Promoting Urban Climate Change Resilience in Selected Asian Cities

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The TA will assist the prioritized countries to foster urban climate change resilience in medium-sized cities and to build capacity to work together to prevent climate change indicated shocks and stresses. The Urban Climate Change Resilience Trust Fund (UCCRTF) under the Urban Financing Partnership Facility seeks to achieve ambitious targets, including directly making over 2 million people in 25 cities less vulnerable to climate and disaster risk, and reducing by at least 14% the economic loss from climate related hazards. This Cluster RETA has been designed to make available UCCRTF resources to ODs to provide planning and capacity building support as well as pilot activities for project development either before or during PPTA. The TA will support a range of activities to help lay the groundwork for UCCR planning processes, project pipeline, and knowledge and capacity development. As set out in the UCCRTF Implementation Guidelines (IG) prioritized activities have to demonstrate additionality and innovativeness for structuring and financing pro-poor UCCR projects in terms of (i) urban system and climate risk analysis, (ii) integrated urban infrastructure planning and management, (iii) pro-poor urban development, and (iv) urban climate change resilience improvement. By providing upstream support, the TA expects to create a robust pipeline of viable, innovative and integrated UCCR projects.The proposed cluster TA (i) has incorporated lessons for effectiveness learnt from the existing Financing Partnership Facilities ; (ii) addresses a sub national target group, in particular, cities and entities that are providing public services; (iii) brings synergies with other initiatives under the Urban Operational Plan 2012-2020. The cluster approach is proposed because (i) the subprojects are closely related, with common objectives and significant potential synergies, (ii) they will operate collectively as a pilot for strengthening resilient urban development and (iii) a cluster modality will maximize TA coherence and coordination better than an individual TA approach. The interlinked subprojects address the crosscutting issues surrounding UCCR. The subprojects are as follows:"Subproject 1 (Planning) focusses on strengthening UCCR planning and project pipeline in selected cities/DMCs "Subproject 2 (Knowledge) includes support for city capacity building through knowledge management, networking and monitoring. "Subproject 3 (Pilots and project development support) will provide resources for pilot interventions and project development that will help integrate urban climate change resilience into projects. The cluster TA aims to promote UCCR among the selected DMCs. It will contribute to an advanced understanding of opportunities for resilient urban development in the region, actions required to accelerate institutional take up, capacity building and planning for UCCR. Specific actions will be worked out during the course of TA implementation. Coordination with other development partners will be undertaken to avoid duplication of efforts.