Abstract Summary
The accelerated urbanization of Brazilian cities over the last fifty years, coupled with climatic influences, has caused serious impacts on human and natural systems, and is being addressed under the heading of climate change (IPCC, 2014). Mitigation and adaptation measures depend on various policies at different scales, of which the local scale is the most appropriate, as the impacts are observed in the territories. However, the existing climate impact assessment and climate action plan development guides are assigned to large cities, leaving small cities (population between 20 and 100 thousand inhabitants) without specific guidance and methods for developing such a tool adapted to their reality. In general, the thematic secretariats of small towns have limited budgets and a small number of technical staff. The lack of knowledge on the subject among municipal departments and the general public hinders awareness, local debate and the development of public policies. In this context, we present a project that proposed the customization of a method adapted to the reality of small towns in Brazil (but also adaptable to other countries), seeking to overcome the difficulties mentioned above. We also believe that it is essential to involve the population, both in understanding local problems and in choosing and prioritizing the actions that should make up the Participatory Climate Action Plan. The methodology designed was applied in two small towns, one of approximately 20,000 inhabitants, located in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte and the second, a municipality of approximately 80,000 inhabitants, both in the state of Minas Gerais, southeastern Brazil. Several challenges arose during the process, which required specific strategies to deal with each of them. We can cite, for example, the involvement and interest of the population in the climate issue and the Participatory Climate Action Plan instrument, where we used participatory booklets and workshops; the participation of technicians from different sectors of the public administration in the development of the Plan, especially those sectors whose theme is not directly related to climate impacts; the uniformization of the themes to be discussed (the themes were worked within the designations of Risk Keys and semaphore methods were used to characterize the degree of the problems encountered). In dialogue with these challenges, the project was developed using a participatory and relatively simplified climate impact analysis process, which resulted in an innovative methodology for drawing up a Participatory Climate Action Plan, with the possibility of establishing adaptation and/or mitigation actions, that can be applied by any small Brazilian municipality, regardless of its predominant climate risk.
