Innovare la valutazione di vulnerabilità attraverso il Backcasting Partecipativo. Accesso all’acqua delle comunità costiere di Dar es Salaam (Tanzania)

La ricerca affronta il tema della pianificazione locale per l’adattamento al cambiamento climatico nei contesti ad elevata vulnerabilità, specificatamente nella città sub-Sahariana, focalizzandosi in particolare sull’impiego dei due principali approcci all’analisi di scenario, il Forecasting ed il Backcasting, come strumento di supporto ad una valutazione di vulnerabilità finalizzata ad un adattamento in ottica trasformativa. Negli ultimi anni, con il riconoscimento della stretta connessione tra adattamento al cambiamento climatico e sviluppo sostenibile, il dibattito scientifico sull’adattamento si è sempre più focalizzato sul tema della trasformazione dei sistemi attuali in risposta al cambiamento climatico, e più in generale ai molteplici cambiamenti economici, politici, ambientali e sociali a cui molte comunità e regioni debbono confrontarsi. La necessità di un adattamento in senso trasformativo, specialmente per i contesti ad elevata vulnerabilità, ha indotto la comunità scientifica a ricercare metodi di supporto alla decisione che siano complementari/alternativi rispetto ai più diffusi metodi di tipo climate proofing, oltreché capaci di diversificare ed ampliare le conoscenze necessarie per confrontarsi con la crescente incertezza futura e complessità dei Sistemi Socio-Ecologici. Con questo proposito, attraverso uno studio di caso esplorativo sviluppato a Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), la ricerca sperimenta in pratica l’uso del Bakcasting, un approccio all’analisi di scenario che, a differenza del Forecasting, non risulta ampiamente utilizzato per la pianificazione dell’adattamento locale, sebbene indicato in letteratura come teoricamente in grado di favorire il dispiegarsi di processi trasformativi. Nello specifico, attraverso lo sviluppo di un processo di valutazione della vulnerabilità che ha presupposto in una prima fase l’utilizzo di un metodo di Forecasting applicato analiticamente per studiare a livello urbano un fenomeno biofisico su cui può influire il cambiamento climatico (ossia l’intrusione marina nell’acquifero costiero), ed in una seconda fase l’utilizzo di un metodo di Backcasting Partecipativo applicato a livello comunitario per studiare una tematica di rilevanza sociale correlata al fenomeno biofisico in questione (cioè l’accesso all’acqua di una specifica comunità costiera peri-urbana di Dar es Salaam), la ricerca intende comprendere se il Backcasting Partecipativo possa contribuire a colmare le carenze del Forecasting in materia di aiuto alla decisione per la pianificazione dell’adattamento al cambiamento climatico in prospettiva trasformativa. L’analisi dei risultati ottenuti ha consentito la definizione di un quadro dei limiti e degli elementi conoscitivi che il Backcasting Partecipativo, applicato a livello comunitario, può apportare ad una valutazione di vulnerabilità finalizzata ad un adattamento trasformativo, oltre all’individuazione degli elementi di complementarietà nell’uso del Forecasting e del Backcasting Partecipativo per la pianificazione di un adattamento in ottica trasformativa. L’analisi svolta ha inoltre permesso di individuare una serie di elementi contestuali e processuali che un determinato metodo dovrebbe considerare ed introdurre nel processo di valutazione per favorire una rappresentazione alternativa della vulnerabilità e l’emergere di piattaforme di azione in senso trasformativo, oltre a definire una serie di possibili sviluppi futuri di ricerca. I risultati conseguiti dall’attività di ricerca hanno dunque concorso all’avanzamento delle conoscenze in merito all’utilizzo dell’analisi di scenario di tipo Backcasting Partecipativo per sostenere la pianificazione dell’adattamento in senso trasformativo a livello locale/comunitario nei contesti ad elevata vulnerabilità, in particolare nella città sub-Sahariana

knowledge for transformational adaptation planning comparing the potential of forecasting and backcasting methods for assessing people s vulnerability

In recent years there has been growing recognition that people's vulnerability is not just as an outcome of possible climate impacts, but rather a dynamic contextual characteristic of a socio-ecological system. Accordingly, along with the acknowledgement of the close connection between climate change adaptation and sustainable development, the scientific debate on adaptation has increasingly focused on the issue of transformation of current systems in response to a changing environment. The need for transformational adaptation, especially in high vulnerability contexts, induces planners to broaden and diversify both knowledge and methods to deal with the growing uncertainty and complexity of socio-ecological systems. By focusing on future studies, this chapter aims to explore the transformational knowledge contribution of forecasting and participatory backcasting methods in assessing people's vulnerability using the case study of coastal Dar es Salaam (Tanzania). Participatory backcasting helps understanding contextual vulnerability and community aspirations, and defining shared adaptation goals and action. Conversely, forecasting proves to be fundamental for the identification of boundary conditions and system thresholds relevant to a specific problem, thus providing knowledge that is valuable for integrating global and local perspectives

Coproduced urban water services: When technical and governance hybridisation go hand in hand

This study questions the processes of technical and governance hybridisation in the coproduction of water services in cities of the Global South. The existing literature addresses the compensatory role that water services coproduction plays in urban and peri-urban areas, where access to centralised and reliable water resources is often lacking. However, less research focuses on the evolution of coproduced practices in relation to wider transitions of urban spaces, water resources, centralised infrastructure, and service delivery strategies. Still, the resulting technical and governance configurations stemming from these situations are largely unexplored. This study considers four cities, namely, Hanoi (Vietnam), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Cochabamba (Bolivia), and Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). All our case studies are somewhat characterised by rapid land-use changes, juxtaposition of rural and urban activities, varying urban typologies, and increasing poverty, sociospatial inequality, and exclusionary service provision. We draw on data collected from field surveys and participatory workshops with inhabitants and institutional actors between 2017 and 2020 as part of a recent research project. We explore the evolution of water coproduction from technological and governance perspectives. The cases analysed in the research highlight that the time and social development of water coproduction do not follow a linear path. It is rather characterised by cycles of emergence, maturation, and decline. It may build upon pre-existing forms of community-based water management that were established in rural areas (for irrigation or water harvesting, for instance). The results show that water coproduction may have different evolutions, entailing different hybridisation processes. Water coproduction can be characterised by either complementary or concurrent service configurations, by blurring actor categories, and by different drivers in the hybridisation process. Ultimately, evolution in urban coproduced practices appears as a process of technical and governance hybridisation, rather than as final and fixed hybrid systems

Backcasting scenarios for adaptation to climate change: the case of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania)

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Climate change effects on groundwater in coastal areas

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Typologies of Institutionalised Co-production of Water and Sanitation Services in the Urban South: Looking at the case of Addis Ababa through a political-ecology perspective

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Evaluation of the vulnerability to climate change of the coastal communities in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) as regards salt water intrusion in the aquifer: Methodology and Results

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Towards transformative adaptation: experimenting participatory backcasting in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania)

This contribution focuses on climate change adaptation in urban context, which is currently a relevant challenge and a field of growing interest for urban and environmental planners. By assuming that adaptation planning should not seek exclusively to reduce the potential impacts of climate change, but should also identify transformative social projects oriented to sustainability, it is recognized the limitations of the classical forecasting approach for local adaptation planning (mostly used for risk/impact studies), as it is primarily oriented towards the conservation of the status quo, and unable to fully recognize the contextual mechanisms that determine people’s vulnerability trajectories. Following this perspective, this contribution sustains that the need for a transformative adaptation requires the enlargement and diversification of the knowledge base with which planners face uncertainty and system complexity, and the experimentation of alternative approaches that support a proactive attitude against social drivers of vulnerability and towards achieving desired futures rather than probable ones. The argument is illustrated through a case study on access to water in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), where, by flipping the usual perspective on planning (from forecasting to backcasting) and promoting participation throughout the entire process (by using the Theatre of the Oppressed as a method of participation), a critical approach to adaptation planning is outlined and experimented with a coastal community. The contribution describes the developed experiment and analyses the transformative potential of backcasting with respect to the different problem representation (and resulting actions) it brings out, and to the transformative elements it seeks to introduce in the process, namely community vision , social learning, and empowerment. The experiment raises some questions regarding the way in which this type of approach can be effectively integrated into centralized institutional decisionmaking systems like Tanzania’s

Climate change effects on groundwater in coastal areas

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Valutazione della vulnerabilità all'intrusione salina nelle aree costiere di Dar es Salaam

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