GCRO co-hosts seminar on governing climate change in Southern cities

In late November 2022, the GCRO, in collaboration with Artha Global, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Karachi Urban Lab and Nanyang Technological University, hosted an online seminar entitled Governing climate change in Johannesburg, Mumbai, Karachi & Jakarta.

The seminar brought together a set of researchers working across Southern geographies to shed light on what cities are doing to tackle climate change and other core environmental issues. Cities across South and Southeast Asia and Africa will face unique developmental and social challenges in the coming decades as rapid urbanisation confronts rising environmental pressures. Furthermore, informality, stretched municipal capacity, limited resources and a set of environmental and economic justice issues will rear their heads as state governments and municipalities across geographies wrestle with climate change within cities.

Panelists explored both successes and failures in different cities’ approaches to addressing these challenges and discussed what they could learn from each other, as well as what the respective cities have in common. They each reflected on the following four common themes:

• Gaps in data and community engagement;
• Environmental and economic justice;
• Low municipal capacity; and
• Rapid urbanisation.

The seminar was attended by a wide range of participants from different sectors and regions across the globe. The seminar recording is available here.