Capacities of private developers in urban climate change adaptation

Abstract

Anthropogenic climate change has the potential to severely impact the natural and human environment. The urban environment is particularly exposed to the impacts of climate change because of a range of geographic and social factors. This chapter aims to investigate the institutional capacity of the private urban development sector in South East Queensland (SEQ), Australia to respond to the task of climate change adaptation and, in turn, investigate the role of private financial institutions in funding climate adaptive urban development. The project methodology included a desktop literature review, an online questionnaire survey and a series of semi-structured interviews and focus groups held with members of the SEQ development sector that included developers, consultants, state and local government staff, architects, solicitors, planners and financiers. Larger developers tended to have more capacity to include climate adaptive features in their developments.