A framework for city stakeholders climate change aewareness-developmewnt process

Resumen

Most of the world’s population now lives in cities, and it is forecasted that 60% of the population will live in urban areas by 2050. Cities, are understood as complex systems, have been adapting to the challenges their surrounding have posed them throughout history. However, climate change (CC) sets a new global challenge due to its dynamism and uncertainty that cause direct effects both in the long a short term in the proper function of cities. As cities recognize both the vulnerabilities derived from CC and their role as a contributor to CC, they have attempted to not only to reduce their impact on the environment but also to build resilience to be able to face the irreversible effects of CC and transform themselves into more sustainable cities. However, building climate resilience and becoming a sustainable city encounters several barriers. Infrastructure, ecological, socio-cultural, economical and governance factors that define cities as complex systems need to be taken into account. This thesis is focused on the governance factor and the need to develop the awareness of the stakeholders' composing a city. Recent literature points to developing awareness of not only public entities but also private companies and community groups to be key to shift from the existing passive to the required proactive behaviour. In this vein, the aim of the thesis is to contribute to the definition of detailed processes and tools that develop awareness and facilitate the collaboration of all city stakeholders when building climate resilience and becoming a sustainable city. To that end, the conducted methodology ensured having the theory in the literature and the expertise from the practitioners taking part in the development phase of the thesis. As a result, the thesis proposes a framework that defines a process to develop climate awareness in four consecutive steps. Each step is composed of the attributes that define climate awareness, the mechanisms that determine the development of climate awareness and the policies to go from one step to the other. The process and the interactions among the elements composing the framework are further explained through a causal loop diagram and illustrated in behaviour over time graph. To validate that the Climate Awareness Development framework facilitates the understanding and improvement of cities’ climate awareness development, the theory of the framework has been mathematically modelled in a system dynamics model. Furthermore, the model has been encapsulated in a user-friendly interface to enable stakeholders with a tool that facilitate the understanding of the theory behind the framework. Finally, two case studies have been conducted to pilot test the results in cities that have already started to develop climate awareness.