Project Summary

​The aim of this project is to accelerate the impact of the Integrated Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change Adaptation Plan (IDRMCCAP) for Comuna 8, a district with approx. 140,000 inhabitants in the city of Medellín, Colombia. This is a pioneering plan in its integrated approach for an urban edge setting in the Global South and the way it was co-produced by community organisations and local government agencies with support from academia (with Heriot-Watt University and University of Edinburgh facilitating the process), which is itself an impact from our preceding action-research in this city.

Now that the IDRMCCAP for Comuna 8 has been formally approved and is in the public domain, additional funding would give us an opportunity to increase its impact, making full use of the demonstrative power of the community-led pilot NBS in combination with the content of the plan. Further impact will be achieved at the community level across neighbourhoods in the Comuna 8 district;  the city level, particularly in districts on the urban/rural edge of Medellín; and  internationally – by means of the activities that are itemised in section 4. Beneficiaries of Activities 1-6 will be 29,000 inhabitants exposed to high landslide risk in Comuna 8 according to the most recent estimations. Activity 7 will establish pathways to impact potentially benefitting 116,000 residents exposed to high landslide risk in Comunas 1, 3, 6, 7 and 13, the most vulnerable districts on Medellín’s urban/rural edge. Activity 8 will benefit policymakers and practitioners working in urban disaster risk mitigation and climate change adaptation, potentially benefitting urban populations exposed to landslide risks and climate change globally. The project is organised around the following activities:

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1. Consolidation of two of the community-managed NBS to help strengthen their potential as demonstration projects to achieve wider impact.

2. Production of indicators to monitor community-managed NBS effectiveness.

3. Production of a “citizen’s guide” to the IDRMCCAP for Comuna 8, including the 4 pilot NBS as examples

4. Two workshops to disseminate the IDRMCCAP for Comuna 8 among community organisations and NGOs, with visits to the 4 pilot NBS.

5. Production of short videos explaining the “citizen’s guide” to the IDRMCCAP for Comuna 8 (activity A3) and documenting the workshops and visits to the 4 pilot NBS (activity A4), to be posted on local social media.

6. Online meeting of the Extended Coordinating Committee established during the co-production of the baseline and methodology for the IDRMCCAP for Comuna 8 during 2020/23 (local government, community and NGO stakeholders), to ‘close the loop’.

7. Meetings with key local government agencies to promote replication of the IDRMCCAP in other districts of Medellín with similar conditions and exposure.

8. Presentation of the pioneering co-produced IDRMCCAP for Comuna 8 and the community-led NBS at the “Co-producing Alternative Urban Futures through Experimental Urbanism” to be held in Brussels 15-16 January, organised by the Urban Studies Foundation: https://www.urbanstudiesfoundation.org/events/cfp-co-producing-alternative-urban-futures-through-experimental-urbanism/