By Mandy Jayakody
Cities, as social and economic hubs, are major impact zones of climate change and as such need to be earmarked as critical spaces in which to build climate resilience.
Historically, climate change has been regarded primarily as an environmental issue, and there has been minimal effort to incorporate effective planning responses into essential delivery areas within municipalities.
With the onslaught of disastrous events, which South Africa has experienced over recent years, particularly in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal, the economic and social implications of climate change on local government have become unequivocal.
There is an urgent need for physical adaptation measures that include strategies and interventions to modify infrastructure and enhance resilience.
Additionally, it is essential to strengthen the capacity of local government officials and policymakers to promote more informed decision and integrate, complex knowledge sources, climate information, examples of practice and understandings of urban and city regional systems in adopting a programmatic response to building resilience.
Equally, as the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC) we remain alert to the need to address the significant challenges posed by energy transition, including energy security, infrastructure development, and financial sustainability on municipalities - and to many, that remains their immediate nightmare and a constrain to their critical role of leading the energy transition and localised green economy and net-zero industrialisation paradigm.
A recent collaborative project between the Presidential Climate Commission and the European Union utilised the Climate Resilient Development Pathway (CRDP) framework to facilitate a peer-to-peer learning exchange targeted at local governments and practitioners, with the goal of enhancing their capacity to integrate complex knowledge sources, climate information, practical examples, and understandings of urban and regional systems into more climate-resilient development strategies.
The approach requires the navigation of various uncertainties within social, ecological and economic systems that are challenging and introduce various levels of complexity into planning, specific skills and concerted efforts into integrated planning are also essential.
eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality: A case study of floods and the impacts of floods
In April 2022, extreme rain of just over 300 mm fell on a single day over parts of the KwaZulu-Natal province in South Africa, and especially around the major port city of Durban. The resultant floods caused considerable damage that amounted to more than R25 billion across the province, with more than 450 lives lost, an estimated 13 500 houses damaged or destroyed, 40 000 people displaced, and 630 schools affected.
These flood-producing rains were by no means uncommon, although their impact was significantly exacerbated by a number of factors, including: the physical and natural environment; infrastructure and planning issues including land-use change and the increased proportion of impervious surfaces, without the necessary upgrades to infrastructure; and socio-economic factors such as the existing vulnerability of certain settlements.
Lessons from the eThekwini included the need for community level Early Warning Systems and significant investments in the city’s ecological infrastructure to minimise loss of life and reduce the impacts of flooding.
Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality (NMBMM): A case study of the impacts of droughts
The consistent decline in spring rainfall in NMBMM between 2008 and 2015 was a clear sign of the onset and persistence of drought.
The impacts of the drought have been extensive and include agricultural and job losses, health issues, exacerbation of existing inequality (through unequal access to scarce water supplies) and environmental impacts affecting river quality and functioning.
The climatic factors that contributed to the drought were exacerbated by several anthropogenic factors, including: degraded river catchments as a result of expanded urban development and invasive alien plant infestation; lack of maintenance and investment in water, wastewater and stormwater infrastructure; water demand exceeding supply; and governance challenges including political instability and the loss of critical professional skills in municipal engineering functions.
Equipping Municipalities with the right tools and strategies
Considering the current state of municipal capacity, along with competing priorities and short-term political cycles, it is improbable that South African municipalities are adequately equipped to effectively implement climate response strategies through CRDP thinking without a coordinated effort from both public and private sectors. This would undoubtedly represent a missed opportunity.
While local government service delivery is intrinsically linked with climate resilience development, most municipalities are not conscientised of these supposedly obvious linkages to their primary mandate in areas like water service provision, road, and drainage infrastructure, informal settlement upgrading, biodiversity management, waste management, disaster management as the real value and opportunity to address climate change impacts in a different way.
What is clear is that South Africa must become adept in doing more with less and this will include establishing networks for better collaboration in our collective efforts to address climate change – both through mitigation and adaptation actions at a local level.
Mandy Jayakody is the Just Urban Transition Manager. Presidential Climate Commission.
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