ABSTRACT

This chapter provides a systematic discussion of the linkages between climate change, health and well-being, and governance in the urban context, collecting and summarizing relevant literature in these areas, in order to examine systems approaches to health/environment co-benefits in cities. It summarizes the health impacts of climate change in cities and the general foundations of systems approaches and distinguishes four main elements of systems approaches, relating to analytic method, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and scaling/bounding. The chapter typifies health/climate co-benefits in different urban sectors, considers the characteristics of systems thinking in the specific context of improvements in urban governance, and illustrates these concepts via a set of city-specific examples. Systems approaches to urban health issues call for participatory and inclusive decision-making processes, which can identify co-benefits that might otherwise be overlooked in a more sectoral, top-down approach. This requires involving all stakeholders in a given city, including communities and citizens, public authorities, businesses, and even external actors, such as funding agencies.