Over the past five years, the UK Government funded Sustainable Urban Economic Development Programme (SUED) has worked with leaders in 12 intermediary cities in Kenya to identify the challenges climate change will pose for their cities and begin the process of systematically building urban resilience to climate change in the face of those challenges.
In the process, SUED has developed a resilience building framework that includes climate smart urban economic plans that have identified viable investments in climate resilient infrastructure and value chains projects laying the groundwork for addressing climate change and climate resilience in Kenya’s future green growth hubs.
Primary in its objectives, SUED has prioritised working with intermediary cities to make decisions on major investment projects that promote the marrying urban development and climate change. It has done this through its key principles.
SUED’s key principles, resilient, resource efficient, socially inclusive, and sustainable have helped supported intermediary cities to build their urban resilience to climate change by employing a multi-faceted approach. SUED knows that as Kenya urbanises, the vulnerability of its population increases putting pressure on her leadership to build resilience to climate change.
In support of this, the programme has secured more than £48M private sector and public sector investments that are context-specific and can be adjusted to the dynamic nature of risk and resilience.
This has been a result of an intentional process of designing climate-smart value chain projects that are domiciled across the country and act as catalyst for the local economy.
At the onset, the programme identifies a climate resilient value chain project that will have the highest impact in its locale. Secondly, the programme identifies the key climate risks in the value chain and then determines the most effective climate intervention. The programme does this through a vigorous investment attraction process that starts with a screening and selection process which is followed by an in-depth prefeasibility study after which a robust market sounding is done to identify an investor whose ambitions and interest align with SUED’s development objectives and climate considerations.
The Impact of SUED's Case Studies on Sustainable Development: A Deep Dive into Real-world Solutions
