New Fellows' First Presentations 2013
Hooman Farzaneh
JSPS-UNU Postdoctoral Fellow
Mahendra Sethi
UNU-IAS PhD Fellow
Presentation Descriptions
Presentation language: English
"Analysis of Urban Climate Co-benefits in Different Sectors"
Hooman Farzaneh, JSPS-UNU Postdoctoral Fellow
Urban areas occupy less than 2% of the Earth’s land surface, but house just over 50% of the world’s population, a figure that was only 14% in 1900 and one that is expected to increase to 60% by 2030. Climate change will exacerbate the existing urban environmental management challenges in cities in most cases making existing problems much worse. Cities are faced with a number of sustainability challenges in the context of climate change. There is an urgent need to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other air pollutions from cities if ambitious mitigation targets are to be met. Meanwhile, cities are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change unless adaptation plans can be put in place. These challenges highlight the need for cities to rethink how assets are deployed and people are protected, how infrastructure investments are prioritized, and how climate will affect long-term growth and development plans. Since responding to the complex challenges of climate change mitigation and adaptation requires a knowledge-based approach, the present research is based on providing an analytical approach for assessing climate co-benefits in different sectors in urban areas.
This research falls in the classification of expected co-benefits in different sectors, with special focus on urban transportation and energy system, and also addresses in some detail the role of executive policy targets support to reduce the GHG emission and air pollution in cities. The objective of this research is to propose a methodology to analyse climate co-benefits of the urban system based on its systemic characteristics. The research seeks to explore: 1) how different sectors contribute to the emissions of GHGs and pollutants in cities, 2) the proper methods to pursue the climate co-benefits approach (tackle both climate change and local environmental problems at the same time) in different sub-sectors in cities, 3) the potentials to reduce emissions in big cities and 4) the executive policy objectives to manage climate changes in big cities. The proposed methodology as “Integrated System Approach (ISA)” offers a practicable technique/framework for adopting and evaluating potential co-benefits based on the linkage between global climate change and energy consumption in cities and relates it to the corresponding social, economic and technological factors.
As the final output, the research provides an overview of the current status of climate co-benefits in Asia particularly China, India, Indonesia and the Middle East and its potential direction in the future based on literature research and analysis as well as the results of the survey.
"Climate Change and Urban Settlements - A Spatial Perspective of Carbon Footprint and beyond…"
Mahendra Sethi, UNU-IAS PhD Fellow
Climate change has long since ceased to be a scientific curiosity, and is no longer just one of many environmental and regulatory concerns. It has been stated that climate change is the major, overriding environmental issue of our time, and the single greatest challenge facing environmental regulators. According to a recent UN-Habitat research, cities contribute to climate change and cities are affected by climate change. Another study on the subject by the World Bank shows that 50 of the largest urban settlements combined, rank third in both population and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and second in GDP when compared with the largest and wealthiest countries. Some recent estimates show that 60?80% of final energy use globally is consumed by urban areas and more than 70% of global GHG emissions are produced within urban areas. Meanwhile, UN DESA has predicted that a majority of future population growth for the remainder of this century will occur in urban areas. This forms a crucial base: the growing urban footprint particularly in developing countries will determine the pace of global warming. The scientific discourse so far lacks a systematic approach, having been guided by an economic perspective; it tries to find co-relations between emissions and economic output (GDP) or population growth, typically comparing developed and developing countries. But a review of the top 15 carbon emitting countries and cities exhibits a wide range of variations in emission structures, ranging from 1.7 to 18.2 t/capita and 1.4 to 29.8 t/capita respectively. It thus becomes even more important to research the causations of emissions in urban areas from a spatial perspective, with the aim of empirically quantifying urban burdens and studying their drivers to deduce a responsive urban strategy.
In the past, I have worked in the interface of natural-social sciences and my PhD research unearths the complex inter-relationship of climate change and cities in the Indian context. My research at UNU-IAS shall advance this scientific investigation into the local governance domain by assessing how global environmental concerns could effectively be assimilated into local policies??―urban planning and management. It bears relevance to a multitude of policy and action pathways, particularly for Asian cities with diverse spatial and emission structures.
Programme
11:00 - 11:25
"Analysis of Urban Climate Co-benefits in Different Sectors"
Hooman Farzaneh (JSPS-UNU Postdoctoral Fellow)
11:25 - 11:55
Discussion
Chair: Jose Puppim de Oliveira (Senior Research Fellow and Assistant Director, UNU-IAS)
12:00 - 12:25
"Climate Change and Urban Settlements - A Spatial Perspective of Carbon Footprint and beyond…"
Mahendra Sethi (UNU-IAS PhD Fellow)
12:25 - 12:55 Discussion
Chair: Jose Puppim de Oliveira
日時：2013年11月29日（金）11:00-13:00
場所：国連大学高等研究所（横浜市西区みなとみらい1-1-1 パシフィコ横浜国際協力センター６Ｆ）
参加費：無料
申込方法：ホームページより申込（11月28日（木）まで）
http://www.ias.unu.edu/sub_page.aspx?catID=8&ddlID=2839
問合先：
国連大学高等研究所
電話 045-221-2300
Eメール unuias@ias.unu.edu
