Located between urban and rural jurisdictions, peri-urban regions have distinct environmental, social, and institutional characteristics. Peri-urban regions are often in a state of transition due to contested land use. Increasingly, residents of peri-urban areas are facing water insecurity as a result of rapid urbanization and the impacts of climate change.
Learning financial skills through involvement in an urban farming cooperative has improved the lives of women in Amman, Jordan. The article Developing Value Chains in Amman, Jordan describes how the cooperative has led to women gaining valuable skills through increased participation in business and farming activities.
Tunisia is helping to feed its growing cities by developing more efficient and sustainable agriculture that uses rainwater and recycled urban wastewater.
Poor communities rarely benefit from global emissions trading schemes, because of the high transaction costs of participation. However, the registration of small community-scale projects to the carbon market through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) might be a way for low-income communities to profit from their efforts to reduce emissions.
A paper by IDRC partner the International Network for Bamboo and Rattan assesses the potential of bamboo to meet East Africa’s urgent housing needs. In this region, the supply of houses in rural and urban areas has failed to keep up with demand, leading to severe shortages of safe and affordable housing.
IDRC-funded researchers propose local urban agriculture as a solution to food insecurity in a recent paper published by the International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies.
Wastewater treatment is a serious issue in Mexico City due to its large population, heavy water use, and inadequate wastewater infrastructure. Researchers supported by IDRC have published a paper where they compare the social and environmental impacts of the technology used in wastewater treatment plants in Mexico City.
The Mantaro Valley in central Peru is highly vulnerable to extreme weather events, such as droughts, floods, and frost. According to recent projections, this vulnerability will increase in coming years due to climate change.
From 2006-2012, 212 organizations participated in research supported by the Climate Change Adaptation in Africa (CCAA) program. Despite the lack of African institutions working on climate change issues prior to the CCAA program, some 89% of these organizations are based in Africa, and now represent one of CCAA's key results: a strong base of African expertise to conduct and communicate research on adaptation to climate change. Following CCAA funding, mentoring, and opportunities to work with international experts, these institutions and their researchers are now recognized by communities and governments in Africa and beyond as go-to experts to inform adaptation initiatives, programs, and policies.
Access to water for poor residents in Jakarta, Indonesia, is limited. Among the challenges they face are the high prices demanded by water service providers, poor water quality, and limited access to water infrastructure. With support from IDRC, the global humanitarian agency Mercy Corps worked with residents, local government, researchers, NGOs, and the private sector to tackle these challenges.
IDRC-funded researchers have identified coastal areas in the Nile Delta that may be vulnerable to sea level rise using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Results indicate that significant land loss may occur in that region by 2100. Using the most recent predictions of sea level rise, total coastal land lost could be between 22 to 49%.
Researchers from Canada and India funded by IDRC have found that filtering water through sari-cloth before purifying it in the sun’s heat makes polluted water safe to drink.
Researchers compared water quality available in two informal settlements in Lebanon and Jordan. Tests were conducted to compare water supplied by the municipality and bottled water. The results: tests showed that their quality is similar, although the brand of the bottled water and how it is stored affected its quality.
Research shows that weather-related emergencies, such as floods, significantly increase internal migration in Costa Rica. An increase of one hydro-meteorological emergency raises migration rates between 0.7 and 0.11 percentage points. Therefore, migration can be a potential adaptation strategy when faced with weather-related emergencies, with people moving to less vulnerable places.
When a neighbourhood is at risk of flooding, the most logical solution is to build new houses in more secure areas and to relocate the residents. But in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, things are not so simple.
Morocco is a partially arid country where rain is rare but where agriculture prospers in spite of everything. Climate change has nevertheless had a major impact on Morocco in recent years. Precipitation has decreased by 20%, and heat and cold waves are increasingly frequent.
Angola once benefited from a rich climatological database. But 30 years of civil war, which lasted from 1973 to 2002, destroyed 98% of the country's meteorological stations and the associated data.