ADB's Green Cities Initiative is helping cities in Asia and the Pacific better prepare for extreme and uncertain weather brought about by climate change.

Transcript

Title: Making Cities Climate Change Resilient

Description: ADB's Green Cities Initiative is helping cities in Asia and the Pacific better prepare for extreme and uncertain weather brought about by climate change.

VO: Imagine a day when you wake up and floodwaters are surging around you. Houses next door have been swept away by an angry sea. People struggle against the raging storm, but some lose their lives. For some people in Asia and the Pacific, that day has been a tragic reality.

Many cities in the region face the threat of natural disasters brought about by climate change, and experts say few city managers understand how to make their cities resilient against such threats.

SOT: Sonia Sandhu
Senior Environment Specialist
Asian Development Bank
One of the key-most challenges faced by cities is understanding what resilience is all about. Understanding the meaning of resilience in a city, which is basically for infrastructure to withstand climate variations or shocks induced due to sudden climate variations.

VO: Climate resilience is the capacity of cities to withstand and adapt to weather disturbances brought about by climate change. With nearly half of the region’s population living in urban areas, many people find themselves exposed to extreme weather variations, especially the poor.

SOT: Sonia Sandhu
Senior Environment Specialist
Asian Development Bank
These are communities in the most unplanned areas or areas in cities which are most prone to shocks. They’re just going to be prone to these shocks again and again, but there are reasons why people do remain there, for livelihoods…

VO: With temperatures rising and weather patterns changing, the Asian Development Bank’s Green Cities Initiative is taking steps to help cities better prepare for climate change.

SOT: Sonia Sandhu
Senior Environment Specialist
Asian Development Bank
We’re trying to sort of imbibe a multi-pronged approach for resilience through this initiative and through this operations framework, the multi-pronged approach is through holistic asset management. A comprehensive asset management that would help city managers understand the assets that we have and by assets, we just don’t mean built assets, like canals and roads and drains, etc. but also the natural assets, ponds, wetlands, urban spaces, sidewalks and cultural and historical assets.

Basically everything needs to be operated and maintained, everything needs to be valued. The cost of maintenance includes risks from these damages incurred due to climate induced variations, or sudden surges of rainfall or anything. I do believe that resilience will come when infrastructure is able to withstand and still provide services to citizens and people, during a shock.

VO: While cities in the region remain at risk when it comes to climate change, preparing for such disasters and building in resilience during the early urban planning stage makes it possible for cities to survive and function when that day comes, and after.

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