Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
links all spread-out areas increases car dependency and fuel consumption.
The home-work trip is becoming a daily nightmare resulting in congested
traffic with a continuous peak hour.
Moreover, these gated communities and nearby new cities lack sub-centres
that provide adequate services or businesses. Thus a trip to downtown Cairo
is essential for obtaining services.
2.7 Conclusions
In November 2007, UN-Habitat held an Expert Group Meeting on 'Cities in
Climate Change' in Nairobi, Kenya, bringing together participants from
UN agencies, research institutions, local authorities and the private sector.
The experts discussed the role of UN-Habitat regarding climate change
and worked out basic elements for the agency's strategy on cities in climate
change. The main outcomes of the Expert Group Meeting are that UN-Habitat
has a clear role to play in dealing with climate change at the local level with
a special focus on urban areas in developing countries. Furthermore, cli-
mate change should be regarded as a cross-cutting issue and integrated into
UN-Habitat's existing initiatives and programmes [109].
The experts underlined the importance of immediate action—for example:
1. Launching of the Sustainable Urban Development Network (SUDNet)
in 2008 for strengthening the performance of local governments to
enhance climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in devel-
oping countries through existing and new partnerships
2. Promoting city-to-city cooperation
3. Conducting vulnerability assessments and risk mapping at the local
level and providing guidelines for adaptive local planning
4. Collecting and sharing case studies on good practice
5. Developing mechanisms to assist cities in preventing land-use con-
flicts arising from relocation of human settlements
6. Assisting governments in translating National Adaptation Plans of
Action to Local Adaptation Plans of Action together with adequate
transfer of resources
This is in line with the experience gained from the Strategic Planning for
Cities Program in Egypt because the actions required by the experts are
what the programme in Egypt lacks on the broad level.
Much can be done in the developing countries. In the Egyptian context,
there is a need for more awareness and action with regard to energy-efficient
