This paper considers the risks from and vulnerabilities to flooding in four urban poor communities close to the coast in Lagos, Nigeria. Drawing on interviews with inhabitants and key informants and also on group discussions, it documents the scale and frequency of flooding in these settlements and the impacts, as well as the individual, household and community responses.

Significant lessons can be drawn from grassroots experiences of coping with extreme weather for reducing the vulnerability of the urban poor to climate change. This paper examines the household and community coping strategies used by low-income households living in Korail, the largest informal settlement in Dhaka. This includes how they use physical, economic and social means to reduce risk, reduce losses and facilitate recovery from flooding and high

This paper describes the institutional and resource challenges and opportunities in getting different sectors in eThekwini Municipality (the local government responsible for planning and managing the city of Durban) to recognize and respond to their role in climate change adaptation.

This paper draws on case studies in Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania and Vietnam to explore the different ways in which migration intersects with the changing relations between rural and urban areas and activities, and in the process transforms livelihoods and the relations between young and older men and women. Livelihood strategies are becoming increasingly diverse, and during interviews people were asked to describe their first, second and third occupations, the time allocated to each and the income that each produced. In all study regions, the number of young people migrating is increasing.

Both national and international policy responses to the rapid food price increases in 2007 and the first half of 2008 did little to address the very serious impacts on low-income urban dwellers.

The relationship between climate change and cities is complex. City-based activities contribute significant amounts of greenhouse gases and, simultaneously, are often more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Dhaka is now the world's eighth largest city and a significant proportion of Bangladesh's greenhouse gases are generated there although, relative to total emissions worldwide, the contribution is negligible.

This paper discusses the political circumstances which help explain why the insanitary living conditions of such a large section of India’s urban population have been ignored, and contrasts these with the circumstances which explain successful sanitary reform in Britain in the second half of the 19th century.

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