CLIMATE CHANGE LAWS IN BUENOS AIRES, MEXICO CITY AND SAO PAULO: METROPOLITAN PROBLEMS IN THE CITIES? CLIMATE AGENDA

MERLINSKY, GABRIELA; TOBÍAS, MELINA; ALCARAZ, LUIS

Buenos Aires

Taller; Taller de trabajo Adaptación al Cambio Climático en sectores clave en América del Sur? Encuentro en el marco de En el marco de la Tercera Reunión de Autores Principales del Grupo de Trabajo II (Impacto, Adaptación y Vulnerabilidad) IPCC; 2012

Universidad de Buenos Aires

In recent years the problem of Climate Change (CC) has become increasingly important in the global environmental agenda. Agreements such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol, or reports made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have been central in the construction of the problem as a public issue. Despite being one of a planetary phenomenon, its immediate impacts and the measures required to address them require redirecting the gaze to the local level. At this level, cities deserve special attention, not only for the emissions production they concentrated, but also by the large proportion of people who live there exposed to risks arising from climate variability, such as the existence of extreme events linked to heavy rains, hurricanes or cyclones. In Latin America, where over 70% of the population resides in urban areas, the situation is aggravated by social vulnerability faced by various social groups who live in areas with poor habitat conditions and high environmental degradation. The combination of climate variability and social vulnerability presents a major challenge for governments in the region. In this context, megacities governments like Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Sao Paulo, which clump together around 50 million people (about 10% of Latin America´s population), recently signed within the framework of the UN Conference Rio + 20, a cooperation pact to jointly promote an environmental agenda where the CC occupies a central place. Furthermore, these cities became pioneers in the region including the issue of CC on their political agenda, developing and establishing specific rules concerning this issue in their jurisdiction areas. In this poster, we propose as central objective a comparative analysis of CC laws in these three cities, seeking to compare and contrast dimensions such as: i) the importance and interaction that adaptation and mitigation policies against CC have in each city, ii) the institutional design in terms of the role assigned to the local authority ofCC management, and iii) the role of participation of different social groupsin the political decision-makingprocess associated with climate. Besides, we are also interested in analyzing the existing tensions inthe implementation of global policies in local and urban metropolitan scales. We will give special attention to the different scenarios of climate risk defined in the regulations. At that point, we are interested in identifying factors that promotes or impedes the design and implementation of adaptation policies in cities. Nota: El trabajo ganó el segundo Premio del Concurso de Posters del Programa Interdisicplinario de Cambio Climático de la Universidad de Buenos Aires. En el marco del taller ?Climate Change adaptation in South America key sectors?. Organizador: Dr Vicente Barros. En el marco de la Tercera Reunión de Autores Principales del Grupo de Trabajo II (Impacto, Adaptación y Vulnerabilidad) Panel Intergubernamental de Cambio Climático IPCC.