Challenges of implementing municipal level climate change

Although decision-makers involved in urban development have started to recognize the severity of the impact of urban built environment on climate, a sufficient level of action has yet to be achieved particularly at the local level in many countries. Turkey, as a developing country, went into action by publication of the national level plans (i.e. Turkish National Climate Change Action Plan (NCCAP) and Turkish Climate Change Adaptation Plan (TCCAP)) that introduce sets of strategies both for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Although these two national plans are fundamental for achieving targets in the process of combating climate change, reflection of these national levels strategies into local/municipal level planning practices stands as a critical challenge to be overcome in the country.    

Municipal authorities are the key actors in the production of urban space with their power to coordinate actions among different stakeholders and enable (or disable) community involvement with policy programs in Turkey. However, a very limited number of municipal authorities have a local level climate change action plans. More critically, implementation of these plans in action often fails. This research explores the experienced difficulties in the implementation of municipal level climate change action plans in Turkey. Main aim of the research is to reveal the problem areas identified by the municipalities and investigate the requirements, expectations and possible solutions responding to those problem areas.

Vita
Ender Peker, Mercator Fellow at the Istanbul Policy Center, Sabancı University, is a post-doctoral researcher specializing in climate responsive urban design, in particular the ways in which the built environment is co-designed by technical rules, regulations, and codes that seek to order urban life in deference to inhabitants’ socio-ecologic values. Ender holds a PhD in Real Estate and Planning from the University of Reading, UK, and a MSc degree in Urban Design from Middle East Technical University (METU). He completed undergraduate courses in city and regional planning at METU and economics at Anadolu University, Turkey.

Ender worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA) and Middle East Technical University. He also worked in the Joint Centre for Urban Design at Oxford Brookes University and the Department of Planning and Landscape at the University of Manchester as a visiting researcher.

His research interests cut across the following themes:

• urban design and the built environment
• climate responsive design and architecture
• governance of sustainable urban development