Coping with stormwater in a Johannesburg, South Africa informal settlement

Abstract

Stormwater management, as part of urban infrastructure, is generally lacking or inadequate in informal settlements.Residents and community groups in informal settlements often take local initiatives, with or without external assistance, aimed at supplying the lack in infrastructure. Utilising a qualitative research strategy, this study considers self-help and community-based initiatives to cope with and manage stormwater in informal settlements, through the case of Slovo Park settlement in Johannesburg, South Africa. The study shows that household/stand-based strategies are minimally effective technically. Community-based initiatives forming part of the drive to catalyse in situ upgrading, although challenged by limitations, are imbued with potential. Enabling environment and appropriate buy-in from the state and relevant non-state agencies are necessary to exploit the potential inherent in the community-based approach.

Green Infrastructure for Sanitation in Settlements in the Global South: A Narrative Review of Socio-Technical Systems

“…Bottom-up approaches to GI without state involvement are often limited in available resources and short-lived because of the precarious living conditions of many residents in settlements in LMIC [40]. Residents have the motivation and social capacity to identify, prioritise, plan and implement projects to meet community needs, with or without government or NGO assistance, as demonstrated by the Nepal project, but they need government, NGOs or professionals to provide an enabling environment for the community-based approach to succeed [41,42]. On their own, self-help initiatives are coping strategies only [41].…”

“…Residents have the motivation and social capacity to identify, prioritise, plan and implement projects to meet community needs, with or without government or NGO assistance, as demonstrated by the Nepal project, but they need government, NGOs or professionals to provide an enabling environment for the community-based approach to succeed [41,42]. On their own, self-help initiatives are coping strategies only [41]. Topdown approaches are constrained by a lack of adequate material and human resources, and various ecological, institutional, political and cultural challenges [1,43].…”

Climatic disasters within a flood-prone coastal slum in Lagos: coping capacities and adaptation prospects

“…This must have led Dobson (2017) to argue that community-driven improvements in informal settlements are underutilized for risk reduction and resilience building. Some of the available studies reveal how low-income households cope with climate challenges such as flooding, windstorm and sea level rise (SLR) (see, for example, Adelekan, 2010; Agbor, 2013; Adegun, 2014; Thorn et al , 2015; Amoako, 2018; Mbuya et al , 2018; Cobbinah and Kosoe, 2019; Udelsmann Rodrigues, 2019). The coping strategies for flooding are either structural or nonstructural, reactive (done after flooding) or potentially preventive/pre-emptive (done before, in anticipation, of flooding).…”

Towards applying a green infrastructure approach in the GCR

“…Further to this, the inhabitants of Diepsloot have adapted their environment to best suit them, with little planning guidance (Carruthers, 2008;Mafunganyika, 2011). The removal and, consequently, the lack of vegetation, as well as the large amount of impervious surfaces due to rapid densification, have caused a major problem of surface water runoff in the Diepsloot settlement (Adegun, 2013). Earth access lanes, gullies from wastewater runoff and haphazard dumping are prevalent throughout the denser areas of the settlement, which strain the natural ecosystem of the region (Carruthers, 2008).…”