Day 2 of the Climate Leadership Academy was titled “Explore and Inspire.”  Mike Crowley and Scott Muller of the Institute for Sustainable Communities  did a great job in introducing speakers and setting the stage and tone for the day.  

I felt today that people really did explore the idea of how to reduce poverty in their cities, protect the environment and balance the short term and long term needs of adapting to climate change, improving livelihoods while improving livability.   

Dato Haji Zulkifli, President of Kauntan Municipal Council, Kauntan Malaysia spoke about their greening efforts, including planting trees, reducing erosion and improving air quality. Challenges they are facing and what they want to learn from others:

• Climate science. They have limited capacity and need to learn more so they can institutionalize climate policies
• Integration. They need to have closer integration of efforts among city agencies.
• Public awareness.  Awareness of the impacts of climate change increased after the extensive flooding they experience in 2012.  How do you maintain awareness and increase understanding?
• Funding. This is an issue for everyone and they are looking at ways to have more support from the state and federal government and finding ways to work with the private sector through corporate social responsibility efforts.

Wannobaon Khuan-arc, Researcher/Project Coordinator at the Thailand Environment Institute spoke about efforts to restore parts of the Kok Noi River to reduce flooding in Chiang Rai.  Parts of the river dried up after too much development.  They conducted public hearings to talk about the problems and created a sense of ownership of this project so that residents will help maintain the project. They restored wetlands and created community benefits such as a walking path.  You can learn more about their efforts by visiting their website at www.thaicity-climate.org  or by visiting the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) website, which is providing some funding for this and other efforts in the region – www.acccrn.org.

Wannobaon Khuan-arc, Researcher/Project Coordinator at the Thailand Environment Institute spoke about efforts to restore parts of the Kok Noi River in Chiang Rai, Thailand.

Sengdara Douangmyzay with the Lao Department of Urban Planning, Ministry of Public Works recalled that when he was growing up the in the 1970s, more than 70% of country was covered by forests. He felt that forests were part of their daily lives. Now it is less than 40% of the country covered by forests.  The decline of forests is due to illegal logging and shifting cultivation of land (80% of population are farmers).  This focuses on the issues of livelihoods.  The City of Pakxane has started implementing some “green policy” initiatives to restore and preserve the urban forests, such as preserving wetlands, restoring river banks and planting trees. But he remarked that citizens say that the green policy is more expensive and that clearing land for cash crops to generate income far outweighs forest protection. People want to get out of poverty so they see the way is to have land and to plant cash crops – at the expense of forest protection.  So they challenge is to get people out of poverty as well as protect the environment.

I was also lucky enough to speak with Nyimas Ida Apriani, who heads up the environmental office for Palembang City, Indonesia, towards the end of the day who shared with me what she is going to take back to her town from participating in the Climate Leadership Academy– the importance of creating networks and committees to solve climate change challenges.

There were many other presentations and insight that was shared during the day.  To learn more about the Climate Leadership Academy click here or download presentations by joining the climate change discussion in the Climate Preparedness, Adaptation, and Resilience group on the Knowledge Network.  For more information about CityLinks, visit the CityLinks website, and Notes from CityLinks blog, or e-mail international@icma.org.  Follow us on Twitter - @ICMACityLinks.