This roundtable conversation explores recent trends in locally-led development and climate change adaptation that focuses on local knowledges, perspectives and lived experiences and the contextual realities implicated in the processes of change. Climate change is yet another unwelcome challenge for informal urban neighborhoods. This impacts heavily on countries of the Global South like Colombia, and has informal settlements that characterize their cities at a boiling point. Risks linked to the natural environment pose a particular threat when they are mixed into a political and economic climate that has fostered inequalities and injustice. This is a challenge for development professionals, institutional actors and for civil society. For positive adaptation, these local actors, who are occasionally at odds, must find new ways of working.

Colombia, for example, is a neo-colonial context that has been fraught with discrimination, war, criminal violence, and political corruption. Despite these challenges, Colombia has been an outlier in terms of inclusive and pro-poor initiatives as seen through social and integral territorial planning. In informal neighborhoods like Panorama and Puerto Issac, civil society leaders and experts struggle for improvements by conserving greenspaces, promoting urban agriculture, and recycling clothing. To do so, they engage in more than livelihoods and innovations. They also involve themselves in community mobilisation, socio-political networking, partnership building, political negotiations, and compromise. While long term change demonstrates a heritage of success, the shorter-term socio-political challenges are daily.

This roundtable seeks to better understand the agency, power and influence built into locally-led development and the responsibility and weight that goes with it. Finally, the discussion will seek to co-produce new knowledge on how urban changemakers are working and how experts and other actors can better collaborate, support, and catalyse the foundational work done at local scales relevant to cities in Canada and around the globe.

Laura Ramos has worked in community development in Yumbo, Colombia for over 20 years. As a social worker, she provides capacity building for civil society organizations and their integration into municipal policy planning. provides an expert perspective on the challenges and successes of integrating neighborhood groups into mainstream urban development.

Fundacion FACY has worked on environmental issues in Panorama for over 10 years. Don Miguel and Diego are active members of the foundation working hands-on planting trees and promoting urban agriculture. They will discuss the delicate balance between concrete environmental actions and the political dimensions of urban development.

Maria is a leader and entrepreneur who has worked to improve her neighborhood for over ten years. Her recent initiative established clothing workshops throughout her neighborhood creating jobs and reducing carbon footprint and waste. Her contribution explores the opportunities in innovation and the political process to make it possible.