Climate Change adaptation in informal settings in Latin America and the Caribbean: Understanding and Reinforcing Bottom-up initiatives.

In the 1980s and 1990s, prevailing public policies promoted the transfer of housing, infrastructure, and service provision responsibilities from central governments to municipalities across Latin America (LA). In many cases, however, the necessary resources did not follow. Unfunded municipal mandates, coupled with rapid demographic growth and migration, accelerated the emergence of informal settlements (about 128 million people live in slums in LA). These informal settlements are typically located in disaster-prone areas and their populations face several climate-related challenges. In Yumbo (100,000 inhabitants), slum dwellers face extreme heat, frequent floods, pollution, and landslides. In Tunja, (145,000 inhabitants), Salgar (20,000 inhabitants), and Concepción (230,000 inhabitants), infrastructure is deficient and informal settlements face frequent floods, landslides, and earthquake risks. Water scarcity, crime, insufficient vegetation, and inadequate sanitation prevail in all these settlements. Yet small/medium cities still enjoy some advantages in the face of these challenges. First, government and citizens are closer to each other than in megacities. Second, slums are moderate in scale (only 20% of their population live in slums, compared to about 40% in major cities). Finally, they are incubators of adaptive capacities and thus have the potential to produce rapid and effective transformations in the face of CCV.