Discussant: Allan M Lavell

Cities and urban areas across the world face significant risks from climate change and are increasingly taking an active role in formulating, implementing and financing climate change adaptation (Revi et al. 2014). In rapidly growing economies in the global South, urban adaptation action is inextricably linked with goals of ensuring sustainable development and mitigating disaster risk (Revi, 2016). Given the nature of this adaptation-development spectrum (Singh, Gajjar, & Deshpande, 2016), in practice, adaptation actions are undertaken by multiple actors, at different scales; mediated by diverse institutional arrangements; and reflect different agendas and visions of what effective adaptation and sustainable urban development mean. The session will have four speakers’ present cases on diverse imaginations and practices of urban adaptation from cities of the global south: Chennai (India), Kampala (Uganda), Cape Town (South Africa) and Bengaluru (India). Rooted in robust empirical evidence, the cases highlight how adaptation across cities is mediated by different actors with multiple and often competing agendas, and varied formal and informal institutional arrangements.