We live in an urban world: more than 55 per cent of the world population lives in urban areas today and this number will grow to 68 per cent by 2050. Cities are particularly vulnerable to Climate Change as the concentrate large populations and a centres for the national economy and social-economic development. In order to build the climate resilience of the national population and economy, building resilient cities and human settlements is essential. National Adaptation Plans are the most important process to articulate the adaptation needs and priorities of countries, and therefore countries should comprehensively address urban and human settlement issues in National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) at the formulation and implementation stage.

The guide primarily targets decision-makers at the national level working on NAPs, both within and outside UNFCCC focal point ministries, while it also targets a broader set of stakeholders at the national and sub-national levels who are interested in NAPs or who may be involved in their implementation. This guide has been developed to address the support countries require to enhance the coverage of human settlement/urban issues within the broader national effort to formulate and implement NAPs. The supplement also offers advice on how adaptation efforts at the urban level can be scaled up and better integrated into national efforts.

The study seeks to inform the update and revision of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) National Spatial Strategy by analyzing five international experiences on national spatial frameworks and identifying sustainable and progressive approaches. Case studies include Republic of Korea, Germany, Malaysia, Morocco and China,Germany. Each country has been selected through a set of criteria collaboratively set by the UN-Habitat Headquarters and Riyadh Office.

The case studies provide a cross section of experiences that can be used to inform the revision of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s (KSA) National Spatial Strategy. This diverse group of countries, experiencing both unique and common development issues, have adapted their own National Spatial Frameworks (NSFs) based on their country’s social and political context. At the same time, they address local and international pressures experienced through rapid urbanization, climate and environmental risks, and an increasingly globalized world.

Interlocking Stabilised Soil Block (ISSB) technology has been gaining recognition, particularly in East Africa. This material and method of construction has the advantages of low cost and minimal environmental impact, while providing comparable quality to conventional fired brick construction. With a growing number of organisations using the technology there is a need to improve communication and knowledge-sharing, to quantify and verify the benefits, and to develop efficient approaches for its promotion and adoption.

The purpose of this publication is to promote the use of ISSB by sharing some case studies of successful adoption and adaptation to local contexts. It also highlights some of the challenges faced in developing and promoting the technology with some key lessons learned from projects in northern Uganda. This document provides stakeholders interested in the sustainable development of human settlements with a reference tool for an innovative construction method in practice.

La Estrategia de Apoyo a la Gestión Urbano Ambiental de Arequipa fue iniciada por la Municipalidad Provincial de Arequipa a principios del 2003 y finalizó su segunda fase en enero del 2007. Ha sido apoyada por PNUMA y UN-Habitat, organismos que junto con el Consejo Nacional del Ambiente (CONAM), el Ministerio de Vivienda,

Construcción y Saneamiento, a través de la Dirección Nacional de Urbanismo (VIVIENDA), el Instituto Nacional de Defensa Civil (INDECI) y el PNUD, están desarrollando la Estrategia de Apoyo a la Gestión Ambiental en el Perú. Arequipa es la primera ciudad participante en la estrategia a nivel nacional, que ha sido ampliada a las ciudades de Lima-Callao y Chiclayo.

Sus principales objetivos han sido elaborar un diagnóstico urbano ambiental de la ciudad para apoyar la comprensión del desarrollo urbano y el impacto en su entorno, así como mejorar la planificación y gestión urbano ambiental de Arequipa.

In Zambia the Sustainable Cities Programme was implemented in Lusaka from 1994-2001 to address high levels of poverty and inequality experienced in the city resulting from a shrinking economy as the country’s copper-dominated export sector started to dwindle and government’s capacity to adequately deliver public services was impaired. The city suffered major environmental challenges particularly air and water pollution; insufficient water resources; ineffective solid waste management; inadequate sanitation systems; traffic congestion; limited urban planning capacities and open quarrying.

In 2002, the programme was extended to Kitwe city, to help address environment-development problems of inadequate and inefficient urban services particularly in low income areas, growth and expansion of informal settlements; congestion in the town centre; air pollution and a declining economic base. This was coupled with weak institutional capacities that were unable to facilitate city-wide service delivery on a sustainable basis. In both cities the programme, founded on a broad-based stakeholder participatory approach, was targeted at building capacities in environmental planning and management (EPM) in urban local authorities and their partners; it also supported measures for poverty alleviation, particularly in unplanned settlements and promoted environmentally sustainable socio-economic development and growth.

This report documents the activities of the Sustainable Lusaka Programme and Sustainable Kitwe Programme in Zambia in the period 1994-2007.

The Sustainable Cities Programme was first implemented in 1996 in Shenyang and Wuhan, in China. From this initial experience, the environmental Planning and Management methodology was integrated in urban management to address pressing environmental concerns, such as air pollution, water quality, solid waste management and urban traffic. Innovative participatory and environmental governance mechanisms were tested, promoting sustainable natural, economic and social development of both cities through the implementation of demonstration projects. As a result, environmental awareness increased and crosssector and institutional cooperation strengthened.

From the success of the Shenyang and Wuhan experiments, the Sustainable Cities Programme II was set up in 2005 between Administrative Centre for China€hss Agenda 21 and UN-HABITAT. This international project was designed to last three years. Guiyang, Hailin and Panzhihua were chosen as pilot cities of the Sustainable Cities Programme II with three main objectives:

(i) to improve the environmental Planning and Management/Sustainable Cities Programme application and policy implementation processes.

(ii) to develop an institutional framework and networks for sustained environmental Planning and Management support.

(iii) to institutionalize normative functions of the Sustainable Cities Programme.

The criteria used for the pilot-city selection comprised institutional, human and technical capacity, geographical location to balance between southern and western regions, the urbanization trend in relevance to upcoming environmental challenges, strong cross-sector communication and commitment by local authorities, project feasibility as well as the identification of positive outputs for city environment/development.

Nuevos enfoques para construir procesos de planificación urbana y gestión ambiental en la ciudad se hacen necesarios para que la funcionalidad de los mismos sea sostenible.

Esta experiencia demuestra la importancia de integrar y asociar estrategias de planificación urbana ambiental con estrategias de desarrollo local y nacional. Es necesario crear nuevas plataformas de negociación entre el sector públicoprivado, de manera que se generen alianzas estratégicas para el desarrollo local.

The Sustainable CitiesProgramme/LA21 Programme in the Philippines was started in 1998 by UN-HABITAT in collaboration with the department of the environment and Natural Resources. It was targeted at secondary towns and was perceived as a localization of the Philippine Agenda 21. Its main purpose was to pioneer the integration of environmental planning and management within the city organizations using the Sustainable Cities Programme-Local Agenda 21 (SCP-LA21) approach.

Three cities were selected as demonstration cities€S,, that is, Lipa, Tagbilaran and Cagayan de Oro. By enhancing the capacity of local government units in participatory environmental planning and management, the programme sought to address issues of poverty, inequity, powerlessness, gender inequality, and environmental degradation evident in the participating cities. each city went systematically through a 4 phase environmental Planning and Management process as follows: Phase 1 - start up, Phase 2 €, strategy and action planning, Phase 3 € follow up and implementation, and Phase 4 € consolidation and replication.

Upon the termination of the Project in 2001, the application of the environmental Planning and Management process showed good prospects in curbing urban problems. The participating Local Government Units found that managing sustainable urbanization presented tremendous challenges, requiring them to undertake bold institutional and policy reforms and new urban environmental strategies.

The Sustainable Cities Programme (SCP) started in the Tanzanian capital, Dar es Salaam in 1992 under an initiative known as the Sustainable Dar es Salaam Project. Dar es Salaam was one of the first demonstration cities in Africa where environmental planning and management were revitalized under the SCP, a joint initiative of UNHABITAT and UNEP to implement Agenda 21.

Others cities were Ismailia in Egypt, Accra in Ghana, Dakar in Senegal, Ibadan in Nigeria, and Lusaka in Zambia.

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Guide for Community Based Environmental Management Information Systems (CEMIS) (THE)