June 2019

Urban newsletter

Hello
We pleased to welcome Principal Researcher Lucy Earle to the IIED Human Settlements research group. Lucy's knowledge and experience will help us to grow our workstream on the forced displacement of people in urban areas. You can find details of the whole team on our website.

Otherwise, find details below of all our latest project and publication news, and please drop us a line if you want to find out anymore about our work.

Best wishes
Alexandra Norodom – Human Settlements Group

Project news

Refugees and inclusive healthcare

Our two-year British Academy funded project 'Towards Inclusive Health Systems and Infrastructure Access: Enhancing the Well-Being of Refugees in East African Cities', in partnership with the Africa Population and Health Research Centre (APHRC) in Nairobi, and Young African Refugees for Integral Development (YARID) in Kampala has concluded. The project looked at urban displaced populations’ access to healthcare, shelter, and infrastructure.
Brief: Refugees in cities: grassroots researchers shed light on basic needs
Brief: Cities for all? Rethinking urban displacement

Forced displacement in urban areas

The Human Settlements Group is now leading an institute-wide ‘Global Engagement Theme’ on the ‘humanitarian/environment’ interface and is developing a new workstream on forced displacement in urban areas.This builds on the learning from our British Academy project above and aims to generate new and consolidate existing relationships with partners working with refugees and internally displaced people.

Urban Africa Risk Knowledge

Our three-year Urban ARK project came to a close. IIED worked particularly closely with university partners in Malawi and Nigeria to document the full spectrum of risks affecting residents of low-income and informal settlements in African cities. Many of the events that cause harm to people and damage to property are not fully recognised and the underlying root causes of risk associated with poor quality housing and basic infrastructure must be addressed. The Urban ARK website contains all policy briefings and documentation.

Resilience of informal workers

Our new action-research project funded by the National Institutes of Health Research (NIHR) with partners in Zimbabwe and India, seeks to support informal workers’ well-being and promote resilience to climate change. We held our first meeting with all teams in April 2019, and data-collection will start in the coming months.
Blog: Unsmart, unsafe cities for informal workers: effective policy change will need better data

Environment & Urbanization

New issue on climate change adaptation out now

The new issue 'towards more inclusive climate change adaptation' is out now. Our understanding of climate change impacts and vulnerability in urban centres has grown rapidly in recent years, as has the number of cities developing and implementing plans to respond to the challenges of climate change. The papers in this issue explore such plans and responses in a variety of contexts and scales.

Editorial: Open access editorial
Full issue: Environment & Urbanization
Policy briefing: Responding to climate change in contexts of urban poverty and informality
Blog: 'Participatory' adaptation plans aren't working for migrants in cities

Food and security

Food security and nutrition policy debates have shifted in the past decade or so, with growing attention to food consumption and especially to food access, affordability and utilisation. The October 2019 issue will examine the latest food and nutrition issues in urban areas.

New publications

Urban Climate Change Adaptation as Social Learning: Exploring the process and politics

A Spectrum of Methods for a Spectrum of Risk: generating evidence to understand and reduce urban risk in Sub-Saharan Africa

Revealing and responding to multiple health risks in informal settlements in sub-Saharan African cities

Informality as experimentation: Water utilities’ strategies for cost recovery and their consequences for universal access

Supporting community-led research on risks and creating policy platforms to enhance Nairobi’s governance for resilience