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Flooding in Cape Town's informal settlements: Conditions for community leaders to work towards adaptation
Abstract
Informal settlements are particularly vulnerable to environmental hazards, due to the lack of infrastructure such as drainage systems and because residents' homes are built with inferior materials. A number of case studies analyse flood-prone informal settlements, mostly with a focus on describing the flooding, household vulnerabilities and coping mechanisms. Although this is important, it is also acknowledged that better collaborative efforts, both within communities and between communities and local government, are needed to move from coping towards adaptation. In order to better understand the capacities of communities to engage in collaborative efforts, we need to look at issues of governance, political dynamics and leadership. Drawing on insights from 3 years of field visits to three flood-prone informal settlements in Cape Town, this paper first illustrates that, although residents apply coping mechanisms on a household scale, the common spaces of the settlements continue to become flooded. Thereafter, context-specific conditions for engaging in collaborations that could improve adaptation at the community scale are discussed. Community leaders are central actors in this regard as intermediaries between residents and local government or non-governmental organizations, and three factors condition their chances of working towards community-scale adaptation: the location of the settlement, external connections and internal consolidation. Comparing the settlements, these factors show how both macro-policies and micro-politics restrict adaptation. To enable community leaders to work towards community-scale upgrading, macro-policies that establish uneven possibilities for different settlements need to be addressed, in addition to the lack of transparency that fragments micro-politics and trust within the settlements.
... The urban poor are particularly vulnerable to the hazards of climate change as their access to infrastructure and services such as water supply and sanitation is often precarious [2]. In the context of the contemporary city, marginalised communities residing in informal settlements most commonly bear the brunt of climate change related impacts [18][19][20][21]. In line with the increasing call for both rapid climate action as well as longer-term, transformative climate change adaptation, which aims to alter broader societal aspects by confronting issues such as power and justice [22,23], it is imperative to seek out the lived experiences of informal settlement residents. ...
... In the case of Cape Town, the effects of global warming can be seen in the fact that the metropole recently endured the worst drought of the last century, known as the 'Day Zero' water crisis [25,26]. Increasing number of flooding events can be attributed to more intense albeit potentially fewer rainfall events, as well as the consequences of urbanisation and surface hardening [18,19,27]. While both the effects of these climate impacts on informal settlements as well as the actions taken in response to these impacts have been studied and reported on, the link between climate change impacts and sanitation is one which has received limited attention. ...
... With the inclusion of a wider range of actors in multi-level governance, the influence of non-traditional actors such as Non-Governmental Organisation (NGOs) is growing [37,44]. Apart from formally established NGOs, community-based social movements and intermediaries who are urban poor themselves are also driving governance around issues such as service delivery [19,45]. The inclusion of communities in decision-making can enable co-operative engagement between local government institutions, communities and intermediaries in a manner which enables "the voice of the marginalized to be better heard and trusted . . . ...
In light of the increasing call for climate action, there is a growing body of literature studying the ways in which informal settlements in the Global South are adapting to the impacts of climate change. In these particularly vulnerable communities where the existing infrastructural vulnerabilities faced by residents are exacerbated by the hazards of climate change, multi-level approaches involving more inclusive forms of governance are needed for the implementation of climate action. Drawing from the case of a sanitation upgrading project in the informal settlement of Murray, located in Philippi, Cape Town, this paper adds to current understandings of multi-level rapid climate action in informal settlements by endeavouring to address two gaps in this body of literature. Firstly, this paper demonstrates a link between climate change and sanitation which has received little attention by showing that improving sanitation infrastructure makes communities more resilient to extreme weather events associated with climate change. Secondly, the paper addresses how and by whom rapid climate action can be implemented in complex socio-institutional contexts such as informal settlements where the impacts of climate change are felt particularly strongly. This paper identifies what enabled and constrained climate action in the Murray informal settlement in an attempt to provide lessons for local government from the case of the sanitation upgrading project. Bottom-up initiation of multi-level climate action is dependent on fragile partnerships which require the support and involvement of a skilled and dedicated local government. Nevertheless, co-operative and transparent engagements across levels hold the potential to contribute to transformative adaptation through the establishment of new partnerships and forms of governance which recognise community groups as legitimate stakeholders and acknowledge the importance of lived experiences and mentalities.
... Settlers have arrived at different times for differing reasons (e.g., evictions, economic opportunity), creating a complex mix of cultures, settlements and governance structures (Brown-Luthango, 2013). Due to the high water table, low topography and poor formal and informal drainage, Philippi experiences regular and prolonged winter (June-August) flooding (Drivdal, 2016). ...
... A number of actors are involved in flood management across a variety of scales, with examples including (i) individual households raising their home's entrance, (ii) residents and NGOs working together to reblock settlements to improve drainage, (iii) local government structural measures such as drainage channel maintenance and (iv) local government non-structural measures such as risk awareness campaigns (Drivdal, 2016;Ziervogel, Waddell, Smit, & Taylor, 2016). There are implementation challenges such as obscure and heterogeneous power dynamics within settlements lead by informal local leaders (Drivdal, 2016) and lack of consultation and qualitative engagement with communities from the city (Joubert & Martindale, 2013). ...
... A number of actors are involved in flood management across a variety of scales, with examples including (i) individual households raising their home's entrance, (ii) residents and NGOs working together to reblock settlements to improve drainage, (iii) local government structural measures such as drainage channel maintenance and (iv) local government non-structural measures such as risk awareness campaigns (Drivdal, 2016;Ziervogel, Waddell, Smit, & Taylor, 2016). There are implementation challenges such as obscure and heterogeneous power dynamics within settlements lead by informal local leaders (Drivdal, 2016) and lack of consultation and qualitative engagement with communities from the city (Joubert & Martindale, 2013). In terms of mapping, the city of Cape Town has an open online platform housing many of the datasets owned and maintained by the city (CTMV, 2019) although their primary focus is the built environment and tends to lack detail in informal settlements (Borie et al., 2019b). ...
To include qualitative aspects of flood resilience, such as emotion, social connections and experience, into urban planning, we present a methodology incorporating innovative and experimental map visualisations of informal settlements. The concept of resilience in urban planning is often deployed in technocratic ways using quantitative tools such as geographic information systems (GIS). Yet in the urban Global South, where high proportions of the population live in informal settlements, the knowledge infrastructures used by public authorities leave little room for participation and consideration of local experience. We outline arts-based workshop activities and a qualitative GIS methodology to map resilience as defined by informal settlement residents in two case study cities, Nairobi (Kenya) and Cape Town (South Africa), with applicability across the urban Global South. For each city, four map layers were generated: (i) flood footprints showing resident’s spatial knowledge of floods; (ii) georeferenced, narrated 360° photo spheres capturing different perspectives about a space; (iii) spatial social network maps showing residents connections to formal and informal actors before/during floods; (iv) multimedia pop-ups communicating contextual details missing from traditional GIS maps. We show how these prototype maps can be integrated within planning knowledge infrastructures. For spatially imprecise qualitative aspects of resilience in informal settlements, placing markers on a map makes them visible in ways that planners can begin to engage with. Although challenges remain, we found openness in Nairobi and Cape Town by city-level actors to use qualitative forms of evidence, and that the contextual detail aided their retention and understanding of resilience.
... Cluster 3 (blue): They highlighted local community ideologies to address the complex flood risk brought on by climate change (Sinthumule and Mudau 2019;Drivdal 2016). The use of a sector response or a one-size-fits-all strategy is inappropriate in the majority of situations. ...
... The use of a sector response or a one-size-fits-all strategy is inappropriate in the majority of situations. The concept of community science is centered on engaging non-scientists in the process of describing and monitoring floods, typically under the guidance of a professional agency or expert (Drivdal 2016;Desportes et al. 2016). Citizen science is becoming more and more popular, which can be ascribed to its ability to produce inexpensive, current, and comprehensive disaster vulnerability information, as well as its associated social inclusion. ...
The United Nations (UN) emphasizes the necessity of reducing the social and material
losses imposed by water disasters, with an emphasis on protecting the most vulnerable social groups
to achieve sustainable development goals (SDGs). Several objectives outlined under the SDGs
including Goals 1, 11, and 13 concentrate on minimizing vulnerability to disasters and boosting
resilience to extreme occurrences. Flooding is an increasingly challenging problem facing cities today,
with consequences mostly felt in marginalized communities. Residents of informal settlements are
particularly susceptible to the effects of flooding given that they are compelled to live in the most
unsafe locations, such as floodplains. This study reviews the current status of flooding research from
empirical perspectives globally and in South Africa through systematic literature and bibliometric
analysis of 249 peer-reviewed articles on flooding, with a focus on informal settlements. We detect
groups of keywords and major research themes. Our analysis shows that studies on flood modeling
in informal settlements are inadequate. We synthesized the research to present a body of knowledge
on floods in informal settlements. Future research prospects are identified in areas of upgrading
housing and infrastructures, policies, integrating indigenous knowledge, and local participation.
... Informal settlements often have informal community leaders who take up several roles, such as mediators between external nodes and the residents (Drivdal, 2015). The 'mentality' of this node or how they perceive themselves varies, but they generally seem to see themselves as significant intermediary actors between residents and external nodes such as NGOs, researchers and local government. ...
... Generally, they have limited material resources; however, they usually have more external connections than most other residents, and can influence the extent to which other nodes can access or interact with their constituent community members, acting as gatekeepers (Barry & Rüther, 2005). Further, the technologies that leaders apply vary with each individual leader, often depending on the kind of connections they have (Drivdal, 2015). ...
It is well documented that informal settlement residents are particularly vulnerable to flooding, and many suggest improved collaboration is needed to improve the situations. Reason being that sustainable change will require a varied set of knowledge. This means that stakeholders from different spheres with different economic and political interests are likely to be involved. This paper will look into processes of knowledge production by applying a nodal governance framework to analyse the interaction between researchers, local communities, local government and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the production of survey data/geographical information system (GIS) knowledge of two specific informal settlements in Cape Town, South Africa, prone to flooding. The production of knowledge at a local scale is critical to effective governance, but the gathering of this data is a complex process ‘flavoured’ with the differing perspectives and objectives of the various ‘actors’ involved. This shapes the outcomes of knowledge production and needs to be carefully considered in the survey process.
... However, the bulk of scholarly attention has focused on the encroachments of the poor on marginal and hazardous lands in naturally flood-prone areas. Previous studies have examined causes, impacts and local responses to flooding in notorious "slum" areas encroaching on wetlands, coastal estuaries and swampy areas in cities such as Lagos in Nigeria (Ajibade & McBean, 2014), Cape Town in South Africa (Drivdal, 2016;Jordhus-Lier et al., 2019;Musungu et al., 2016) and indeed also in Accra (Aboagye, 2013;Abu & Codjoe, 2018;Amoako, 2018;Amoako & Inkoom, 2017;Frick-Trzebitzky et al., 2017;Owusu et al., 2019). Numerous studies have examined similar issues in infamous "slum" areas encroaching on river embankments in cities such as Mumbai in India (Chatterjee, 2010), Dhaka in Bangladesh (Braun & Aßheuer, 2011), Jakarta in Indonesia (Padawangi & Douglass, 2015), Durban in South Africa (Williams et al., 2018), Accra (Twum & Abubakari, 2019) and various medium-sized cities in Pakistan (Rana & Routray, 2018), Malawi (Kita, 2017;Manda & Wanda, 2017), South Africa (Ogundeji et al., 2013) and Ghana (Danso & Addo, 2017). ...
Urban flood risk is significantly shaped by ground conditions and the built environment , which are constantly modified and transformed by human actions. This paper examines the intertwinement of flood risk and unregulated urban expansion processes in three selected sites in Accra's expanding periphery. All three sites have been included in Accra's urban extent since the 1990s, but differ with regard to the timing of development and socioeconomic characteristics of residents. The research illuminates how flood risk is produced and "built-in" to the urban fabric through widespread practices associated with unregulated urban expansion processes, especially the persistent encroachment on water retention areas, wetlands and riparian zones and the highly fragmented provision of transport infrastructure in emerging residential areas in the periphery. Such harmful development practices are neither confined to homebuilders from poorer segments of the urban population nor spatially concentrated in low-income areas. The research highlights how the actions and inactions of a wide range of social groups and actors engaged in urban land administration and development contribute to flood risk in various ways, making flooding an increasingly alarming issue of citywide concern. Different stakeholders highlight fragmented urban governance as an underlying root cause for the obstruction of sustainable land and water management. Overall, the study calls for a more robust recognition of spatial planning and transport infrastructure provision in flood risk mitigation and highlights the urgent need for planning and governance practices that challenge the existing fragmentation of urban governance systems.
... Here, such activities usually rely on artisans within the community who provide the "technical" support for such physical modi cations. Evidently, social capital in the form of relatives, friends, and artisans within and outside informal settlements provide the mechanisms for residents of informal settlements to tackle their ood vulnerabilities Drivdal, 2016;Kusakabe, 2012). As Dale (2005) argues, social capital is critical in supporting small communities to cope in terms of "getting by" and "going ahead" during disasters. ...
Flood vulnerabilities and eviction threats are challenges informal settlement residents encounter in urban Africa. Although recent literature posits emerging residents’ coping and adaptive capacity to flooding, research on African cities is scarce. To address such a knowledge gap, this chapter explores micro-level flood response strategies in Old Fadama—one of Ghana’s informal settlements—and their sustainability implications of providing residents with long-term relief from flood vulnerabilities. Findings reveal that residents’ awareness and experience with floods have led to some individual and community-level responses. Nonetheless, perennial flooding in the community is indicative of the limits of such response strategies in tackling flood vulnerability. This situation is compounded by local government threats of evictions after flood disasters. Together, these undermine the sustainability of residents emerging coping and adaptive capacities. This chapter, therefore, argues for an integrated community-based urban flood management approach that engages informal settlement residents’ response strategies and their socio-ecological circumstances to provide sustainable pathways to traverse their flood vulnerabilities.KeywordsFlood vulnerabilitiesInformal settlementsSustainabilityResponse strategiesGhana
... Here, such activities usually rely on artisans within the community who provide the "technical" support for such physical modifications. Evidently, social capital in the form of relatives, friends, and artisans within and outside informal settlements provide the mechanisms for residents of informal settlements to tackle their flood vulnerabilities Drivdal, 2016;Kusakabe, 2012). As Dale (2005) argues, social capital is critical in supporting small communities to cope in terms of "getting by" and "going ahead" during disasters. ...
The breach of urban planning, water sanitation, and hygiene infrastructure enabling food and water exposure at an alarming rate to contamination with Vibrio cholerae organisms is the major cause of cholera outbreaks. The purpose of this chapter is to identify and quantify the risk of spread of cholera in post-flood scenario. It attempts to assess the interconnection between cholera outbreaks and flooding in Nigeria using the recurrence of flooding in Nigeria in relation to the incidences of cholera outbreak cases of the disease between 1970 and 2010 using existing literature and datasets. The distribution map revealed the magnitude of exposure and susceptibility to cholera outbreak after flood incident which is predominant in the northern part of the country. Exposure of water supply to high rates of flooding and runoff is basically connected to the 2010 outbreak of cholera from the north to the south of the country.This study suggested that intensive epidemiological studies on “cause-effect relationship,” between infectious diseases and disasters, are necessary in controlling post-disaster outbreaks. The risk involved in disaster, most especially post-disaster conditions, requires proper assessment and also adequate measures requiring immediate implementation such as improving healthcare delivery services needs maximum attention. Flood prevention and mitigation strategies demand systematic evaluation through comprehensive surveillance, well-coordinated collaborations, emergency, and early warning systems.KeywordsDisaster mitigationFloodHealthCholeraResilienceNexus
... The drainage system was, therefore, selected as another indicator for mapping flood vulnerability in the study area. The lack of a drainage system is a big problem in most informal settlements especially in developing countries because most municipalities claim to have no mandate to provide such infrastructure in informal settlements [115,[117][118][119]. ...
Floods have been projected to increase due to climate change and informal settlements in developing countries will be the most affected. This study presents results of using Local and Indigenous Knowledge in selecting indicators for mapping the vulnerability of people to flood hazards in an informal settlement context. Using Quarry Road West informal settlement, the study employed a convergent parallel mixed-methods approach which involved a household survey (n = 359), interviews with key informants (n = 8) and a focus group discussion (n = 1). The study findings reveal that flood vulnerability in the study area is not only a result of the proximity of the houses to the Palmiet River, the M19 freeway and Quarry Road, but also as a result of the nature of the soil and the type of materials people use to build their houses. Furthermore, findings reveal that using both Local and Indigenous Knowledge possessed by community members, a minimal number (sixteen) of context-specific indicators for mapping flood vulnerability in the study area were selected. The study also finds that flood vulnerability in the study area is a result of physical, socio-economic and institutional problems. Therefore, using local and Indigenous Knowledge to select indicators for mapping flood vulnerability helps to provide a better understanding of flood vulnerability in an informal settlement and this gives decision-makers and other stakeholders a glimpse of adaptive measures that can be implemented to increase people's resilience.
... Hence, urban areas in developing countries will be the most adversely affected [181]. This is due to the increased number of people living in urban areas, high population density, settlement of people in floodplains, steep slopes and wetlands, increased impervious surfaces, land-use changes, poor drainage infrastructure and indiscriminate disposal of waste which clog drains [181][182][183][184]. Furthermore, most urban dwellers in developing countries have low adaptive capacities [185,186]. ...
In the face of climate change, mapping flood vulnerability has become important. This is because it helps to identify vulnerable people in particular communities and provides a better understanding of the causes of their vulnerability. The objective of this scoping literature review paper is to describe the components, elements, criteria selection methods, scale and settings, data, analytical approaches, the purpose of the maps, sensitivity analysis and accuracy assessment techniques used for mapping flood vulnerability in developing countries. A search over the last decade was conducted in Web of Science and Scopus using the keywords: “flood vulnerability” OR “Spatial Modelling” AND “developing country”. The results reveal that flood vulnerability mapping in developing countries was integrated and multi-disciplinary and the mapping was mainly done at a community level or local level. Indicator-based multi-criteria analysis approaches and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) were commonly used in mapping flood vulnerability. The selection of criteria or indicators was mostly based on the existing literature and expert knowledge. Stakeholder participation and use of indigenous knowledge in producing the flood vulnerability maps was limited in the reviewed studies. Sensitivity analysis was hardly done and the lack of reliable, updated and high-resolution data adversely affected the validation and usability of the flood vulnerability maps. Since a lot of people especially in urban areas are expected to be vulnerable to flood hazards due to climate change, validated and accurate flood vulnerability maps are crucial in supporting decision making and strategic interventions aimed are reducing flood risks.
... Williams et al. (2019) state that in South Africa, people in informal settlements are vulnerable to flood hazards because they live in hazardous areas and have poor socio-economic conditions. Drivdal (2016) contends that the lack of drainage systems in informal settlements significantly make residents vulnerable to flood hazards. According to Sutherland (2019) flood vulnerability in informal settlements in South Africa is not only a result of the residents' exposure to natural hazards but is also a result of social and political marginalization. ...
Climate change and the multidimensional nature of flood vulnerability, necessitate an in-depth consideration of experiential knowledge in reducing flood vulnerability in geospatial environments such as informal settlements. The objective of this paper is to provide a critical review of literature and scholarship in the context of the integration of Indigenous Knowledge and Geographical Information System in mapping flood vulnerability in South Africa. Keywords were searched in two databases for empirical studies that integrated Indigenous Knowledge and Geographical Informal System in mapping flood vulnerability in South Africa. The search extended to literature cited in the papers identified from the databases. The studies were thematically analysed and synthesized. The findings reveal that flood vulnerability in South Africa is mainly considered from an integrated perspective. Approaches used to integrate Indigenous Knowledge and Geographical Information Systems in mapping flood vulnerability are fragmented. There is a lack of sensitivity analysis and map validation, limited use of Indigenous Knowledge as well as inadequate community participation in the mapping of flood vulnerability in informal settlements. This critical review demonstrates the need for a comprehensive, explicit and participatory approach for integrating Indigenous Knowledge and Geographical Information System that genuinely utilize the special characteristics that each of them possesses.
... Of the four environmental factors, the two most important ones were, not surprisingly, sudden onset hazards, which can cause death and significant damage to infrastructure. People were particularly reluctant to move to locations with high flooding risks, which may not be surprising given their devastating impact on urban populations (Braun & Aßheuer, 2011;Drivdal, 2016) and their increasing occurrence in urban areas of all three countries, including the capital cities ( Alvarez & Resosudarmo, 2019;Porio, 2011;Tang, 2019). ...
Internal migration of the urban population is substantial with diverse drivers, barriers, and reasons for destination choices. Whereas internal mobility in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries is well-studied under the umbrella of residential, labour, amenity, and retirement migration, such research in non-OECD countries is rare and limited to the economic aspects of migration. In this study, we assess the relative importance of social, environmental, and amenity factors in urban peoples' destination choices within three countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines) through an online survey. Concerns about safety and high living costs at potential destinations were among the most important factors in mobility decisions, whereas amenities were the least important. A high risk from climatic hazards, particularly from severe ones such as flooding and typhoons, was also an influential destination disincentive, particularly for people in Malaysia and the Phil-ippines, that is, likely to grow in importance as climate change accelerates unabated. To maintain the attractiveness of highly exposed cities and regions to skilled people, urban planners must minimise these risks, for example, through crime control, flood disaster management, and early warning systems.
... In all, 309 actions took place 'before and after' (the early transfer of items to safe places, after one occurrence of excess rainfall and before another (Owusu Twum and Abubakari 2019)), while 152 actions occurred 'before, during and after' (Ethiopian Programme of Adaptation to Climate Change (Leal Filho et al 2018)). Eighty actions took place 'before and during' the climate event (raising shelters with rubble, sand, cement or stilts (Drivdal 2016) before and during excess rainfall), while 122 occurred 'during and after' the event (the use of netted doors and windows to keep mosquitos out (Chukwuma and Uchenna 2018) during and after excess rainfall). ...
Over time African cities and their residents have responded to climate impacts in increasingly creative ways, based on local knowledge and available resources. Overviews of adaptation policy, plans and actions have largely been lacking for Africa, particularly at the local, city level. We applied a systematic map to assess what the human responses to climate impacts are in African cities, noting the climate drivers of these actions, the range of responses, where they have taken place, and who the actors are. Standardized, pre-selected search terms were used to systematically search peer-reviewed and grey literature, using Web of Science, Scopus, and Google. Publications were screened based on pre-approved inclusion criteria, and actions described in included articles were coded using categories from key conceptual framing papers on climate change adaptation. Of 2042 peer-reviewed and 60 grey-literature publications, 252 underwent full-text screening, with 121 included for coding. We recorded 1504 actions, taking place in 41 cities from 21 African countries, in response to various climate drivers. Anticipatory and reactive actions were taken by actors, from individuals to international agencies, and we highlighted successful adaptations, those taking advantage of climate impacts, and maladaptive actions. Combinations of climatic and non-climatic stimuli induced adaptive responses, which were frequently based on local knowledge, and provided a base upon which government action could build. Residents of informal settlements had less adaptive capacity than those in formal settlements, and government action could build their resilience. Since development is affected by climate impacts, climate change information
should be integrated into development programmes.
... In cities of the global South, adaptation to extreme climate events, particularly to those related to flooding, is a growing concern. For urban poor, who often live on peripheral land with high exposure to climate risk, the threat is particularly acute (Drivdal, 2016;Desportes, Waddell, & Hordijk, 2016). In Cape Town, climate change vulnerabilities and persistent flooding represent a particular challenge to the city's widespread informal settlements, making the city an important case in question (Seeliger & Turok, 2013b this article is a local government intervention in an informal settlement located in a wetland on the Cape Flats, which experiences annual flooding. ...
This paper responds to the call by Wise et al. (2014) to improve our understanding of decisions related to urban climate adaptation by situating policy interventions in a broader governance context. To develop this argument we use a qualitative case study from Cape Town, South Africa of a local government intervention in an informal settlement suffering from annual flooding. The intervention took the form of gravel platforms raising the ground on which residential dwellings were located. We argue that the meaning and purpose of this intervention have been shaped by multiple social agendas promoted by various actors, producing a contested result and arguably impacting on the potential of the intervention to serve as a pathway to increased adaptive capacity. In addition to the notion of adaptive pathways, we draw on the notions of governance configuration and local policy subversion to explain the case in question.
... In cities of the global South, adaptation to extreme climate events, particularly to those related to flooding, is a growing concern. For urban poor, who often live on peripheral land with high exposure to climate risk, the threat is particularly acute (Drivdal, 2016). In Cape Town, climate change vulnerabilities and persistent flooding represent a particular challenge to the city's widespread informal settlements, making the city an important case in question. ...
Labour has for a long time been an important concept in economic geography, but more often as a cost that influences investment decisions than as a social force in its own right. Recently, however, some geographers have begun putting the politics of labour at the forefront of the analysis. Labour geography can be understood as a discernible strand of research which, throughout the last decade or so, has begun to emerge from a wider Anglo-American Marxist-inspired geography tradition. In this article, I will critically review this emerging literature, which represents a fresh approach to the recent changes in the world of work and to the close relationships between workers, firms, the state and the wider community. Particularly interesting – from a geographical point of view – are the strategies of organised labour in creating new scales of organising, and in rethinking old ones.
Almost 2 424 (or 1,4%) of the 176,654 digitally published theses and dissertations from South African institutions of higher learning contain “human settlement(s)” or “housing” as catalogue keywords. This paper presents a landscape study of such theses and dissertations completed since the dawn of democracy in South Africa. The goal was to identify gaps in research – both topically and geographically – to guide future research direction in the field of human settlements’ curriculum enhancement and system-wide capacity building.
The objective was to locate the originating institutions and the geographic study regions, document the nature and range of study topics by thematic category and to visualise changes in these factors over time. A purposively selected sample was studied to identify the broad need which the dissertations seek to address, and mapped to research designs and research methods. The research design consisted of a systematic desktop review.
Method: Data on South African theses and dissertations were obtained from the National Electronic Theses and Dissertations (NETD) portal and sorted by keywords and publication date. Quantitative data analysis was performed on a representative sample of dissertations and theses. Originating institutions and (where obtainable/applicable) study regions were geographically mapped. The study revealed areas of research focus mapped according to topic and region. Findings from this paper provide the groundwork for further investigation into research gaps and needs as identified from practitioners’ perspectives, to establish alignment.
Urban citizens increasingly need to adapt to climate risk. This is especially the case in informal settlements that have limited state engagement and are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Community-based adaptation (CBA) in the informal settlement has the potential to support the transformation that re-shapes power relations as well as reducing climate risk. This paper explores how multiscalar governance in Cape Town can either empower or undermine CBA to flooding in informal settlements. Drawing on urban political ecology, the analysis reveals significant tension around differing ideas of the temporality of informal settlements, as well as token community inclusivity in participatory planning processes. While everyday governance practices have been used by the City of Cape Town at the local scale, a local community-based organisation has used insurgent planning to envision and enact a more just city. A community designed and spear-headed reblocking process (rearranging shacks in a settlement to allow for flood drainage and service delivery) is a powerful example of CBA and represents the potential of community-based organisations to take steps towards transformative action. In order to enable more widespread urban transformative CBA, it is important to address the drivers of vulnerabilities and underlying power dynamics of political decision-making to destabilise the status quo and move towards real adaptation.
Building urban resilience in popular settlements in developing countries is an urgent task driven by the compounded effects of climate change and rapid substandard urbanization. Urban resilience tends to be seen in the international development sphere as a governance outcome. Nonetheless, the vulnerability of these settlements results in part from the exclusion of their residents from the very governance structures that should address their vulnerability. Most of the literature on governance for resilience reports cases from developed regions, which cannot be generalized to developing regions. In this article, we present the results of a systematic review of 31 empirical cases of governance for urban resilience in popular settlements in developing countries. We find that although governance structures exist, and most cases report local groups collaborating to address vulnerability, residents of popular settlements are excluded from formal decision-making. This is a lost opportunity for the governance of urban resilience.
African cities are facing challenges arising from climate change. Increased severity of rainfall threaten huge parts of urban settlers living in flood prone areas. Coincidently, projections of population trends suggest that urbanization rates will remain at high levels. The impacts such climate change conditions can have on local livelihoods already under socio-economic stress, may contribute to the onset of urban violence. In sharp contrast to these possible developments, contemporary scholarship on the relation between climate change and conflict has a strong rural focus.
A novel systematic literature review of academic articles looking at trends and patterns of the climate change-conflict nexus was conducted to explore whether there is an urban neglect in the literature. The results suggest that scholarly attention on the urban is very limited and focus rather on rural dynamics. A second main contribution of this paper is the introduction of a conceptual framework on the climate change-conflict nexus in urban areas. It combines existing streams of literature into a single model to further theorize and understand dynamics of the climate change-urban violence linkages. Finally, the paper argues for more research on multi-causal pathways leading from adverse climate conditions to urban political violence.
Poverty in South Africa is much higher than in other middle-income countries, alongside persistently high levels of inequality. Scholars, policymakers and activists have sought to understand these dynamics, and post-apartheid South Africa has become a popular site for studying poverty and inequality, yet knowledge about poverty is still contentious. This chapter is about post-apartheid ‘poverty knowledge’ rather than only about poverty itself. It is particularly interested in how geographers in South Africa engage in and contribute to poverty knowledge. The chapter examines different approaches to the meaning and measurement of poverty, its changing spatialities and multiple drivers. It then surveys geographers’ assessments of post-apartheid anti-poverty policies and programmes in South Africa, their politics, and people’s own strategies in the face of poverty’s disempowerments.
This study examines the research trend of urban flood risk assessment and investigates what methods and approaches have been changed and how these changes have improved our understanding on multi-dimensions of urban flood vulnerability. By reviewing a total of 318 peer-reviewed journal articles during the last 10 years (2006–2016) using bibliometric and content analysis, we observed that the physical vulnerability was the most popular concerns followed by the institutional vulnerability and social vulnerability. Moreover, we found that the planning and policy approach focusing on institutional vulnerability has the potential to link physical and social dimensions of flood vulnerability, facilitating the tight collaboration between applied sciences and social sciences. This study concluded that the continuous increasing number of the comprehensive approach to urban flood risk assessment offers evidence for a new paradigm shift toward a more inclusive way to understand multi-dimensional aspects of urban flood vulnerability across disciplines and different knowledge systems.
Centred on people's move from shacks to a residential estate, Raw Life New Hope traces the conditions of possibility of everyday life in South Africa's post-apartheid context. Understanding poverty and marginality as a form of exposure to what I call 'raw life', the book describes contexts in which one might be disenfranchised from living in accord with ideals, or indeed, from life itself. It traces the complex ways that structural violence and social possibility fold into the making of everyday worlds.
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This paper considers the risks from and vulnerabilities to flooding in four urban poor communities close to the coast in Lagos, Nigeria. Drawing on interviews with inhabitants and key informants and also on group discussions, it documents the scale and frequency of flooding in these settlements and the impacts, as well as the individual, household and community responses. It also considers the factors that have contributed to increasing flood risks in Lagos, including the uncontrolled expansion of the built-up area, the lack of infrastructure and the failure not only to expand stormwater drainage but also to maintain existing drainage systems. The paper also considers changes in the frequency and intensity of rainstorms on Lagos Island between 1971 and 2005, which suggest that on average these have become less frequent but more intense.
This paper outlines a framework for adaptation to climate change for urban areas in low- and middle-income nations that is pro-poor and that enhances the capacity of low-income households and community organizations to contribute to such adaptation. It begins by describing how urban centres in low- and middle-income countries concentrate a large proportion of those most at risk from the effects of climate change – as people‘s lives, assets, environmental quality and future prosperity are threatened by the increasing risk of storms, flooding, landslides, heatwaves and drought that climate change is likely to bring. It also points to the weaknesses in the local institutions with responsibility for addressing this and the very large deficiencies in the infrastructure and services needed for protection. It also discusses the lack of attention given to supporting adaptation in urban areas by scientists, governments and international agencies, and considers why this is so.
To improve understanding of the problems and to contribute to identifying solutions, the paper introduces an asset-based framework focused on households and community organizations. As a conceptual approach this helps to identify the asset vulnerability to climate change of low-income communities, households and individuals within urban areas. It also considers the role of assets in increasing adaptive capacity. The asset-based framework provides an operational tool, an asset-adaptation framework, which serves to highlight the measures needed to address four aspects of risk and vulnerability. These four aspects are illustrated in relation to extreme weather events. The first consists of the
measures needed to protect those most at risk from extreme weather: safer sites, protective infrastructure and better-quality buildings – to prevent extreme weather events from causing disasters. The second, third and fourth aspects focus on limiting the impact of extreme
weather events for low-income or otherwise vulnerable groups through household and community actions for pre-disaster damage limitation, immediate post-disaster response, and longer-term rebuilding. This highlights the many synergies between poverty reduction
and resilience to climate change, and clarifies how vulnerability and risk are influenced by income level, age and gender.
The paper then highlights three reasons why strengthening, protecting and adapting the assets and capabilities of individuals, households and communities is far more important in low- and middle-income countries than in high-income countries. The first is the limitations in
urban governments’ adaptive capacity, especially in providing needed protective infrastructure and services to low-income populations. The second reason is the unwillingness of many city or municipal governments to work with low-income groups, especially those living in informal settlements (which usually include most of those most at risk from floods and storms). The third reason is the key role of assets in helping households and communities to cope with disasters.This focus on strengthening the asset base of households and communities is also a key
means of building more competent, accountable local governments. The paper discusses how a substantial part of adaptive capacity relates to the ability of households and community organizations to make demands on local governments and, wherever possible, to
work in partnership with them. Case studies illustrate the effectiveness of such partnerships in some nations. The paper concludes by discussing the roles for local and national governments and international agencies in supporting adaptive capacity at all levels.
This paper explores the options that can be used by aid organizations working in human settlement development to more effectively address disaster risk management. Qualitative research was carried out in El Salvador at both the household and institutional levels — to analyze the needs, capacities and perspectives of slum dwellers and aid organizations. A clearer understanding of the gaps between what households need and undertake to deal with disasters and risk, and how organizations support them, yields important insights for the restructuring of development aid. At the household level, the research reveals a huge variety of crucial but somewhat weak coping strategies. At the institutional level, organizational structures and mechanisms for social housing provision and financing offer a potentially powerful platform for tackling disaster risk. However, current project measures are insufficient. Support for and scaling up of selected household coping strategies, combined with the expansion of social housing funding mechanisms for risk reduction and financing, are some of the options proposed for targeting aid.
This paper examines struggles for urban permanency in an informal settlement on the fringes of Cape Town in the run up to the South African national election of 2004. It focuses on the rapid emergence of the settlement of Nkanini (Forceful) and the key social, cultural, political and communicative dynamics that framed the ensuing bitter struggle between residents and local City of Cape Town authorities over claims to occupy the land. Analysis frames this struggle in terms of a local appropriation of basic human rights legislation that informs community action and therein claims to residential formality.
Flooding in unplanned settlements in Lusaka is expected, even in years of normal rainfall. There is always much discussion of needed action when fl ooding occurs but, as soon as the seasonal rains stop, the incidents are forgotten. Most of the households affected by fl ooding are poor and the fl ooding damages or destroys their homes and belongings, which might have taken years to accrue. Poorer groups may be faulted for settling on sites at risk from fl ooding, but this is usually because they can fi nd no safer alternative. In addition, as this paper shows, reducing fl ood risks in one settlement can increase fl ood risks in others. Local authorities need to be vigilant in stopping settlement in unstable zones and they need to increase awareness of the need for action in settlements already built in fl ood-prone areas. Ways also need to be sought to provide low-income households with alternatives to informal settlements in fl ood-prone sites. It is hard to stop people from erecting houses where they see vacant land. Since rain in Zambia is seasonal, many marshy areas have been built on during dry periods only to be fl ooded when the rains come. In the end, it is the poor who lose and a solution needs to be found before more lives and property are lost.
Literature from the global South has highlighted the role of self-organized "grassroots" groups in championing the rights of the poor, securing specifi c objectives (e.g. service provision) and strengthening individual and collective capacity. Less attention has been paid to what happens when a poor community is provided with services in the context of weak collective capacity and in the absence of grassroots organization. This case study describes a former informal settlement in Cape Town, where residents were awarded formal housing by the state without a "struggle" and thus without developing the collective drive, capacity or leadership necessary to be full participants in the ensuing process. The paper assesses the community's struggle to assert itself collectively over time, linking their pre-development community diversity to subsequent exclusion from the development process and continuing problems of post-development community consolidation. The implications of becoming benefi ciaries without community agreement, involvement, organization or capacity are considered.
We explore the social dimension that enables adaptive ecosystem-based management. The review concentrates on experiences of adaptive governance of social-ecological systems during periods of abrupt change (crisis) and investigates social sources of renewal and reorganization. Such governance connects individuals, organi-zations, agencies, and institutions at multiple organizational levels. Key persons provide leadership, trust, vision, meaning, and they help transform management organizations toward a learning environment. Adaptive governance systems often self-organize as social networks with teams and actor groups that draw on various knowledge systems and experiences for the development of a common understanding and policies. The emergence of "bridging organizations" seem to lower the costs of collaboration and conflict resolution, and enabling legislation and governmental policies can support self-organization while framing creativity for adaptive comanagement efforts. A re-silient social-ecological system may make use of crisis as an opportunity to transform into a more desired state.
The urban poor frequently live in the most hazardous urban locations - at risk from many environmental hazards and extreme events and vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Reducing this vulnerability requires effective urban governance, involving municipal authorities, national governments, utility providers and civil society organisations. This article considers the role of these stakeholders in combining support for climate change adaptation and improving the social, physical and economic wellbeing of low-income urban residents. In particular, the article argues for the development and application of specific tools, methods and approaches to deliver pro-poor adaptation. Relevant case studies and examples are used to show that climate change adaptation requires solutions based in improved institutional capacity and better urban governance - and that if properly applied, this can help to meet the broader needs of the urban poor.
In many megacities of the global south, the combination of rapid population growth and high pressure on space for housing,
results in urban growth taking place in areas particularly prone to natural hazards. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is
no exception to this rule. Many marginal settlements or slums are located on low-lying land at high risk of flooding. This
paper analyzes the vulnerability of slum dwellers in Dhaka and highlights the major factors behind their sensitivity to floods
and their ability to adapt to the related changes. The empirical findings presented are based on a questionnaire survey covering
625 households in five slum areas of Dhaka. Our data suggests that social capital plays an important role with regard to the
ability of slum dwellers to find ways to live with the floods. Regardless of how strongly people are affected, mutual help
and support are dominant features in times of crises. While poorly educated and resourced slum dwellers are highly vulnerable
to external shocks, they still show a surprising capacity to cope with natural calamities.
KeywordsFlood–Vulnerability–Coping–Adaptation–Slums–Megacities–Dhaka
South Africa is struggling to provide services to the millions of poor people migrating to the major centres and living in informal settlements (shanty towns). Whilst the local authorities are generally able to provide potable water from the municipal network to communal taps scattered around the settlements, there is usually inadequate provision of sanitation and little or no provision for the drainage of either stormwater or greywater. This paper describes an investigation into ways of engaging with community structures in the settlements with a view to encouraging "self-help" solutions to greywater management requiring minimal capital investment as an interim "crisis" solution until such time that local and national government is able to provide formal services to everyone. The work was carried out in three settlements encompassing a range of different conditions. Only two are described here. It has become clear that the management of greywater has a low priority amongst the residents of informal settlements. The lack of effective political structures and the breakdown in communication with Ward Councillors and local government officials have contributed to the lack of progress. As the project progressed it became evident that greywater cannot be considered separately from stormwater, sanitation and refuse removal.
We provide a complete characterization of the set of Markov-Perfect Equilibrium (MPE) of dynamic common-property resource games a la Levhari and Mirman (1980). We find that all MPE of such games exhibit remarkably regular dynamic behavior. Surprisingly, however, and despite their memoryless nature, MPE need not result in a "tragedy of the commons", i.e., overexploitation of the resource relative to the first-best solutions. We show through an example that MPE could, in fact, lead to the reverse phenomenon of underexploitation of the resource. Nonetheless, we demonstrate that, in payoff space, MPE are always suboptimal.
Modern conceptualisations of flood risk management (FRM) embody the active engagement of citizens in the appraisal of risk and the development of risk reducing options. But such engagement is known not to be easy. The relevant literature suggests that the potential barriers to stakeholder engagement in FRM are conventionally theorised in three categories: stakeholder-based barriers; time-related barriers; and barriers caused by power inequalities. This paper describes research exploring these issues, by critiquing existing ideas about the barriers to stakeholder engagement in FRM and elsewhere, and by using a case study from Taiwan. Using in-depth interviews of stakeholders we found that failure to acknowledge and take account of the micro-politics in the engagement process brought about new impediments to participation: power sharing unexpectedly created new barriers. We conclude that these results may have relevance elsewhere but that conflicts will remain as long as there are choices to be made. Stakeholder engagement is about resolving these conflicts, but the promoters of flood risk reducing interventions need to be much more analytical in their efforts to understand the 'micro-political positions' of all the stakeholders they encounter, rather than see such differences as themselves inherently problematic.
The article examines household perceptions of flooding as part of climate change in two low elevation coastal zone cities in the Caribbean. The research examines differences in vulnerability of households as the combined results of socio-economic inequalities in entitlements and exposure to natural hazards – flooding and extreme rainfall. Case studies of Paramaribo and Georgetown show that household exposure to floods is increasing, with lower-income groups suffering longer from exposure and with more damaging effects. Such effects are time lost in work and education, damages to assets, and stress. Households in lower-income areas take more measures to prevent flooding than higher-income households. During floods social capital leads to mutual help among neighbors, but this is not carried through to collective organization in preventive strategies. Links with local government are also found to be lacking. Results show a lack of city-wide organization and participative measures for the households concerned, with possible detrimental effects on lower-income households.
Many of the urban poor in Africa face growing problems of severe flooding. Increased storm frequency and intensity related to climate change are exacerbated by such local factors as the growing occupation of floodplains, increased runoff from hard surfaces, inadequate waste management and silted-up drainage. One can distinguish four types of flooding in urban areas: localized flooding due to inadequate drainage; flooding from small streams within the built-up area; flooding from major rivers; and coastal flooding. ActionAid undertook participatory vulnerability analysis in five African cities, to explore local people's perceptions of why floods occur, how they adjust to them, who is responsible for reducing the flood risk and what action the community itself can take. While local people adapt to floods, recognition of local, national and international governments' and organizations' responsibility to act to alleviate flooding and its causes, especially the consequences of climate change, is urgently needed.
This paper uses a critical realist framework to analyse environmental risk in a local space. It argues that urban risk needs to be understood in terms of the causal mechanisms that shape risk events and the contingent conditions that provide the context within which they occur. It uses a case study of an informal settlement in Hout Bay, South Africa, to explore these ideas. It is an approach that challenges the dominant technical and scientific discourse that usually determines the understanding of risk. The research suggests that the key causal mechanisms that shape risk events in informal settlements are globalisation and urbanisation, poverty and vulnerability, the social construction of environmental problems, gender relations, the rise of civil society organisations, political governance and the spatial distribution of risk. The environmental characteristics of the site, as well as the development of the settlement during the political transformation in South Africa, are the key contingent conditions determining the nature of risk.
Providing adequate shelter and improving the lives of people living in informal settlements represents a major development challenge. Upgrading informal settlements holds many unique challenges for external agents involved in this process. It is important that these agents understand the social and political dynamics of informal settlements and how these can influence project plans and strategies. Moreover, project planners should also understand how a changing national social and political environment and the general quality of governance in society impact on intervention projects. Social change theory provides a basis for understanding the social and political dynamics of informal settlements. The Marconi Beam informal settlement in Cape Town has been analysed from a stage of rapid growth in the early 1990s through to the settlement's demolition, following which people have been living in formal houses in the nearby suburbs of Joe Slovo Park and du Noon for at least 3 years. This has taken place during a period of far-reaching social, political and economic change in South Africa.
Partnerships increasingly play a major role in determining and implementing major policy drives in localities. Under-standing how they may provide value is therefore essential to understanding modern governance principles. This article describes action research aiming to develop a conceptualization of fac-tors inherent in collaborative forms and, hence, about their practicality as governance tools. Different interpreta-tions of what collaborative governance is intended to achieve are first reviewed. Two areas that seriously affect the ability of collaborations to deliver their potential, structural complexity and diversity are then reviewed. The article concludes by considering what is needed to make collaborative governance work.
Post apartheid subsidised housing has delivered poorly constructed single units on plots as dormitory settlements, increasing economic and social exclusion and urban sprawl at gross densities of 50 to 60 du/ha. The resultant impact of travel costs, accessible provision of civic facilities, infrastructure costs and land availability are unsustainable.18 Although a major proportion of Informal settlement in the Cape Metro are located in two clusters that are well located for access to jobs in the surrounding central business districts and upper income areas; the low education and skills level precludes the majority of this sector of the population from access to jobs in the growing economy19. In this context of poverty; basic hunger, poor health and HIV/aids, violence and fire risks are core to the challenge of sustainable settlement upgrade. The design of Kosovo informal settlement upgrade uses principles of a hierarchy of places, spaces and movement systems, appropriate building typologies to minimise relocation, sustainable infrastructure design and greening, building and operational efficiencies, effective land use and care of the environment; to improve health, safety and security, optimise community and livelihoods opportunities and sustainable resource use and regeneration.
This article analyses the evolution of metropolitan government in South Africa. During the past ten years South Africa has progressed from having no metropolitan government, to a two-tier metropolitan system and now to a single-tier metropolitan system. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) prefers single-tier metropolitan authorities as a means to, inter alia, promote redistribution of resources and services, promote strategic land-use planning and facilitate economic and social development. A single-tier system was accordingly introduced in 2000. The major thrust of this article is an examination of the process that led to the introduction of six metropolitan governments, and the theoretical debates that underpinned this decision. It also analyses new types of executive systems, forms of public participation, development and service delivery. Finally, it provides a preliminary analysis of the performance of the new metropolitan governments. The article argues that structural reform, territorial changes, development in local government and new forms of service delivery have seriously overburdened local government in the short term and have detracted from service delivery. These unitary metros have, however, been operating for less than four years and must be given time to prove themselves before an informed evaluation can be made. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This paper reviews the concept of adaptation of human communities to global changes, especially climate change, in the context of adaptive capacity and vulnerability. It focuses on scholarship that contributes to practical implementation of adaptations at the community scale. In numerous social science fields, adaptations are considered as responses to risks associated with the interaction of environmental hazards and human vulnerability or adaptive capacity. In the climate change field, adaptation analyses have been undertaken for several distinct purposes. Impact assessments assume adaptations to estimate damages to longer term climate scenarios with and without adjustments. Evaluations of specified adaptation options aim to identify preferred measures. Vulnerability indices seek to provide relative vulnerability scores for countries, regions or communities. The main purpose of participatory vulnerability assessments is to identify adaptation strategies that are feasible and practical in communities. The distinctive features of adaptation analyses with this purpose are outlined, and common elements of this approach are described. Practical adaptation initiatives tend to focus on risks that are already problematic, climate is considered together with other environmental and social stresses, and adaptations are mostly integrated or mainstreamed into other resource management, disaster preparedness and sustainable development programs.
Recent scientific outputs suggest that climate change is likely to cause shifts in the global pattern and intensity of flood events, in some regions increasing the exposure of populations to severe flooding. Potential future risks underline the importance of research and intervention work aimed at strengthening local capacity to cope with flooding, especially for the poor in developing countries. This paper reviews recent theoretical and applied research on vul-nerability and adaptive capacity of households and communities in flood-prone areas. It traces the growing tendency for interventions to prioritize action at the local scale and suggests directions for further research to deepen understanding of actual and potential coping strategies.
The governance debate is wide-ranging and complex. The aim of this article is to bring order to the debate by concentrating on how the rise of governance challenges many of the more traditional notions of public administration. Governance is about new methods and forms in governing and ultimately is about a change in the meaning of government. This article argues that a governance perspective provides an organizing framework for understanding the changing processes of governing. Five propositions and associated dilemmas are examined. Governance involves: multi-agency partnerships, a blurring of responsibilities between public and non-public sectors, a power dependence between organizations involved in collective action, the emergence of self-governing networks and the development of new governmental tasks and tools. The key of governance are: its weak underpinnings, a tendency to facilitate blame avoidance and scapegoating, the proliferation of unintended consequences and inadequate accountability mechanisms. In the light of such factors analysts and practitioners should consider the prospect of governance failure. Governance represents a positive attempt to tackle social and economic challenges in innovative ways but it should not be seen as a panacea. This article draws on insights from the UK Economic and Social Research Council's Local Governance Programme.
This paper presents thedifferential impacts of flood hazards amongstreet children, the urban poor andresidents of wealthy neighborhoods in MetroManila, Philippines. It argues that beingpoor is not the only reason why certainsectors are more vulnerable to floods orany environmental hazards – spatialisolation and lack of participation indecision making intensify their presentand future vulnerability, as well. Archival research, interviews, focusedgroup discussion, participant observationand surveys of populations at risk areemployed to delineate the flood experiencesand coping strategies of street childrenand residents of poor urban settlements andwealthy neighborhoods in Metro Manila atthe household and community levels. Theconcept of entitlement, the ContextualHazards Model, and the Access Model areused in the data analysis andinterpretation. Several policyrecommendations on hazard management anddisaster mitigation are identified toreduce flood losses in Metro Manila.
Megacities in developing countries are rapidly transforming places. Under the impetus of global change processes and consequent
transformations at the environmental, social, cultural, political and economical scales; factors causing disasters and losses
are changing every day. These changes are also altering society’s ability to respond to hazard events. This paper examines
the response of slum dwellers who are the most vulnerable and marginal section of urban population and often located in places
with high hazard risk with less or no means to reduce the impact of flood events. Marginal population groups in megacities
suffer the negative consequences of large scale global change processes and do not benefit from the risk mitigation strategies
adopted by city authorities. The paper therefore argues that people living in informal settlements instead have to employ
a combination of structural means and complex networks of assistance to recover from floods. Based on the results deduced
from data collected with the help of household surveys in the slums of Mumbai, the study demonstrates the types of coping
strategies used by slum dwellers and the changing characteristics of these mechanisms under the influence of global change
processes in megacities. Furthermore, results show that capacity to respond is not equally distributed among slum dwellers
due to underlying socio cultural divisions and emerging economic and political constraints. The paper concludes that to address
existing discrepancies in urban societies and within slum settlements, flood mitigation strategies will have to be (1) more
inclusive of marginal population (2) sensitive to the limitations and scope of old and new social structures and (3) incorporate
innovative networks of support to deal with the consequences of global change.
KeywordsAdaptation-Cities-Hazards-India-Mitigation-Slums-Vulnerability
In this paper, we acknowledge that the literature has successfully articulated processes that have brought about environmental injustices. However, it remains weak in its engagement with processes that can or should contribute to the realisation of environmental justice, which can be attributed mainly to the limited but popular perspective that has been championed principally by the North American literature. We suggest that concerns with environmental justice should go beyond the preoccupation with the evidence of injustice to encapsulate processes and strategies for achieving environmental justice in its various forms. Empirically, this implies the need to move away from the preoccupation with toxic waste as the main central focus of the environmental justice literature. We argue that the processes and strategies for achieving environmental justice are as important as the end results that we strive for, particularly in areas of human settlements. To this end we used the case of Mfuleni Flood Relief Project in Cape Town, as an empirical evidence of the complexity of resettlement as a ‘just’ process.
The burgeoning interest in social capital within the climate change community represents a welcome move towards a concern for the behavioural elements of adaptive action and capacity. In this paper the case is put forward for a critical engagement with social capital. There is need for an open debate on the conceptual and analytical traps and opportunities that social capital presents. The paper contrasts three schools of thought on social capital and uses a social capital lens to map out current and future areas for research on adaptation to climate change. It identifies opportunities for using social capital to research adaptive capacity and action within communities of place and communities of practice.
Some 90% of the Guyanese population are at risk from contemporary flood hazard and the potential impacts of climate change and sea-level rise. Such risks are not the product of physical systems alone, and by using a political ecology frame the geography of flood hazard in urban environments can be seen to coevolve with political, social and economic systems. These systems are explored by a historical review which traces the roots of present vulnerability to the colonial experience, and an analysis of contemporary vulnerabilities which draws from a peri-urban and an urban case study. The case studies show that the current fashion in international donor agencies to fund ‘community sponsored development’ has missed an opportunity to enhance security through grassroots empowerment, and rather that those community organisations associated with this system have been co-opted by political elites reproducing embedded distributions of power and vulnerability.
The end of apartheid in South Africa broke down political barriers, extending to all races the formal rights of citizenship, including the right to participate in free elections and parliamentary democracy. But South Africa remains one of the most economically polarized nations in the world. In The Politics of Necessity Elke Zuern forcefully argues that working toward greater socio-economic equality—access to food, housing, land, jobs—is crucial to achieving a successful and sustainable democracy. Drawing on interviews with local residents and activists in South Africaâs impoverished townships during more than a decade of dramatic political change, Zuern tracks the development of community organizing and reveals the shifting challenges faced by poor citizens. Under apartheid, township residents began organizing to press the government to address the basic material necessities of the poor and expanded their demands to include full civil and political rights. While the movement succeeded in gaining formal political rights, democratization led to a new government that instituted neo-liberal economic reforms and sought to minimize protest. In discouraging dissent and failing to reduce economic inequality, South Africaâs new democracy has continued to disempower the poor. By comparing movements in South Africa to those in other African and Latin American states, this book identifies profound challenges to democratization. Zuern asserts the fundamental indivisibility of all human rights, showing how protest movements that call attention to socio-economic demands, though often labeled a threat to democracy, offer significant opportunities for modern democracies to evolve into systems of rule that empower all citizens.
The tension between international agencies, national and local institutions of the Global South has received much recent attention. This paper contributes to the debate by contrasting contemporary participatory models of management for the built environment with local experience of social capacity building and vulnerability to local flooding. It draws on field data collected in 1995-96 and is set within the contexts of recent structural adjustment and democratisation in Guyana.
Identified vulnerabilities to flood hazard reveal that social and political assets play key roles in shaping access to local, national and international resources for environmental management. Despite recent structural reforms, and a rhetoric of participatory democracy, it is found that marginalized groups with limited social resources (women, children, the aged, the economically poor, petty-agriculturalists and squatters) continue to be excluded from local participatory decision-making in environmental management, and that the top-down construction of community has enabled local and national political elites to capture institutional structures designed to facilitate local empowerment and sustainable environmental management in coastal Guyana. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
In this article we investigate the complex relationship between environmental risk, poverty, and vulnerability in a case study carried out in one of the poorest and most flood-prone countries in the world, focusing on household and community vulnerability and adaptive coping mechanisms. Based upon the steadily growing amount of literature in this field we develop and test our own analytical model. In a large-scale household survey carried out in southeast Bangladesh, we ask almost 700 floodplain residents living without any flood protection along the River Meghna about their flood risk exposure, flood problems, flood damage, and coping mechanisms. Novel in our study is the explicit testing of the effectiveness of adaptive coping strategies to reduce flood damage costs. We show that, households with lower income and less access to productive natural assets face higher exposure to risk of flooding. Disparity in income and asset distribution at community level furthermore tends to be higher at higher risk exposure levels, implying that individually vulnerable households are also collectively more vulnerable. Regarding the identification of coping mechanisms to deal with flood events, we look at both the ex ante household level preparedness for flood events and the ex post availability of community-level support and disaster relief. We find somewhat paradoxically that the people that face the highest risk of flooding are the least well prepared, both in terms of household-level ex ante preparedness and community-level ex post flood relief.
The development of low-income housing continues to be a political imperative and an urban reconstruction priority for the post-apartheid South African state. But, even though policies for housing construction and delivery by the state are in place, in practice many homeless families initiate, direct and drive the process through which they secure state-provided housing. I analyse in this study two such cases where homeless residents in peripherally located, poor areas of the Cape Metropolitan Area successfully accessed state-provided housing. In both instances, homeless families organized around the different sets of capacities that structured the nature of the linkages that each forged to resources outside of their respective areas, and thus the ways in which they pursued their need for housing. I argue in this study that uneven and place-specific, community-based capacity often directs the manner in which communities interpret, interface with and access state-run urban reconstruction projects such as housing provision. An analysis of community-based capacity thus proves useful to investigate the potential and the problems that underlie state initiatives for development and the manner in which communities participate and engage with urban reconstruction and development.
Draining the shantytowns; lessons from Kosovo informal settlement, Cape Town, South Africa
- N Armitage
- R Beauclair
- N Ashipala
- A Spiegel
Understanding the complexities of informal settlements: Insights from Cape Town
- W Smit
Report on flooding in the informal settlement, ‘Egoli
- L Drivdal
Improving flood risk management in informal settlements of Cape Town: An interactive qualifying project (Thesis, bachelor)
- B Bouchard
- A Goncalo
- M Susienka
- K Wilkinson
Sustainable approach to urban stormwater management. Catchment, storm water and river management branch, City of Cape Town
- C A Haskins
The new instrument for upgrading informal settlements Informal settlements: A perpetual challenge? Cape Town
- M Huchzermeyer
Learning to swim: Strengthening flooding governance in the City of Cape Town Amsterdam conference on the human dimensions of global environmental change: ‘Earth system governance: People, places and the planet
- G Ziervogel
- W Smit
Built-in resilience: Learning from grassroots coping strategies for climate variability
- H Jabeen
- C Johnson
- A Allen
Social organization in the slums
- W F Whyte
What determines vulnerability to floods; a case study in Georgetown
- M Pelling
Amsterdam conference on the human dimensions of global environmental change: ‘Earth system governance: People, places and the planet
- G Ziervogel
- W Smit