to climate resilience and to identify barriers and opportunities for closing the …
This new report explores how climate and urban challenges could be addressed in tandem to set African cities on a path of prosperity and sustainable long-term development. It recommends steps that governments at national, local and city level could employ to attract the capital needed to address priorities around development …
This socio-economic assessment report informs and supports further planning processes undertaken to analyse refugee hosting settlements within the municipality of Arua (classified as a secondary city in north-western Uganda). Arua is strategically located bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan, and therefore hosts a large population of urban …
Final comprehensive report filed by the Additional Chief Secretary/Commissioner of the Revenue Administration before the National Green Tribunal in Original Application No. 264 of 2020 (SZ) on the action taken by the Tamil Nadu government for the temporary and permanent measures to prevent recurrence of flooding and sewage overflows in …
