Rafaela Dias Romero

City Halls and Their Own Role on Fighting Climate Change: The Case of Rio de Janeiro

ABSTRACT

This dissertation aims to analyze the role of local level in terms of sustainability management, taking city halls not only as regulators of city wide emissions, but also as corporations that indeed generate their own emissions through their operations, buildings and fleet. Based on literature review, and making use of comparative analysis of New York, San Francisco and Rio de Janeiro climate action plans, the main objective is to highlight strategies for Rio de Janeiro's city hall in order to improve its corporate’s sustainability management. The document begins presenting climate change issue as a public good, its challenges, and examines the relationship between sustainability management and cities competitiveness. Then it discusses sustainability management at the local level, while presenting a comparative analysis of case studies. In addition, data management is presented as a challenging issue when building a public corporate sustainability information system. Finally, it proposes strategies to improve Rio’s sustainability management and observes both gaps and benefits.

Keywords: Climate change, Sustainability management, City level, Brazil, Rio de Janeiro

Rafaela Romero is an Architect and Urban Planner for Transport Engineering at the Rio de Janeiro City Hall. She advises on Traffic Engineering Company’s Operations Board, at Rio Operations Center. In these functions, she develops traffic contingency plans for main routes and tunnels of the city and train operation teams. Moreover, she is part of the team that plans and executes mobility solutions to the challenges brought on by major events such as the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games. Through the Rio de Janeiro City Hall, Rafaela was selected to join the group "Carioca Leaders", which is a program that aims to identify professionals with leadership skills and provides strategic training towards a better municipal management. She has also published papers on innovative governmental solutions for transportation, sustainability, and open data, in Rio de Janeiro and New York. Rafaela has a professional degree from Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) as Architect and Urban Planner, a Master degree on Transport Engineering from COPPE/UFRJ, a Business Administration certification from COPPEAD/UFRJ and recently concluded a Master of Public Administration at School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) from Columbia University in NY.