Urban-Act: Climate Resilience as a Governance Challenge – Final Workshop & Exit Event
The half-day workshop featured three keynote presentations, a "Local Voices" contribution from Bacolod City, structured breakout group discussions, peer-to-peer learning sessions, and a closing keynote by UNESCAP. The overarching message was clear: climate resilience is fundamentally a governance challenge requiring integrated, cross-sectoral, and multi-level coordination.
Key takeaways
- Governance gaps (Prof. Greiving, TU Dortmund): Seven common gaps were identified across all three cities – from national-to-local implementation gaps to data usability deficits – with recommendations for context-specific spatial planning protocols and permanent city-level coordination mechanisms.
- Climate risk & spatial planning (Prof. Birkmann, Univ. Stuttgart): Flood risk assessments and hotspot maps were produced for all three case cities, explicitly integrating vulnerability evidence alongside hazard-exposure data.
- Transport & accessibility (Prof. Friedrich, Univ. Stuttgart): With increasing motorisation in the Philippines and Thailand, there is a critical window to introduce electric vehicles and green energy at scale; the most important challenge for long-term sustainability is making public transport genuinely competitive through line-based services with short, reliable headways.
- Local impact (Dr. Ramos, Bacolod CPDO): All 12 project recommendations were integrated into Bacolod's Comprehensive Development Plan.
Regional partners from UCLG-ASPAC, Clean Air Asia, TERI, and NIUA shared lessons on climate-conscious governance assessment, embedding climate action in existing local planning instruments, cluster-based capacity building, and making technical knowledge actionable for city decision-makers. A recurring principle: strengthen existing systems rather than creating parallel ones and "Design for adoption, not just delivery".
Key outputs & next steps
The project delivered climate risk vulnerability assessments, flood risk hotspot maps, a simplified transport modelling tool, and learning notes on nature-based solutions, mobility, and green infrastructure. Looking ahead, the academic partners confirmed their intention to pursue joint scientific publications, contribute to the upcoming IPCC report on climate and cities, and continue using the case studies in teaching and the joint PhD programme between TU Dortmund and the University of the Philippines.
Mr. Curt Garrigan, UNESCAP, stated in his closing keynote "The true measure of success is how the collective outputs can support further action by countries and local governments."