Urbanization and Climate Co-benefits: Implementation of Win-win Interventions in Cities

Urban areas are increasingly contributing to climate change while also suffering many of its impacts. Moreover, many cities, particularly in developing countries, continue to struggle to provide services, infrastructure and socio-economic opportunities. How do we achieve the global goals on climate change and also make room for allowing global urban development? Increasing levels of awareness and engagement on climate change at the local level, coupled with recent global agreements on climate and development goals, as well as the New Urban Agenda emerging from Habitat III, present an unprecedented opportunity to radically rethink how we develop and manage our cities.

Urbanization and Climate Co-Benefits examines the main opportunities and challenges to the implementation of a co-benefits approach in urban areas. Drawing on the results of empirical research carried out in Brazil, China, Indonesia, South Africa, India and Japan, the book is divided into two parts. The first part uses a common framework to analyse co-benefits across the urban sectors. The second part examines the tools and legal and governance perspectives at the local and international level that can help in planning for co-benefits.

This book will be of great interest to students, practitioners and scholars of urban studies, climate/development policy and environmental studies.

Christopher N.H. Doll is a research fellow at the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability in Tokyo, Japan. He is active across many areas of sustainability research including urban development, biodiversity governance and the diffusion of low carbon technologies. He holds a Masters and PhD in remote sensing from the University of London.

Jose A. Puppim de Oliveira is a faculty member at the Getulio Vargas Foundation (FGV/EAESP and FGV/EBAPE), Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (COPPEAD-UFRJ) and Fudan University (Shanghai). He is also a researcher affiliated to the United Nations University (UNU-IIGH) in Kuala Lumpur and MIT Joint Program on Science and Policy of Global Change, Cambridge (USA).