Urban capacity building, like other forms of capacity building, can involve building both human capacity as well as institutional capacity, and it can be based on efforts that lead to a multiplicity of results such as increased knowledge or improved processes.

 

Urban capacity building was discussed in a parallel session of the 10th International Conference on Community-Based Adaptation (CBA10), which took place in Dhaka, Bangladesh,  21-28 April. The parallel session was led by Lynne Carter, FHI 360 / USAID, and Denia Syam, Asian Cities Climate Change Mercy Corps Indonesia. The session presenters were Sarder Alam from ICCCAD, Charles Tonui from ACTS, Kimberly Junmookda from Plan International, A. M. Nasir Uddin from ActionAid Bangladesh, and Jitu Kumar from The Evangelical Fellowship of India Commission On Relief (EFICOR).

 

Considering the complexity surrounding capacity building efforts, there are several highlights among what was discussed.

 

 

Sarder Alam stated that when facilitating community learning, doing so in local and well understandable language was a key to success. Furthermore, he did not perceive it to be very effective to rely solely on classroom teaching– neither for communities, nor for facilitating organizations. Instead, focus needed to be more on face-to-face discussions and visiting activities. Sarder concluded that audiences needed to be involved in capacity building processes through participatory tools such as discussions and experience-sharing.

 

Charles Tonui stressed that groups sharing a similar cultural background and living in urban areas did not necessarily perceive themselves as being part of a certain urban community, even though the government perceived them as such, and thus tried to engage them in certain communities. Therefore, cultural backgrounds and perceptions of affiliation needed to be taken into consideration when trying to involve urban communities in capacity building activities. 

 

Kimberly Junmookda stated that building adaptive capacity for children demanded attention being paid to issues which were different from those arising when working with adults. She outlined how the process of getting access to children in poor urban areas was in itself highly challenging, and that what was of core importance in this context was to cooperate with less obvious gatekeepers such as informal educational institutions. Furthermore, Kimberly shared that different, often more visual, material was needed when working in the field of Climate Change Adaptation Child Centered Approaches. 

 

A. M. Nasir Uddin focused on the fact that when discussing resilience at community level, one could not leave out aspects of institutional capacity. This, however, did not only entail engaging local government institutions in the process, but also actually understanding communities as being part of these institutions - meaning that both poor urban communities were to be involved in institutional urban planning processes, and that government institutions on different levels were to be taken into consideration by communities when building up capacities. Finally, one needed to be aware of the fact that empowering communities could lead to tensions on an institutional level due to possible shifts in power structures. 

 

Jitu Kumar closed the round of panelists’ presentations by arguing in line with Charles Tonui that when looking at urban settlements and capacity building, core focus needed to be laid on people’s different backgrounds, the contexts they were living in, the contexts they were coming from and the needs they had. Often, social coherence was lacking in urban contexts due to differing social and cultural backgrounds. These needed to be understood and defined through dialogue and cooperation, and then reacted to accordingly by involving institutions and through appropriate forms of livelihood improvements.

 

During these brief presentations, the audience had the chance to note down questions, which were gathered, grouped and posed to the panelists by Lynne Carter and Denia Syam. One of the major issues discussed in this context related to the question of how capacity in institutions, once built up, could be retained in cases of staff leaving. This was identified as a major challenge by all panelists; however, it was agreed upon that proper digital knowledge documentation and dissemination as well as physical networks of knowledge building and sharing rather than individual capacity building were helpful in this context. 

 

Another question raised was how one chooses and defines a community to cooperate with, and how one can identify what to work on with this group.

 

Wrapping up this discussion, these are key advocacy messages that emerged: