Building Climate-Resilient and Equitable Cities During COVID-19

The document examines the intersection of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and urban inequality, proposing six priority solutions to build climate-resilient and equitable cities. It highlights how the pandemic exposed systemic vulnerabilities, particularly for the urban poor in informal settlements, and argues that adaptation investments offer high benefit-cost ratios (2:1 to 10:1) and local job creation. Proposed solutions include upgrading poor settlements, building water resilience, advancing nature-based solutions, creating knowledge networks, enhancing devolved funding, and fostering peer-to-peer city collaboration.

• The COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and systemic inequality create compounding crises that disproportionately affect the urban poor, migrants, and low-wage workers. Over 1 billion city dwellers lack affordable and secure housing, and nearly 3 billion lack basic hand washing facilities at home.
• Climate change impacts are intensifying the challenges of pandemic recovery, with many cities likely to experience a climate-related disaster within 12 to 18 months. Examples include the difficulty of maintaining social distancing during Cyclone Amphan in Bangladesh and eastern India, and flooding in South African informal settlements.
• Investments in climate adaptation provide significant economic returns, with benefit-cost ratios between 2:1 and 10:1, and typically generate more local jobs per dollar spent than traditional investments.
• Upgrading informal settlements is critical for city-wide public health and resilience, as 600 million of the 1 billion people in such settlements live on unprotected coastlines, flood plains, and unstable hills.
• Cities must transition to water-resilient models by aligning urban development with the natural water cycle and increasing investment in affordable drinking water and sanitation for the poor, including decentralized and off-grid solutions.
• Nature-based solutions (NBS) are recommended to reduce heat and flood risks and improve air quality, though a gap exists between available investors and bankable NBS projects in cities.
• There is a need for increased devolved funding and mandates for local governments to allow for recovery measures tailored to local needs. While over $11 trillion was approved globally for COVID-19 stimulus as of August 2020, much of it is not directly available to local governments.
• Peer-to-peer collaboration allows cities to scale proven practices and avoid repeating mistakes, such as Mexico City adopting Rotterdam's water squares model.

APA

World Resources Institute (2020). Building Climate-Resilient and Equitable Cities During COVID-19. https://www.wri.org/insights/building-climate-resilient-and-equitable-cities-during-covid-19

Chicago

World Resources Institute. Building Climate-Resilient and Equitable Cities During COVID-19. 2020. https://www.wri.org/insights/building-climate-resilient-and-equitable-cities-during-covid-19.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Resources Institute |title=Building Climate-Resilient and Equitable Cities During COVID-19 |date=5 October 2020 |url=https://www.wri.org/insights/building-climate-resilient-and-equitable-cities-during-covid-19 |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldresourcesinstitute2020building, author = {{World Resources Institute}}, title = {{Building Climate-Resilient and Equitable Cities During COVID-19}}, institution = {World Resources Institute}, year = {2020}, month = oct, url = {https://www.wri.org/insights/building-climate-resilient-and-equitable-cities-during-covid-19}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }