Rapid urbanization is leading to growth to soar on the the margins of cities in low-income countries. Estimates suggest that more than 1 billion people now live in informal settlements, where make-shift buildings are the rule, and infrastructure for water, sewage and transportation is inadequate. The impacts of climate change are compounding the burdens of living in these informal settlements by bringing more intense and more frequent floods and heat waves. How can people in these low-income areas adress these growing risks?
The aim of the Resilient Planet Initiative is to help vulnerable residents of informal settlements in Eastern Africa find the information they need on the climate-related risks they face and the adaptation strategies they can use. It seeks to develop and share information on data on cimate change impacts and ways to address these impacts. The information is intended to help decision-makers plan and take action to adapt to climate change and share their experiences and the lessons they learn. The aim is to reach out provide information that can be used by those in leadership positions in public and private sectors at local, national an international levels plan and take action to adapt to climate change, and share their experiences and lessons learned.
The initial focus of the initiative is to provide accessible, comprehensive, and actionable information to leaders in informal communities in Eastern Africa, where both information and infrastructure are lacking.
The project is creating a network of three new, interconnected digital platforms:
The initial focus of initiative is the development of the exchange hub app. The goal is to provide women leaders in informal settlements in Eastern Africa with information on climate risks from the data hub, and information on adaptation interventions from the solutions hub. The aim is that with this combination of information, leaders can leverage information from both sources to devise their own solutions, and ultimately to share their experiences with others, to help foster a collaborative approach to resilience building.
Six partners are collaborating on the initiative, which received funding from Google.org. The partners are:
Global Resilience Partnership – managing the project and providing technical leadership.
Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers – providing links to Roof Over Our Head labs in informal settlements.
Slum Dwellers International – ensuring that the app meets the needs of women leaders in Eastern and Southern Africa.
Ona – designing the software to access data and sharing functionalities.
University of Oxford – providing climate risk data and supporting adaptation taxonomy and finance access.
Center for Climate and Resilience Research (University of Chile) – developing the app’s programming interfaces for global climate data access and taxonomy integration.
Stockholm Environment Institute – overseeing taxonomy integration for resilience solutions.
Design and development by Soapbox.