Reducing risks to cities from climate change; an environmental or a development agenda?

Brief for volume 19 number 1 of the journal 'Environment and Urbanization' entitled 'Reducing Risks to Cities'.~Discussions of how to address climate change have focused far more on mitigation (reducing greenhouse gas emissions) than adaptation (coping with the storms, floods, sea-level rise and other impacts that climate change will bring). The limited discussions on adaptation have also given little attention to cities. But many cities in Africa, Asia and Latin American and the Caribbean are at high risk from climate change- even as they (or the nation in which are located) have contributed very little to greenhouse gas emissions. Many such cities are national capitals, or otherwise central to their nation's economies and cultures.