The Social Resilience Guide considers a variety of topics, from inhabitants’ wellbeing to the delivery of services, with a particular focus on vulnerability and inclusive and protective measures. This Guide has three angles of analysis: understanding vulnerability from a social perspective; assessing the availability of services in response to people’s needs; and formulating actions for resilience that adapt to local needs.

More than one-quarter of the world’s urban population lives in informal settlements. Informal settlements create marginalisation and segregation, and their inhabitants are often more vulnerable to health risks, natural disasters, unreliable wages, hazardous working environments, and a lack of basic services. This Enhancer outlines a series of indicators to help local governments evaluate informality in their city, and identify its root causes in order to manage it appropriately.

This Guide suggests methods and steps for mainstreaming Climate Change into National Urban Policies. Government stakeholders can select the methods and tools needed based on their respective circumstances, under a framework of “Phases” and “Elements” that serve as the building blocks of the mainstreaming process. Within each of the Elements, which are aligned and consistent with phases of UN-Habitat’s National Urban Policy process, concrete actions covering various policy aspects are proposed…

A practical guide to project financing in East Africa is based on the premise that green buildings typically carry higher upfront capital/buyer costs but lower ongoing/ operational ones. As such, they offer financial value to lenders, owners, and occupiers; and societal value in reducing resource consumption, and carbon and other forms of pollution. Unlocking this value requires specialist energy efficiency, green building, and localised energy finance.

In hot tropical climates, it is necessary to eliminate the penetration of solar radiation into buildings through glazed surfaces through strategies such as appropriate building orientation (along the east – west axis), adequate sizing of openings (window to wall ratio), proper location of openings (facing north and south), careful selection of glazing properties and appropriate solar protection using sun shading devices. This document illustrates how to properly size shading devices for windows…

Urban areas generate around 70% of global energy use and energy-related Green House Gas (GHG) emissions (IEA 2009), thus cities in the developing world, where most of the growth will take place, will have a significant impact on GHG emissions, seriously threatening any effort to reduce them – unless new urban developments are designed to minimise their impact.

This research aims at informing development initiatives that responds to capacity gaps and requirements of stakeholder sectors in Myanmar in relation to mitigation and management of risks relevant to climate variability and change. The research concentrates on Dagon Seikan Hpa-An, Keng Tung, Kyauk Phyu, Labutta, Mawlamyine, and Meiktila; and select communities therein.

This handbook is intended to guide national and local government officials on how to build resilience to climate change and hazards at the local level. Section 2 of the book introduces key issues related to climate change in Myanmar. Section 3 provides a methodological guidance on how to develop local climate resilience action plans. The annex part contains a long list of climate change adaptation (CCA) options applicable at a local level in Myanmar.

This manual is intended to serve as a guide for national and local government officials on how to assess vulnerability of townships of Myanmar to climate change and hazards. The assessment framework presented herein captures a wide array of issues related to climate change and its impacts on townships and communities. Those are grouped into environmental, socio-economic and infrastructure components.