Expression of Interest

to document a

Good Practice on Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience in/ for

Urban Poor Communities in Asia-Pacific

ESCAP, UN-HABITAT and the Rockefeller Foundation are jointly preparing the ‘Quick Guide on Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience in Urban Poor Communities in Asia-Pacific’ as a practice-oriented overview of the issues for local and national level policy makers and other urban stakeholders[1]. The partners will use examples of good practices throughout Asia and the Pacific to illustrate the messages of the Quick Guide and are therefore looking for:

1)Good practices that have been documented already

If you know of a practice that has already been documented extensively, e.g. for an award,for advocacy or training – online or in print, kindlylet us know:

  • The name and location of the good practice;
  • A link to and/ or the document itself describing the good practice; and
  • The contact details of a focal point able to provide further information.

Please send above information by emailto bylatest Mon, 27 Feb 2012.

If the good practice is selected for reference in the Quick Guide, ESCAP will share the draft text on the practice with the respective implementing organizations and documenters for review before publishing. We will give due recognition to the respective organizations in the Quick Guide, including providing links to websites or original documents.

2)Good practices that have not been documented yet

As input to the Quick Guide and as stand-alone reference sources to be uploaded online, the partners would like to commission the documentation of several good practices (following a template that will be provided by ESCAP) between Feb and May 2012. Local documenters of selected good practices will be remunerated for their contribution and work closely with ESCAP in a reiterative documentation process, as part of which ESCAP also plans to visit some of the practices.

If you or your organization has extensive knowledge of a good practice that 1) has not been documented in detail before, 2) is at an advanced implementation stage, and 3) satisfies the requirements listed on page 2, and if 4) you/ or a suitable documenter would be interested in documenting it during above indicated timeframe, then kindly complete theSummary Questionnaireattached as page 3 and return it to: by latest Mon, 27 Feb 2012.The partners will short-list good practices to be documented from all completed expressions of interest that we receive and contact focal points of the selected practices.

Kindly spread this request for expressions of interest through your network.

Requirements for Selecting Good Practices for the Quick Guide

The Quick Guide will cover all aspects of climate change adaptation and resilience in urban areas of Asia-Pacificand couldtherefore refer to good practices that:

  • Address any consequence of climate change: both sudden shocks, such as flooding, typhoons, drought, erosion etc., and slower-onset changes, such as new risks to health, food security, livelihoods, basic infrastructure and services etc.;
  • Focus on any stage of an adaptation or resilience enhancing process, ranging from vulnerability assessment, adaptation planning, advocacy and awareness raising, implementation of adaptation and resilience measures (from emergency planning, early warning, monitoring, disaster management, post-disaster relief, reconstruction, to long-term coping mechanisms) and their coordination, management, to evaluation and reiterative learning processes;
  • Relate to both physical interventions (such as infrastructure or housing designs) or governance and management arrangements (such as policies, processes, instruments, partnerships or incentives);
  • Are implementable on and/ or affect community or city levels.

For good practices to be included in the Quick Guide, they must be:

  • Replicable in/ adaptable to other institutional, economic, political and/or geographic contexts within cities and towns of Asia-Pacific;
  • Pro-poor, i.e. actively benefit the poor or at least not harm them;
  • Focused on adaptation and resilience measures. Mitigation may be mentioned if it occurs as a co-benefit or if it is an integrated mitigation-adaptation practice.

Priority will be given to those practices that:

  • Can be easily replicated in/ adapted to small and medium sized towns;
  • Require modest capital investments and rely on technologies and managerial set-ups that can be implemented with limited resources;
  • Involve citizens in planning, implementation and/or operation of the practice;
  • Address gender issues;
  • Are holistic in outlook, i.e. covering several aspects or processes to achieve effectiveness and synergies, enabling communities and cities to better handle surprise, prepare for and manage multiple overlapping impacts, to be flexible and to have redundancy in urban systems.

The Summary Questionnaire is attached as page 3.

Summary Questionnaire

  1. Name of practice
  1. Location(s)

[List district/city/town & country]

  1. Actors

[List key partners and stakeholders as well as the roles of each]

  1. Issues addressed/ focus[1 paragraph]

[Describe what challenges/gaps the practice is addressing]

  1. Stage of implementation[2-3 paragraphs]

[What year was the practice initiated? Is it partially or fully implemented/ functioning/ operational?]

  1. What was/ is being done? [2-3 paragraphs]

[Describe how the practice works/ what it does, and why this particular approach was chosen. What are the key innovations and value-added of the practice? What is its scope and costs?]

  1. Outcomes and impacts[2-3 paragraphs]

[What has been achieved and who is benefitting? In what ways is it pro-poor? What main factors for success would you emphasize?]

  1. Sustainability[1 paragraph]

[What is the strategy to keep this practice going over the mid and long terms?]

  1. Replicability and scalability [2 paragraph]

[Can this practice or parts of it be replicated or was its success local context-specific? Has this practice/ parts of it been replicated already or is someone planning to replicate it? At what scale has this practice been implemented (e.g. household, ward level, watershed, city-wide) and what are the prospects for scaling up implementation within the city or town to benefit large numbers of people?]

  1. Why do you think should this practice be documented and disseminated?[1 paragraph]
  1. Documentation

[Has this practice been mentioned/ documented somewhere already (please provide details/ links)? Has it received recognition/awards? Is this practice ready to be documented (i.e. Is necessary information such as financial information, legal documents, impact assessments etc. available/ can be obtained? Do the implementing partners agree for it to be documented – incl. hosting potential verification visits of ESCAP/ partners?)?]

  1. Local documenter

[Who would document the good practice (please provide the full contact details, including name, position, address, email, tel).What is this person’s/ organizations relation to the good practice? Kindly note that documentation would have to be done in English]

1

[1]The objective and format of the Quick Guide will be comparable to the series of Quick Guide on Housing the Urban Poor in Asian Cities, which can be viewed & downloaded here: