Deadline: 10-Oct-22

The ActionAid Association invites applications for Urban Action School (UAS) 2022: Towards Climate-Just Cities, the one-week course covering various aspects of urban climate justice action with a focus on the cities of the Global South.

This course has been designed essentially for mid and senior-level activists, policy advocates, lawyers, journalists, researchers, and all categories of urban policy practitioners. They have designed UAS’22 to benefit action researchers and social activists, build the participants’ knowledge base, and complement action research and field-based activism. They hope that UAS’22 becomes a space for knowledge upgradation, reflection, sharing and equipping the participants to acquire new skills to function better in their day-to-day work. In addition, they seek to make a difference to the participants and organizations/movements where they work.

The 21st Century is often referred to as an urban century – cities will rise across the globe and define future trajectories of human civilization. With millions of people arriving in urban areas in the developing world every month and an estimated 70% of global GDP arising from urban areas, the proposition of an urban century does not seem farfetched. Another defining feature of the 21st Century is climate change’s impact on human civilizations across the globe. Cities in developing countries would be disproportionately affected by the scarcity of water, eccentricity of precipitation and increasing temperatures.

Course Structure

• Each year the course, the UAS curriculum, is redesigned to reflect the emerging ideas, issues, and concerns about a particular topic. The intention is to make each iteration of the UAS a credible and significant contribution towards the understanding of cities, citizens, and people-oriented sustainable planning with an attempt to deal with and find solutions to growing urban poverty, migration, alienation, exclusion, violence, and lack of regulation and planning.
• Thus, the UAS 2022, on the theme of “Towards Climate-Just Cities”, will be an effort to further the social, ecological and environmental justice agenda in urban climate action. It aims to deliberate on the fair, creative and multidisciplinary approaches to urban climate justice and equity embedded in collective practices and actions.

Tentative Schedule

• Day 1: From Urban Resilience to Climate-Just Cities: Locating Justice in Urban Climate Action
  • Urban Equity and Climate Resilience: The Conceptual Framing
• Day 2: Climate Change Challenge in Cities: A View from the Global South
  • Climate Change Crisis in Cities of Global South: Issues and Concerns | Communicating Climate Change and its Impacts | Locating the Poor in Climate Action Policies: The Justice Lens | Impact of Climate Change on Indian Cities: Case Studies | Workshop
• Day 3: Mapping the Climate Change Loss and Damage in Cities: Marginalization, Vulnerability and Intersectionality
  • Understanding Climate Change Loss and Damage in Cities: Key Debates and Issues | Disproportionate Burden of the Climate Costs: Impact on Vulnerable Communities | From Climate Change Loss and Damages to Compensation and Reparations: Outlining the Action | Workshop on Frameworks for Assessing Climate Change Loss and Damage in Cities
• Day 4: Field Visits
• Day 5: Collective Climate Action in Cities: A Pro-Poor Agenda
  • Urban Governance and Climate Action: A Pro-Poor Approach – Role of Local Government | Collective Action for Climate Justice in Cities: Role of CSOs and Citizen Groups | People-Centric Urban Climate Action: Best Practices and Case Studies
• Day 6: People’s Protagonism for Urban Climate Justice: From Local to Global Action
  • Commons and Commoning for Urban Climate Justice: Solutions for Urban Climate Crisis | Climate Proofing Cities: Mainstreaming Urban Climate Justice | Community-Driven Climate Justice Initiatives | Workshop on Climate Litigation in India
• Day 7: Reflections and the Way Forward
  • Group Presentation, Feedback and Strategy Building.

Organizers

• Kerala Institute of Local Administration, Kerala , Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung South Asia, ActionAid Association India.

Eligibility Criteria

• The course is open to all, demonstrating a commitment to engaging with urban issues. Social workers, political activists, people working with community organizations, social movements, trade unions, urban local bodies, media persons, government officials, research students, and elected peoples’ representatives working and dealing with the ‘Urban Issues’ are eligible to apply for this course. Experienced participants are preferred for this course as it is essentially designed to build the skill of experienced activists and mid-career professionals.
• The course is open to all, anyone from any part of the world, demonstrating a commitment to engaging with urban issues. Experienced participants are preferred.

For more information, visit https://www.actionaidindia.org/urban-action-school-2022-towards-climate-just-cities/