The Asia-Pacific Resilience Prospectus

The 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) initiative, pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation, aims to help cities in the Asia Pacific achieve urban resilience.

Through the 100RC, a global network of institutions, both private and public, across sectors such as buildings, economy, education, environment, emergency and disaster management, information and technology, urban planning and development, and climate change advocates, comes together to provide service and expertise to assist and support cities in Asia Pacific in achieving urban resilience.

Why Asia Pacific?

The region’s rapid population growth and development bring challenges and opportunities. The Asia Pacific is home to seven out of the ten most populous cities, carrying 55% of the world’s urban population.

Climate change, aging infrastructure, extreme weather, climate change and persistent heat, sanitation, water management, congestion, lack of open spaces, and mass migration are among the problems the region faces, challenges that will eventually take their toll.

The Rockefeller Foundation has leveraged more than $655 million from national, philanthropic, and private sources for this project. Partners of the 100RC have pledged US $230 million worth of pro-bono services, and 36 citywide resilience strategies have been released to implement the 100RC’s resilience initiatives.

Roadmap to Resilience

Resilience building happens when cities respond to their challenges and problems. According to the 100RC initiative, this can be done through collaboration with various sectors and partners, which results in finding solutions that provide multiple benefits.

An example of responding to a city’s problem that brings multiple benefits is the following case in Jakarta, Indonesia. In Jakarta, only about half of the city residents have access to clean water, and just 4% have access to sewerage systems, meaning that some city residents still practice open defecation.

Seventy-four per cent of city households rely on ground or river water, which is frequently polluted. The city plans to build a wastewater master plan to provide a piped sewerage system by 2022 and improve it.

A development in wastewater technology will allow small odourless wastewater and recycled water treatment plants to be integrated into dense urban systems. This wastewater recycling technology can deliver multiple benefits, like improved sanitation, access to clean, reusable water, reduced health costs, improved sanitation infrastructure, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Cities in the 100RC networks are provided with the resources needed to develop resilience through the following ‘4 main pathways’:

• First, financial and logistical guidance to establish a Chief Resilience Officer, a new position in city government.
• Second, expert support in developing a resilience strategy.
• Third, access to the solution, service providers, and partners of the foundation to help cities implement their resilience strategies, and fourth, memberships of a global network of member cities can learn and help each other to attain their resilience goals and projects.

The prospectus highlights sample projects in infrastructure, community, and catalytic studies, as well as planning in some Asian cities, opening up opportunities for investments and involvement.

For example, Bangkok needs comprehensive flood management. The city is working with Deltares, an independent institute for applied research in the field of water, subsurface and infrastructure. Deltares also supports cities in developing climate adaptation strategies by selecting the most suitable adaptation measures. Deltares has developed a roadmap for completing the study and developing an integrated water master plan, the first of its kind in Bangkok. The Dutch government has agreed to fund 30 per cent of the cost.

Jakarta, Indonesia’s significant population growth in its metropolitan area, creates a mobility problem. To address this, the city needs to scale up its bus network and transition to Bus Rapid Transit (BRT).

In Melbourne, Australia, a metropolitan urban forest strategy is being developed in conjunction with the city’s urban forest. This will open up more urban greening projects, such as urban cooling and flood mitigation. The city is looking for investment partners to implement the urban forest strategy.

The city is also developing the Metropolitan Cycling Network, a bicycle network and infrastructure around the city that would improve the resident’s quality of life. To achieve this, the city seeks technical expertise to design and implement cycling strategies to help it build a business case for continued funding.

Sample projects on community and catalytic highlight the shortage of community and open space in Da Nang, Vietnam, due to a lack of investment in open spaces. Several open spaces have become dumping sites. To remedy the problem, the Climate Change Coordination Office, with support from the 100RC, conducted a design competition to transform a vacant area filled with debris into a park for the surrounding community.

The prospectus highlights more sample projects that show the problems and challenges faced by some cities, what the cities are doing about them in terms of solutions and strategies to implement, and the opportunities available to get involved.

100 Resilient Cities concluded on July 31, 2019, after six years of supporting urban resilience in the Asia Pacific region. However, the Rockefeller Foundation committed $8 million to support the work of the 100R’s Chief Resilience Officers and member cities (100 Resilient Cities, 2020).

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