From March 26 to 28, 2014, teams from eight cities in four countries gathered in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic for the Regional Climate Leadership Academy: Increasing the Climate Resilience of Infrastructure Services in Cities across Latin America and the Caribbean. The three-day workshop highlighted innovative and transferable infrastructure resilience practices from across the region through peer-to-peer learning and featured presentations. Workshop Objectives The Climate Leadership Academy was designed to:
Workshop Outcomes On the last day of the workshop, each city team developed an ambitious three- to six-month action plan. The plans particularly focused on mainstreaming climate adaptation and resilience into existing plans and processes, collaboration and coordination to accelerate urban resilience, and capacity building and education for stakeholders. Participants also expressed a newfound sense of community; increased motivation and energy to take climate change action; and new and strengthened connections with colleagues, peers, and other important stakeholders to leverage in support of future efforts. The workshop also produced a Resource Guide that contains case studies on urban resilience, profiles of the cities that participated, and resource lists with links to reports by topic area. The topics covered in the resource lists include: climate change adaptation basics, urban adaptation strategies, infrastructure adaptation, the economics of climate change adaptation, regional resources for Latin America and the Caribbean, and online tools, knowledge centers, and databases. Next Steps A number of key takeaways and next steps were highlighted by the workshop:
To follow-up on these takeaways, workshop participants suggested that the CRIS program disseminate the program’s tools and resources to the participant cities as well as other cities worldwide. They encouraged the program to support ongoing communication and resource sharing among cities. The following workshop materials were created: |