For half a decade UN-Habitat, through its Cities and Climate Change Initiative and Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme, has assisted the urban areas, both formal and informal, of the City of Honiara in the Solomon Islands with adaptation planning. Assistance began in 2012 with a participatory analysis of vulnerability and adaptive capacity.
In 2014, floods devastated Honiara and destroyed one highly vulnerable settlement, Koa Hill. This destruction gave added impetus to adaptation planning. After the floodwaters receded, UN-Habitat assisted Honiara to undertake climate action planning. An innovative feature of the planning process undertaken was that, from the outset, the process was undertaken jointly by the Solomon Islands Government and Honiara City Council, as well as ward- and community-level stakeholders. This innovative institutional anchoring reflects what is often the case but seldom so explicitly acknowledged: that managing the urban territory is rarely an exclusive responsibility of a local authority only - but that higher level authorities and local implementers share this responsibility.