Urban Climate Change Governance within Centralised Governments: a Case Study of Giza, Egypt

Abstract

Urban climate governance on the subnational and local government levels requires multilevel governance and local autonomy. Within centralised governments, climate action becomes challenging. Moreover, in developing countries, development needs are usually prioritised, while climate action is viewed as an unaffordable luxury. In a centralised, middle-income country like Egypt, climate action is a challenge for all government levels. This research investigates the current state and the prospect of urban climate change governance on the subnational level in Egypt. A twofold methodology is used. First, through desk research, a comprehensive list of urban climate governance enabling factors was extracted. The list was used to assess the practices of 3 international case studies (Delhi, Durban, and Amman) and then refined and used to assess the first subnational level climate change strategy in Egypt. Second, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a few selected experts working on climate change and urban policies in Egypt. Two sets of recommendations were formulated to expedite urban climate change governance in Egypt, especially on the subnational and local levels. While the research focuses on Egypt, the methodology and recommendations could be adopted and adapted by local governments functioning within centralised systems.

Factors Affecting Climate Change Governance in Addis Ababa City, Ethiopia

“…Regarding impact and vulnerability, there are several reports that indicate that higher officials as well as the community well understood vulnerable places. Climate-change governance in cities require access to current, contextspecific sources of data, including future climate predictions, GHG inventories results, climate vulnerability assessments, and impacts, such as heat waves and floods [27,34].…”

“…Several studies indicated that a shortage of finance is another factor for the implementation of climate-change response measures [27,29,[32][33][34]. Mostly, local governments or municipal authorities face a shortage of finance to implement mitigation and adaptation because of the existence of many competing issues on urban agendas [27,32,35].…”

“…Weak coordination of actors and sectors are also key factors that hinder climate-change governance [11,32,33,37,39,40]. Most countries' local governments or municipalities lack cooperation with academia, the private sectors, the community, and NGOs [34] and lack vertical coordination between national and local levels, which is important to devise solutions to governance problems at the local level [3].…”

“…Another factor that hinders climate-change governance in cities is access to updated sources of data, including future climate predictions, GHG inventories, and climate vulnerability assessments and impacts such as heat waves and flood [34]. Information accessibility and availability can improve decision-making skills by assisting decision-makers in assessing and prioritizing climate change [27,41].…”

“…The political willingness of leaders and leadership is another major factor that hinders climate-change response [34]. Lack of political will is a challenge the collaborative governance of the climate-change response in most cities [38,42].…”