Getting to decisive action
The next-step challenge in the two cities is, according to the authors, to turn the many strategies and wide-spread willingness to collaborate into more decisive and integrated policy and planning actions.
“There is a need for strengthening institutional and organizational conditions for more decisive prioritization of long-term climate investments and actions, better funded collaboration mechanisms and improved space for learning from experimentation and with input from the voices of local residents,” Timon McPhearson explains.
To do this, the cities must move beyond three things:
One, they need to move beyond the state of envisioning to make tough decisions about goals to be priorities and mainstreamed into established institutional frameworks.
Two, they need to go beyond “coalitions of the willing”, meaning a stronger coordination between the multitude of partnerships and networks is needed. This is no easy challenge, but is critical to mainstream climate change adaptation from transitions to transformation.
Three, the cities must move beyond experimentation. This requires the time to identify, evaluate and translate lessons from specific innovations to a broader context to scale up and better integrate lessons for citywide implementation.
If Rotterdam and New York manage to deal with these governance challenges, the authors conclude, the tale of these two cities can be action-oriented and an empowering inspiration for others cities around the world.