Land Policies, Urban Law, and Climate Change

This document serves as a presentation of the second stage of research on Land Policies, Urban Planning Law, and Climate Change. In the first stage, we described a series of urban and taxation instruments in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia that are used, or can potentially be used, to finance measures that address climate change. In this second stage, we will present a more indepth analysis of some of these instruments, focusing on their implementation, and then perform a comparative analysis and extract possible lessons for other countries. We will present four different instruments: two related to land taxation and two that include urban development fees in four Latin American cities. These instruments are 1) betterment contributions to channel urban streams in Barranquilla (Colombia); 2) property tax with “green” incentives in Curitiba (Brazil); 3) stormwater retention systems in Santa Fe, Argentina; and 4) green urban allotments in partial plans for development in Bogotá (Colombia).