Mainstreaming nature-based solutions for climate resilient infrastructure in peri-urban sub-Saharan Africa

This work was conducted under the “Urban Ecolution: Predicting synergies and trade-offs of water-related ecological infrastructure for climate adaptation in peri-urban Sub-Saharan Africa'', supported through the Climate Research for Development Postdoctoral Fellowship (CR4D-19-21) implemented by the African Academy of Sciences in partnership with the UK’s Department for International Development, Weather and Climate Information Services for Africa (WISER) programme and the African Climate Policy Center of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. This study has also been funded in part by the African Women in Climate Change Science Fellowship supported by the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences Next Einstein Forum and the International Development Research Centre of Canada Aid, the UK’s Research and Innovation’s Global Challenges Research Fund under the Development Corridors Partnership project (ES/P011500/1), and Lincre College, University of Oxford.Despite a growing recognition of the importance of designing, rehabilitating, and maintaining green infrastructure to provide essential ecosystem services and adapt to climate change, many decision makers in sub-Saharan Africa continue to favour engineered solutions and short term economic growth at the expense of natural landscapes and longer term sustainability agendas. Existing green infrastructure is typically maintained in more affluent suburbs, inadvertently perpetuating historic inequalities. This is in part because there remains a lack of fine-grained, comparative evidence on the barriers and enablers to mainstreaming green infrastructure in peri-urban areas. Here, we developed an analytical framework based on a review of 155 studies, screened to include 29 studies in 24 countries. Results suggest eight overarching categories of interconnected barriers to green infrastructure in peri-urban areas. Using a combinatorial mixed method approach, we then surveyed households in nine settlements in drought-prone Windhoek (n=330) and seven settlements in flood-prone Dar es Salaam (n=502) and conducted key informant interviews (n=118). Peri-urban residents in Windhoek and Dar es Salaam indicated 18 forms of green infrastructure and 47 derived ecosystem services. The most frequently reported barriers were financial (40.8%), legal and institutional barriers (35.8%) followed by land use change and spatial trade-offs (33%) and finally ecosystem disservices (30.6%). The most significant barriers in Dar es Salaam were legal and institutional (22.7%) and in Windhoek were land use change and spatial trade-offs (24.4%). At the household level, the principal barrier was financial; at community and municipal levels the main barriers were related to design, performance, and maintenance; while at the national level, the main barriers were legal and institutional. Embracing institutional cultures of adaptive policymaking, equitable partnerships, co-designing futures, integrated landscape management and experimental innovation have potential to scale long term maintenance for urban green infrastructure and foster agency, creativity and more transformative relationships and outcomes.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Participation and marginalization in water governance: probing the agency of powerholders

There is growing awareness that both the practice and science of participation in water governance continue to suffer from blind spots with regard to questions of power and equity. We present an analytical frame that helps explore how participatory processes initiated by water reforms can better address the needs and interests of marginalized groups. We build on recent arguments about the potential to enrich adaptive governance theory from a critical institutionalist perspective, combining power-sensitive concepts with a multi-level analysis. The key insight advanced is about the potential to apply critical institutionalism to unpack structural obstacles to the participation of marginalized groups in water governance and to illustrate how such obstacles are (re)created by the agency of powerful actors. We draw on two cases: the situations of Black smallholder farmers in South Africa and the Indigenous Sámi people in Sweden, in the context of the participatory water policies they are subjected to. The analysis shows how the agency of powerholders can purposefully block the inclusion of marginalized groups in two very different political and historical contexts and provides important insights into some of the main stumbling blocks that hinder the advancement of an adaptive water governance system in both countries. On this basis, we suggest opportunities to advance this research direction analytically and empirically. Our larger argument is about fundamentally recasting our view on the purpose of participatory processes in water governance; rather than primarily being instruments to deliver specific policy outcomes, they should allow marginalized groups to center their concerns about the structural roots of the experienced marginalization into the water governance discourse. It requires acting upon the right-claims of marginalized groups and re-evaluating dominant narratives of acceptable societal tradeoffs as well as cost-benefit distribution based on the inputs from these groups. Otherwise, powerful actors will continue to co-opt water governance processes to their advantage and use their agency to undermine the effectiveness of participatory initiatives

Exploring the benefits and dis-benefits of climate migration as an adaptive strategy along the rural-peri-urban continuum in Namibia

This research is funded by a UK Research and Innovation’s Global Challenges Research Fund University of York internal pumping grant Peri-Urban Resilient Ecosystems, the African Research and Initiative for Scientific Excellence (ARISE-PP-FA-141), the Development Corridors Partnership project (ES/P011500/1), the African Women in Climate Change Science Fellowship supported by the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Canadian International Development Research Centre, and the Climate Research for Development Postdoctoral Fellowship (CR4D-19–21) implemented by the African Academy of Sciences in partnership with the UK’s Department for International Development, Weather and Climate Information Services for Africa (WISER) programme and the African Climate Policy Center of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.The scale of climate migration across the Global South is expected to increase during this century. By 2050, millions of Africans are likely to consider, or be pushed into, migration because of climate hazards contributing to agricultural disruption, water and food scarcity, desertification, flooding, drought, coastal erosion, and heat waves. However, the migration-climate nexus is complex, as is the question of whether migration can be considered a climate change adaptation strategy across both the rural and urban space. Combining data from household surveys, key informant interviews, and secondary sources related to regional disaster, demographic, resource, and economic trends between 1990 and 2020 from north central and central dryland Namibia, we investigate (i) human migration flows and the influence of climate hazards on these flows and (ii) the benefits and dis-benefits of migration in supporting climate change adaptation, from the perspective of migrants (personal factors and intervening obstacles), areas of origin, and areas of destination. Our analysis suggests an increase in climate-related push factors that could be driving rural out-migration from the north central region to peri-urban settlements in the central region of the country. While push factors play a role in rural-urban migration, there are also several pull factors (many of which have been long-term drivers of urban migration) such as perceived higher wages, diversity of livelihoods, water, health and energy provisioning, remittances, better education opportunities, and the exchange of non-marketed products. Migration to peri-urban settlements can reduce some risks (e.g. loss of crops and income due to climate extremes) but amplify others (e.g. heat stress and insecure land tenure). Adaptation at both ends of the rural–urban continuum is supported by deeply embedded linkages in a model of circular rural–urban-rural migration and interdependencies. Results empirically inform current and future policy debates around climate mobilities in Namibia, with wider implications across Africa.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe