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Informal adaptation transforms cities. It also challenges a growing emphasis on formal planning, says Marcus Moench. The science is clear: the future holds more extreme climatic conditions. But what that means for people’s lives in specific locations, or for the globalised systems we all depend on, is uncertain. This is particularly true in the world’s growing urban areas, which also face rapid socio-economic and technological change. To understand and to catalyse responses to the challenges climate change will bring, research and applied innovation are essential. Those challenges include building resilience to disruption, or enabling adaptation — and in some cases fostering a transformation of urban areas. Elements of this are already occurring through governments’ strategic responses and, perhaps more importantly, as individuals and local organisations change their behaviour independently at the local level. But this ‘autonomous adaptive behaviour’ is poorly integrated with planning. This article was published on SciDev.net as part of the spotlight on transforming cities for sustainability. Continue reading the full article here.

Leaders from M-BRACE Cities met last week to share found challenges, opportunities, and regional linkages from the 4-year long engagement in Vietnamese and Thai cities. Core stakeholders from Hue and Lao Cai, Vietnam and Phuket and Udon Thani, Thailand—met in Hue last week for the USAID Mekong-Building Climate Resilience in Asian Cities (USAID M-BRACE) project’s final workshop. The participants shared how they have been assessing and responding to the complex challenges posed by urbanization and climate change. The challenges are magnified by increasing transportation and trade between the two countries as the impending launch of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Economic Community leads to further regional integration. The four cities stakeholders expressed optimism about the future and commended USAID M-BRACE for helping to implement: new policies and successful intervention projects; raising awareness of urbanization and climate change as concerns for public policy; and building opportunities for dialogue and multi-sector networks to combine local, city and provincial government efforts. USAID M-BRACE is implemented by the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition-International in partnership with Thailand Environment Institute and the Vietnam National Institute for Science and Technology Policy and Strategy Studies. For more information, please see the M-BRACE project page.

On behalf of ISET-International, Kathleen Hawley, Project Manager of the Sheltering From A Gathering Storm team, was honored to receive the FedEx Award for Innovations in Disaster Preparedness on October 15, 2014 in Washington DC. The award recognizes innovative interventions that reduces communities’ vulnerability to hazards or natural disasters and increases their capacity to prevent or cope with such adverse events. The award was presented by InterAction and FedEx. ABOUT THE PROJECT The overall goal of the Sheltering From a Gathering Storm research project was to identify key solutions in building resilience in shelter and their long-term economic returns in response to climate hazards. The end goal was to generate quantitative results and qualitative guidance to ensure adoption of climate resilient designs into current institutional frameworks. Shelter accounts for the highest monetary losses in climate related disasters (Comerio, 1997) and is often the single largest asset owned by individuals and families. Resilient shelters are central to the adaptive capacity of most households. Using cost-benefit analysis, this applied research project discovered that resilient housing designs can cost-effectively reduce losses by vulnerable communities due to floods, storms, and high peak daily temperatures. Furthermore, available technologies to withstand floods and typhoons for poor homeowners must be paired with affordable finance and training of local masons (often the ones directly building and designing homes), which is a key entry point for city and national policy makers to incentivize adoption of resilient innovations (Moench et. al, 2014). PARTNERSHIPS LEADING TO ENDURING, GLOBAL SOLUTIONS ISET-International engaged in this two-year program, funded by the Climate Development Knowledge Network, that harnessed key network partners in Pakistan, Nepal, India, and Vietnam to investigate the economic returns to climate resilient shelter designs. Shelter designs and hazard conditions were assessed in cities across Pakistan, India, and Vietnam. In Vietnam, the research team strategically dovetailed with a pre-existing ISET program and partners. In 2011, ISET-International, The Da Nang’s Women’s Union, the Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Da Nang Climate Change Coordination office worked to develop a program that would provide microcredit housing loans and technical assistance to low-income, women-led households. This ensured adoption of the resilience design principles, which had been previously identified and investigated through the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network, an on going program that started in 2008 and with funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. In leveraging this pre-existing program and partners, the Sheltering team was able to amplify the results of the micro finance loan program and then share learnings across the network into areas of India, Pakistan, and beyond. HARNESSING LOCAL INNOVATION AND INSIGHTS The Sheltering program targeted low-income homeowners to address shelter design innovations as a key entry point for resilience. The Resilient Housing Design Competition (RHDC) was hosted in Gorakhpur, India and Da Nang, Vietnam as an integral aspect of the research program. In this forum, the research team charged local innovators to design future climate solutions. In Vietnam, RHDC contestants that advanced to the second round, toured beneficiary households of the Women’s Union micro-finance loan scheme project in Da Nang who had completed construction. The designers then went into another round of design, refining their original concepts with principles and techniques expressed in these beneficiary households. The winner of the RHDC in Vietnam, TT Arch, has supported Da Nang Women’s Union to share key principles of resilience housing, bringing the Sheltering and ACCCRN programs full circle. SEEN VALUE On October 15, 2013, Typhoon Nari landed in Da Nang city at dawn with level-12 winds and level-13 gusts, equivalent to 130 kph. Persistent storm winds coupled with heavy rainfall led to flooding in many areas of the city, especially in Hoa Vang and Son Tra districts. The typhoon caused severe damage: many people were injured, thousands of houses were destroyed or had roofs blown off, and tens of thousands of trees either snapped at their trunks or were uprooted by the severe winds. On October 16, 2013, the day after the typhoon ended, ISET-International and the Da Nang Women’s Union conducted an assessment of damages and the resilience capacity of beneficiary wards in the storm resistant housing project and found that all 244 resiliently designed houses had endured the storm without any damages. The success seen in these beneficiary households is the product of our combined action research program where research into the economics of climate resilient housing designs illustrated the effectiveness of designs and pairing a loan program, led to adoption and transformation through policy impact. REINVESTING AND AMPLIFYING THE RESULTS The project’s success has created a desire to expand the project to other wards throughout Da Nang City via the Women’s Union expansive network. With the awarded funds, the project will leverage the current project funds to reach beyond the initial ward scope and incorporate additional households into the microloan program. The award money will support the training of Women’s Union staff on climate, community based disaster risk reduction, and microfinance management. Through this new team of Women’s Union trainers, program participants at the community level will learn skills for financial management and community based risk reduction. For more information about Sheltering From a Gathering Storm and other country locations, please see: www.i-s-e-t.org/shelter ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The Sheltering From a Gathering Storm Team would like recognize the following organizations in contributing to the success of these ongoing, collaborative programs and partnerships. Central Vietnam Architecture Consultancy (CVAC), Challenge to Change Climate Change Coordination Office Climate Development Knowledge Network Department of Foreign Affairs Hue University Women’s Union of Da Nang The Rockefeller Foundation

The policy dialogue entitled “Climate change and capacity building for climate resilience of local community: Knowledge and Experience sharing among central provinces in adaption planning” was held in Quy Nhon city, Binh Dinh province in August 12th 2014. Participants of this meeting include 35 delegates who are director, deputy director, officials of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment (DONRE), Department of Construction (DoC), Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Department (DARD), the Department of Transportation (DoT) from five central provinces of Binh Dinh, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, Khanh Hoa, Phu Yen; and representatives of the Ministry of Construction (MoC), Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI), Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MoNRE), and the National Assembly. This policy dialogue was organized by the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy and Strategic Studies (NISTPASS) in cooperation with the Institute of Social and Environmental Transition (ISET) and The Climate Change Coordination Office of Binh Dinh Province, with the aim to create a forum for local officials to discuss the challenges and solutions in urban climate change resilience planning (UCCRP) in central provinces. At the beginning, Dr. Bach Tan Sinh and Dr. Mike DiGregorio presented the findings from their studies to set a background for discussion. Subsequently, in the group discussion related to the challenges of urban planning in response to climate change, provincial delegates addressed many practical problems in the central region such as the human resources shortage and weakness; the limited financial resources; the common phenomenon that construction works are often planned and licensed to foster the economic growth of the province and its inhabitants, resulting in little consideration of scientific findings as well as the integration of climate change. At the same time, participants also shared the solutions that were applied in their provinces and questions/suggestions to representatives of ministries and the representative of the National Assembly. One point worth noting is the policy dialogue helped participants to recognize the importance of three issues including the role of research, the involvement of vulnerable communities, and the need for inter-provincial cooperation in UCCRP. In the first issue, after listening to two scientific reports about current situation of UCCRP, participants had a consensus that there should be more scientific studies to provide data base of risk evaluation and the impact of urban development toward ecological environment. In addition, for the research results to be fully utilized, the scientists should consult with policy makers before implementation stage and be able to produce specific, cost-effective, and crystal clear recommendations to policy makers. Secondly, about the role and participation of vulnerable communities in UCCRP, it is the shared recognition of the audience that vulnerable people should be better involved, informed, and insured in the UCCRP process. The third issue discussed by the participants was that UCCRP should be considered as the systematic and an inter-provincial issue, particularly flood management issue. In summary, the policy dialogue in Quy Nhon city created, for the first time, the opportunity for officials at the same level from five neighboring provinces in central region of Vietnam to meet and discuss about the UCCRP. By narrowing the difference among the audience, in terms of experience, knowledge and responsibilities, the discussion was much more focused, effective, and deep down to the problems of UCCRP. The policy dialogue achieved positive results including new awareness about the role of research and vulnerable community, and a consensus for inter-provincial cooperation for a sustainable and effective planning action toward climate change. Blog post prepared by NISTPASS Originally posted by The UCR-CoP blog

Blog by Tho Nguyen and Thanh Ngo, ISET “Students and teachers in Cam Le District, Da Nang, are all too familiar with the impact of disasters,” said Mr. Phi Chau, senior official of the Department of Education and Training (DOET) of Da Nang, Vietnam, as he officially opened the “We Paint to Act Against Climate Change” contest at Ngo Quyen Primary School in May 2014. The event was part of the Integrative Education for Urban Climate Resilience Project, which works toward developing and piloting integrative curricula for climate change education in all schools in Cam Le District. The project aims to build the capacity of students, teachers and their families so that they can respond to immediate climate impacts and contribute actively to urban climate resilience as community members and professionals in the coming decades. These are deeply relevant concerns as Da Nang–a city in the central region of Vietnam–is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and extreme weather phenomena, such as floods, heat waves, saltwater intrusion, riverbank erosion, droughts and extreme cold fronts. This three-year project, which began in 2012, is funded by the Rockefeller Foundation under the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network program, with the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition-International, Vietnam (ISET-Vietnam), the Da Nang DOET and Da Nang Climate Change Coordination Office as key implementers. In recent decades, Da Nang has experienced rapid urbanization, which–together with climate change–is threatening the city with serious compounding impacts. Students, the future generations of Da Nang, therefore need to be equipped with useful knowledge and skills related to climate change and urbanization in order to respond most effectively. In Cam Le District, climate change, in combination with urbanization, has directly affected the education sector. Natural disasters damage schools, books, teaching equipment and supplies. Increased temperature combined with pollution accelerates the spreading of outbreaks such as dengue fever, malaria, sore eye and encephalitis, which children are most vulnerable to. However, a key challenge of incorporating climate change into the school curriculum is that the curriculum is already very full. Based on a survey assessing the capacity and demands of education managers, teachers and students in Cam Le District, the project team–which includes teachers, education and climate experts–proposed that climate change content be integrated into existing education programs. These include both regular and extracurricular components of three subjects for two grades in each education level (primary, secondary and high school). The subjects at high school level, for example, are geography, biology and civic education. A key approach applied throughout this process is shared learning dialogue, which ensures that the opinions and ideas of students, teachers, families, local communities and experts are all taken into account. Teachers identified teaching materials and training among their main needs, and when asked about introducing climate change content in extracurricular activities, students suggested activities such as field trips (e.g., picnicking, camping), presentations, contests (e.g., video clip making, drawing, debating and speech delivering, presenting thematic reports) and club activities on climate change. The painting contests mentioned above, organized as extracurricular events, offer a way to raise public interest and concern around climate change. During these events, we were surprised at the level of eagerness and enthusiasm shown by students, and especially the details and stories they could convey through their drawings. This is a positive sign for the future of urban climate resilience in Da Nang. As of June 2014, the integrative education program has been piloted in all schools of Cam Le District and is being further refined for replication. Climate change is a global issue, but adaptation to it can only be done locally. At both micro and macro levels, Da Nang is making every effort to build capacity for its current and future generations in this regard. Original post on SGI quarterly website, October edition. To read other great stories or to download this October issue of SGI quarterly in pdf, please visit: http://www.sgiquarterly.org/feature2014oct-1.html

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September 7, 2014 | Boulder, Colorado One year after the Boulder Flood of 2013, the county came together to host a week of commemoration. Community members, local researchers, city and county staff were invited to share their stories of what happened, what we’ve learned, and how we can come together and bounce forward after this devastating event. As part of this week-long event ISET-International and BoCo Strong hosted a lively discussion “Resilience: Boulder and the Global Context.” The event was broken into three sections: Introduction by Marcus Moench, Founder of ISET-International Panel Discussion of local and international experts Musical performance by the Railsplitters All of these discussions (and performances) are available online at www.youtube.com/isetintl 1. INTRODUCTION Marcus Moench, Founder of ISET-International, introduced the event by reflecting on his own experiences working abroad, drawing linkages between regions around the world—Gorakhpur, India; Da Nang, Vietnam; and the Himalaya of Nepal—placing Boulder in the global context. See Marcus’ introduction at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZW2zVPtMJ8 Marcus’s introduction focused on: There is a lot of global knowledge that Boulder can learn from, and also places where Boulder can contribute to the global discussion on climate resilience. Thinking ahead, rather than remaining focused on the last disaster. Know your neighbors. Personal relationships matter. Recognize that we depend on complex systems (e.g. energy), failure of which can lead to cascading effects. Individuals respond to disasters on their own behalf, before, during and after the event. Understanding what that action might look like and thinking about how to enable or integrate positive behaviors can lead to a thousand 1% solutions. Those without an effective voice get left behind. Politicians move when they feel the heat, not when they see the light. 2. PANEL DISCUSSION OF LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL EXPERTS Garry Sanfacon is the Boulder County Flood Recovery Manager. Garry created and served in the County’s first recovery shortly after the Four-Mile Canyon Fire in 2010. He has extensive experience in facilitation and community organizing. See Garry’s Discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mehP0tRhqdQ Highlights from Garry’s discussion: Garry became the recovery manager for the floods by accident. Recovery is still happening in the mountain communities. Resilience is not something they want to talk about—these people still need help now. We know that there is another disaster coming. Recovery responders are exhausted—what would happen if another disaster hit today? Who would respond? Communities in the “flatlands” of Boulder have a lot to learn from mountain communities who often don’t expect a government service to help out, but instead are well prepared to fend for themselves in a range of difficult situations. Paty Romero-Lankao is a scientist and “interdisciplinary sociologist” at National Center for Atmospheric Research. Currently, Paty is leading the “Urban Futures” initiative. Cities are key players in the climate arena as emitters of greenhouse gases, vulnerability hotspots and crucibles of innovation. Her research explores the dynamics of urbanization that shape urban emissions, vulnerabilities and risk. She has also analyzed why and how urban populations and decision makers attempt to meet the challenges of reducing emissions while improving their resilience to floods, air pollution and other environmental impacts. Along with other scientists, she is designing urban interdisciplinary studies that inform and are informed by global interdisciplinary research. She has participated in global and local endeavors promoted by UNDP and UN-HABITAT. She was co-leading author to Working Group II of the Nobel prize-winning IPCC AR4, and is currently a convening author of IPCC: AR5, North American chapter. She cares deeply about her family and friends, but she is also passionately engaged in finding options to move humankind toward a more sustainable and fair future. See Paty’s discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBCRWh-iET4 Highlights from Paty’s discussion: As someone who studies these events, even she found it difficult to really understand the gravity of the situation as it was emerging. Many people don’t expect something like this to happen to them. There is no one solution. Infrastructure: Different layer/levels of problem solving. We must pay attention to design. Sump pumps may not work—water could flow right back in. We need effective public policy. Boulder, as a community, should see the flood as a reminder that we need to develop a series of collective and individual actions to respond to future events like the flood. Brett KenCairn is the Senior Environmental planner for Boulder County. He has worked across the western US on community-based sustainable development in primarily rural, native, and ethnic communities. He also helped launch several private sector entities in renewable energy development and worked in a non-profit connecting veterans to green job opportunities. See Brett’s discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7fHlGvMsRg Highlights from Brett’s discussion: What does resilience mean in the context of city planning? Sustainability=Stability, yet change is inherent in everything. Resilience=Change. We can’t have stability without change. Acknowledging this compels us to realize that we cannot create robust systems that cannot change—such systems are brittle and will inevitably fail. Instead, we must prepare for disruption. We are not going to be able to stop climate change. It is becoming widely recognized that even the best mitigation efforts at this point will leave us with change to which we must adapt. Where do we start dealing with change? Some things are foundational (ecosystems, water, sanitation). Part of Boulder’s response will be through the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities Initiative, which the City of Boulder has been invited to join. Greg Guibert has been hired as Boulder’s Chief Resilience Officer. However, as we think about adaption, we must also continue to look for solutions to climate change. Those solutions are simple, but not easy. We need a clean energy system. Karen MacClune is the COO and Senior Staff Scientist at ISET-International. Karen received her PhD in Geophysics from the University of Colorado. She joined ISET is 2009. In 2010 she moved to Bangkok with her husband where they co-founded ISET’s Thai and Vietnamese offices. In mid-2011 she returned to the US to focus on developing training and assessment materials for urban resilience building. Following the Boulder floods, Karen, working with several other ISET staff and associates, conducted a resilience evaluation of the Boulder floods, assessing where we were resilient and why, and where we have opportunities to learn and grow from our experiences so that we’re better positioned for the next disaster. See Karen’s discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCKX_fj_XPc Key Messages from Karen’s discussion: The ISET case study of the Boulder Flood explores what happened, where we were resilient, and where we can learn from the floods and further build our resilience. Boulder has been working on disaster planning and resilience for years. Bike paths throughout town failed safely—as they were designed to. The Boulder Creek Path system has been decades in the making. Funded by city, state, and federal funding, including flood control monies, the bike paths ARE a flood control measure. The flood demonstrated the effectiveness of the creek path, and now we have the public will to mitigate these creeks. Yet, resilience isn’t just infrastructure. There are also human and legal/cultural aspects to resilience, all of which are explored in the case study. For example, the flood enhanced networking and community in many places. Community groups sprung up overnight. College students, and volunteers mobilized over social media networks—people just wanted to help. These personal connections are as important to resilience as well-designed infrastructure. 3. PERFORMANCE BY COLORADO’S RAILSPLITTERS! Thanks to the Railsplitters: Lauren Stovall, Peter Sharpe, Dusty Rider, Leslie Ziegler and Christine King for sharing infectious energy and toe tapping rhythms with us! Check out the Railsplitter’s performance here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRGOjIVIM-Q

What does it mean to be resilient? If you don’t know and are just getting started, what’s the best place and method to learn? Communicating technical concepts to a diverse audience is a challenge. Though ISET hasn’t figured out the silver bullet solution, we’re at least having a fun time trying. The Resilience Tumbling Blocks game was developed to engage people around critical resilience planning concepts in a fun, tactile, memorable way. The game evolved out of ISET-International’s Climate Resilience Framework, a structured approach to assessing and building resilience that ISET has used successfully in South and Southeast Asia. The Resilience Tumbling Blocks game uses the language and structure of the Framework, allowing interested participants to tie their experience back to a much larger body of resilience work and thinking. We piloted this game at TEDxMileHigh: Convergence Exhibits Lounge on September 13, 2014 with great success. A big thanks to the TEDxMileHigh organizers for inviting ISET-International to host a booth! LEARNING RESILIENCE CONCEPTS BY PLAYING GAMES In urban climate resilience planning, there are several key concepts that are ubiquitous worldwide and are incorporated in this game. These include: Uncertainty: There is no amount of planning or preparation that can predict what the next extreme event might be, or when it will occur. The Dice of Disruption introduces an element of unpredictability into the game. Core Systems: Every city and community must consider core systems in their resilience planning. Core systems include: ecosystems, energy, communications, potable water, transportation, food and sanitation. The tower is organized so that these core systems are found at the bottom. If a “disruption” occurs at the base of the tower (when a block is removed), then the entire system (or tower) is put at risk of collapse or “failure.” CHARACTERISTICS OF RESILIENCE The characteristics listed below are key attributes of resilient systems (physical and ecosystems), agents (people and organizations), and institutions (legal and cultural norms) in a city. Unless these characteristics are present or planned into a city’s design, elements of the city, and by association the city as a whole, can become vulnerable and at risk of failure—causing financial or life loss. Each of the Characteristics of Resilience blocks is labeled on one side with a characteristic; on the other side is an idiom to express the term in plain language. Labels for each block are listed below. Characteristics of Physical Systems (e.g., roads, energy systems, water and sewage distributions networks, houses and buildings, etc.): Safe failure: Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Redundancy & modularity: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket Flexibility & diversity: You gotta go with the flow Characteristics of Legal and Cultural norms (e.g., land use restrictions, zoning, the social expectation that “it’s my land, keep off”, etc.): Access: Stand up for your rights Information: What you don’t know won’t hurt you …? Decision-making: The buck stops …where? Characteristics of People and Organizations Responsiveness: Don’t leave for tomorrow what can be done today Resourcefulness: Think on your feet Capacity to learn: Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me. Relationships: I get by with a little help from my friends HOW TO PLAY The Goal of the Game: Collect 7 Characteristics of Resilience blocks before the tower comes tumbling down. Setting up the Tower: The tower should be stacked in order of color with the blue Characteristic of Resilience blocks being placed randomly throughout. Top: Purple/Agents Brown/Institutions Yellow/Systems Bottom: Green/Ecosystems Roll the Dice of Disruption: Every other turn, the player must roll the Dice of Disruption and pull a block of the corresponding color from the tower. If you roll “Bounce Forward,” you can add a block back into the tower to add stability, or you can draw a Characteristic of Resilience. Build the Tower: When a player pulls a block, place it at the top of the tower. Hold on to any Characteristics of Resilience that you collect. Build your community! Let new players jump in and out of the game. Work together to strategize and collect Characteristics of Resilience as a team. WHAT’S NEXT?This game is a proof of concept for a games toolkit that we are developing and planning to roll out in 2015. THE WINNER’S GALLERY There were a lot of winners at TEDxMileHigh, but here is a small selection of folks that stood out!

Provincial officials, city leaders, community members, and representatives from a range of stakeholder groups met in Patong earlier this week to learn about intervention projects conducted in Phuket under Mekong-Building Climate Resilience in Asian Cities (M-BRACE) and to discuss how the outcomes and lessons learned in these projects can help Phuket better address key challenges related to development, urbanization, and climate change. The three projects included a range of activities such as the construction of a new meteorological monitoring station in Patong, the development of climate change and environment classes for schools, capacity building in stakeholder engagement, and a youth short film competition. These projects were designed to address key challenges and weaknesses identified in the M-BRACE vulnerability assessment. As part of the discussion, participants discussed how they could modify and improve existing governance and management processes to incorporate the successful outcomes and ways of working from these projects. One mechanism to build on M-BRACE is already underway; stakeholders also participated in a dialogue with the US Army Corps of Engineers to outline how to utilize shared vision planning and modeling to better address water resource management on the island. After four years of work in Phuket, M-BRACE, which is funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and overseen by the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition-International (ISET) in partnership with Thailand Environment Institute, has, in the words of one stakeholder, “helped Phuket identify and discuss issues in ways that address the underlying causes such as land-use change and urbanization.”

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A Climate Action Plan for the city of Lao Cai has been approved by the Provincial People’s Committee and was formally announced on September 9, 2014. The Action Plan outlines eleven key actions that will help the city address challenges stemming from urbanization and build resilience to climate change. These actions range from ones targeting agents and institutions, such as improving the capacity of weather forecasting and disaster warning, to those that target infrastructure and ecosystems, such as investing in drainage and solid-waste processing systems. For each of the action items, the plan identifies the lead and coordinating agencies responsible for implementation as well as sources of funding, including from local, national, and external sources. With the approval of the Action Plan, agencies and departments throughout the city will now work to integrate these actions into their own one and five year plans. Mr. Mai Dinh Dinh, the Director of the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment praised the plan, saying that this “commits Lao Cai to working directly to address climate change through 2020.” The Action Plan was developed through a collaborative process as part of the USAID-funded Mekong–Building Climate Resilience in Asian Cities program (M-BRACE), which is being implemented by the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition (ISET) and the Vietnam National Institute for Science and Technology Policy and Strategy Studies (NISTPASS). The Action Plan builds on knowledge and capacity generated through a Vulnerability Assessment, a series of Shared Learning Dialogues, and a intervention projects targeting key areas of vulnerability.

OPPORTUNITIES TO LEARN, OPPORTUNITIES TO TEACH, CHALLENGES TO RECOGNIZE With support from the Rockefeller Foundation supported 100 Resilient Cities initiative, Boulder has just hired a “Chief Resilience Officer.” At the same time, as we approach the first anniversary of the September 2013 floods, discussions on resilience in the city and county are gaining momentum. As a result, it’s important to take stock of where we are. Boulder is a resilient city. We are rapidly springing back from the flooding. During the floods neighborhoods pulled together to help each other and the city’s emergency response teams responded quickly to a situation both larger and different from any they had previously envisioned. Although most roads to the mountains washed out, we didn’t lose our water supply or wastewater system, power was only out for a few hours and communications systems continued to function. The bike-paths and parks along Boulder creek functioned as floodways. Their presence and the very limited loss of life reflected early visionary leadership on the part of individuals, such as Gilbert White, coupled with the efforts of the city and county administrations over decades to develop and implement plans, enforce codes, and purchase open-space. None of this could have been achieved in the absence of a supportive and engaged community. We’re resilient, or are we? We came far closer to losing both our water supply and wastewater system during the floods than most people know [1]. If it weren’t for luck and very proactive “out of the box” responses by water supply and wastewater system managers the city would have had to evacuate or, at minimum, face far higher levels of long-term disruption. The floods weren’t the ones we’d planned for. Flows down Boulder creek, while large, were at levels that recur perhaps every 25 years; not the 100-year or 1000-year “big flood.” Instead it was the hillsides and small creeks along the Front Range that carried the brunt of the storm impacts ripping out roads and causing unanticipated disruption across broad areas. The capacity of our wastewater system was quickly overwhelmed, flooding basements and contaminating floodwaters. While we’ve managed to repair the roads so that they are passable and both the water and wastewater systems function, very little has been done to address the underlying vulnerabilities of the lifeline water, wastewater and transport systems on which we all depend. At the household level, recovery is also slow. The most obvious impacts are on those who actually lost homes and either remain in temporary accommodation or have moved away. While some people have rebuilt, others have been unable to. Far more homeowners now carry additional debt incurred when they had to repair flooded basements or replace lost items. The impact on renters was probably as great or greater – lots of basement apartments lost or at least the occupants had to relocate or live in substandard accommodations. Some landlords didn’t do much for their renters. Displaced Hispanic families are having a hard time finding anyone who will rent to them. The impacts on them, the gaps between what FEMA or insurance cover and the costs of recovery, are hidden from public view. Similar impacts are the hidden contradictions between zoning, codes, and realities on the ground. How do you rebuild a home or the bridge to your land when the creek has moved, the flood zone is unclear, and a hydraulic flow study mandated by regulatory organizations would cost tens of thousands of dollars on top of already unaffordable reconstruction costs? What do you do if, as has happened to our neighbors, you moved into Boulder having lost your house to fire the previous year and are now facing a long process to reconstruct following the flood? As a community, we don’t even know who we’ve lost, nor do most people care. Families in the bottom tier may have moved out and almost no one would notice unless they happened to clean your house or do your yard-work or be in your child’s class at school. And you might not even notice then. The individuals facing such challenges are resilient. They take one step at a time and complete the tasks immediately before them. The toll adds up however. Now, almost a year after the floods, many are still very much in the process of recovery. In a similar manner, Boulder is resilient but the real costs of events such as the flood are often both very real and hidden from public view. So what is resilience? Is it just the ability to withstand an event such as the Boulder flood and recover, or is it something more? This is the challenge Boulder’s new Chief Resilience Officer and those working on long term recovery from the flood will have to answer. After all, the flood isn’t Boulder’s only challenge. Fires have had a devastating impact on mountain communities and could easily affect the city itself. Other hazards, such as extreme heat events, are likely as climate changes. As a result, resilience is important…but what is it really? Definitions vary. According to the main academic group working on social and ecological systems, resilience is “the ability to absorb disturbances, to be changed and then to re-organize and still have the same identity (retain the same basic structure and ways of functioning). It includes the ability to learn from the disturbance. A resilient system is forgiving of external shocks.”[2] When applied to cities, the Rockefeller Foundation defines a resilient city slightly differently. A resilient city is one that: “delivers basic needs; safeguards human life; protects, maintains and enhances assets; facilitates human relationships and identity; promotes knowledge; defends the rule of law, justice and equity; supports livelihoods; stimulates economic prosperity.” More commonly, resilience is generally defined in terms of the ability to spring back from disruption or to withstand and recover from stress. Daniel Homsey, the Director of San Francisco’s community resilience programs, talks very simply of resilience in terms of lifeline systems (water, power, communications, food and health) and relationships. To him, a resilient community is one where people know each other and can help each other in times of need and where lifeline systems won’t fail in any major event. Boulder has mixed scores in relation to all of the above definitions. While as a city we have to a large extent recovered from the floods, many individuals, households and businesses have yet to do so. More importantly, there are clear areas where we skirted larger failures more by luck than due to any inherent resilience in our systems or communities. Failure of the power system, for example, would have knocked out water supplies, eliminated our ability to treat sewage, and hamstrung emergency operations. At present, Boulder residents have (?) little ability to affect how our power system is designed and operated or the sources of energy it depends on. As a result, the resilience of one of the most fundamental infrastructure systems we depend on is out of our control. Equally importantly, the degree to which Boulder as a community has really “learned” from the floods is open to question. Homes are generally being repaired using the same materials and approaches as before; roads, bridges and sewer systems are being repaired in ways that aren’t fundamentally any more resilient than before. Many communities, particularly those that experienced little direct impact from the flood, have moved on and aren’t actively engaged in debates over the on-going recovery or what could be done to respond either to the risks we’ve already experienced or those we are likely to face. The upcoming anniversary of the flood and the resilience summit that is being planned represent an opportunity to reinvigorate discussion around pathways to adapt to the challenges Boulder faces. In some cases transformative approaches may be essential. It’s difficult to build resilience in infrastructure systems such as energy or sewage treatment that are not modular and depend in fundamental ways on large-scale interconnected components. Municipalization of energy, as Boulder is considering, could be one avenue for increasing resilience. Equally importantly, speaking as a long-term resident, building resilience may require strengthening or re-creating the connections that define Boulder and different areas within it as part of a community. This could require increased attention to equity – as a community we’re unaffordable and depend heavily on commuters to fill many jobs. To some extent Boulder also appears rigid – we expect the city to serve us without recognizing that as individuals, families and businesses we also need to bear part of the responsibility and contribute to the wider community. Finally, it’s unclear how flexible Boulder really is. We don’t, for example, have clear strategies for responding to the challenges that will emerge as our population ages. Rethinking elements of communities, the systems we depend on and the institutions that govern us may increasingly be essential. Such changes would transform the basic nature of the systems and community connections we depend on. They could enable adaptation to evolving climatic conditions while also building resilience to a much wider range of change processes and potential disruptive events. [1] http://i-s-e-t.org/resources/case-studies/floods-in-boulder.html [2] http://www.resalliance.org/index.php/key_concepts