THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONS, GOVERNANCE, AND URBAN PLANNING ■ 149to be important in galvanizing action. Such “trigger events” provide the moti-
vation, and physical opportunity, for intervening in the urban landscape (for
example, transportation systems, housing) to address climate change.
We found that adaptation measures oft en get adopted only in response to
specifi c local or regional natural disasters, which may or may not be climate
related. For example, in Mumbai, aft er the 2005 deluge fl ooding, the Greater
Mumbai Disaster Management Plan was revised in 2007, strengthening the
Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai’s Disaster Management Commit-
tee and raising disaster preparedness of the city (Gupta 2007). In Yogyakarta,
the 2006 earthquake highlighted the lack of government management capacity
and understanding of disaster response. Consequently, a Disaster Management
Bill and a National Action Plan for 2007–09 were enacted (Hadi 2007b). At
the local level, Yogyakarta’s provincial and local agencies conducted a dam-
age loss assessment and formulated a local action plan, including regulatory,
institutional, and funding frameworks and recognizing the need to enhance
institutional capacity and networks among government, the private sector, and
civil society (Hadi 2007a).
With regard to the authority of municipal governments, the impetus of
national government action (in China and Korea, in particular) has been an
important factor in creating the political space for local government action on
climate change. Municipalities that have a broader range of competencies (such
as for street lighting or the provision of public transport) have been able to
intervene across the diff erent modes of governing for climate change, whereas
those with more restricted authority have had less scope to become directly
involved.
Seoul is one case study in which numerous signifi cant initiatives have taken
place, made feasible partly by the availability of funding. In August 2007,
Seoul expanded the scope of the City Gas Business Fund to a broader climate
change fund with a goal to raise more than $100 million by 2010 to fi nance
research, technological development, and mitigation projects; to support
renewable energy; to improve energy accessibility to the poor; and to promote
energy-effi cient appliances (SMG News 2008). Th e country’s private sector also
raised six funds totaling about $100 million in 2007 for climate change pur-
poses (Oh 2008). Such resources are scarce among our case-study cities. One
means through which additional resources have been garnered is the CDM,
with projects in the transport and infrastructure sectors in Delhi, Mumbai, and
São Paulo. Th is suggests that the CDM could be an important mechanism for
addressing climate change in cities in the future.
Issue framing has also been important. We earlier outlined the importance
of both “localizing” climate change and “issue bundling,” both strategies
that serve to make climate change an important issue on local agendas and