Climate Action Plan Workshop for CapaCITIES

The first Climate Action Plan Workshop for was conducted in Coimbatore on 12th April, 2017. This workshop was a Shared Learning Dialogue (SLD) with the Stakeholder Group and Climate Core Team in Coimbatore. It is the first among a series of consultative workshops where the Climate Core Team and Stakeholder Group will sit together to share thoughts and critical inputs, facilitated by ICLEI South Asia. This SLD was an introductory meeting and workshop, where the participants were introduced to the concept of climate action planning using the ICLEI ACCCRN Process (IAP). The following topics were discussed in the SLD:

1) Identification of past hazardous events and respective impacts and responses
2) Identification of climate risks for the city and climate trends in the city
3) Identification of fragile urban systems
4) Conducting a risk assessment of fragile urban systems
5) Conducting a vulnerability assessment of fragile urban systems

The workshop was attended by the Climate Core Team members of Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC) and members of the Stakeholder Group that was identified by the CCMC. About 30 people were part of the workshop, including representatives from NGOs, business enterprises, as well as individual experts.

The workshop used the IAP tools for assessing the climate risks faced by Coimbatore, the existing fragile urban systems, the anticipated risks to these systems and identified the risks and vulnerability of these systems. With the help of these tools, the team identified 5 systems as fragile in Coimbatore – water, land use planning, transportation, sewerage management, and solid waste management. Since the meeting was a primarily one, aimed at assessing climate adaptive measures, the discussion focused on water, land use, sewerage management and solid waste management. For each system, a climate fragility statement was outlined on the basis of the future climate risks that have been assessed for Coimbatore, through secondary study. The risk assessment of these fragility statements was conducted through discussions with the stakeholder group. The wards which are mainly affected by these fragile urban systems and their fragility and the primary actors who are impacted by them were also identified through discussions and group work.

It was decided that in the next meeting the adaptive measures for each of the fragile urban systems will be identified, prioritised and assessed for their contribution to the resilience of Coimbatore city using the IAP tools.