Urbanising centres and their peri-urban peripheries are located in a range of different ecosystems. These include, rural, forest and coastal landscapes. Whereas they provide critical services sustaining urban systems, when neglected, eroded or otherwise mismanaged they can pose risks like floods, droughts, landslides and food insecurity. Peri-urban areas, the transitional zones between urbanising areas and the surrounding ecosystems, are key to managing these and other hazards, many of these increasingly heightened through climate change impact.
Peri-urban areas often have semi-natural ecosystems providing natural resources for growing cities, while being increasingly influenced by urban economic drivers. This two-way interaction changes the lifestyles and choices of peri-urban inhabitants as their environment goes through rapid change. The extractive nature of urbanisation places a low premium on preserving supporting ecosystems, which are barely recognised and especially so if outside of strict administrative boundaries. In such cases, city governance functions in a vacuum isolated from perceived hinterlands. A lack of “joined up governance” in urbanising areas   usually leads to encroachment of ecologically sensitive lands for housing and other construction activities. 
The experiences of the ACCCRN initiative, which initially spanned 10 cities across India, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia, and now expanded to over 60, showed that ecosystem based adaptation is key to building urban climate change resilient in cities. The provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural services provided by ecosystems for a city support underpin functioning urban systems.
Understanding of Urban Climate Change Resilience and its interaction with peri urban and ecosystem services is dismal at policy levels on multiple scales in multiple countries. Causes are numerous, including governance capacity failure and obstacles to coordination within city administrations, and between these administrations and those of adjacent areas. 
Experience has shown that governance and policy support are critical to achieving desired long-term outcomes for inclusive urban resilience building. Legislation is needed to institutionalize approaches to ecosystem challenges, create funding streams for initiatives, formalize ownership of peri-urban areas, outline and coordinate the involvement of relevant stakeholders including municipal and other governments, and create enforceable mechanisms for accountability in the provision of ecosystem services.