Cities Fit for the Climate Adaptation? Lessons from the New IPCC Report

Cities are at the forefront of climate change. The recently published sixth assessment report by the Working Group II of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), devoted to adaptation, leaves no doubts: the risks faced by people and assets because of climate change have increased in urban and rural settlements alike. Adaptation, however, is not keeping pace.
Chapter 6, devoted to “Cities, Settlements and Key Infrastructure”, highlights the existence of an “adaptation gap”: measures for cities, settlements and infrastructure to adapt to the unavoidable consequences of climate change are still falling dramatically short of what is needed. Existing and planned measures, moreover, do not always avoid the risk of entrenching inequalities and thus enhancing vulnerability among the most disadvantaged groups.
The panel will discuss policy solutions, urban governance potential, and the failures so far:

• Arancha Gonzalez, Dean of the Sciences Po’s Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA)
• Alexandre Magnan, Researcher at IDDRI – Institut du développement durable et des relations internationales
• Tadashi Matsumoto, Head of Sustainable Urban Development Unit at OECD
• Mark Pelling, Professor at King’s College London, Coordinating Lead Author or Chapter 6 “Cities, Settlements and Key Infrastructure” of the 6th IPCC Assessment Report – Working Group II
• Noémie Fompeyrine, Head of Resilience, Prospective, Research and Innovation Division at the City of Paris.

Moderation by:

• Charlotte Halpern, Director of the Executive Master of Regional Governance and Urban Development at the Urban School and senior research fellow at the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics, Sciences Po
• Giacomo Parrinello, academic Director of the master Governing Ecological Transitions in European Cities at the Urban School and assistant Professor at the Centre for History, Sciences Po.

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