The constraints on climate change adaptation in a city with a large development deficit: the case of Dar es Salaam

Abstract

The city of Dar es Salaam, with a population of more than four million, has no climate change adaptation plan. It also has a very large development deficit and lacks adequate provision for infrastructure and services such as piped water, sewers, drains and solid waste collection. Addressing this deficit (and building the institutional and financial capacity to do so) is also important for building resilience to climate change impacts. Eighty per cent of the city's population lives in informal settlements, but there is little effective land use management and a number of these settlements are on sites that flood regularly. Climate change impacts include sea level rise, rising temperatures and increased occurrence of extreme weather, including rainstorms and droughts, all of which present challenges to city and municipal governments that are struggling to reduce the development deficit. This paper discusses the measures being taken to address this deficit and where and how these measures can be accompanied by improved disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

Ecosystem services potential for climate change resilience in peri-urban areas in Sub-Saharan Africa

“…Ecosystem services in urban and peri-urban areas have been categorized by major initiatives, such as the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (McGranahan et al 2005) and the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB 2011) and have received increasing attention as part of the important debate on green infrastructure (DGEnvironment 2012). However, urban ecosystem services are not given sufficient attention compared to other ecosystems such as wetlands and forests (Gómez-Baggethun and Barton 2013; Kiunsi 2013).…”

Building Consensus with Local Residents in Community-Based Adaptation Planning: The Case of Bansong Pilbongoreum Community in Busan, South Korea

“…This means that climate change adaptation based on communicative rationality can be prepared through the process of mutual sharing, learning and participation in community issues [68]. The use of participatory methods identifies causal mechanisms for climate change within the community, and integrates scientific and local knowledge to enable adaptation learning, planning and effective implementation [69]. This means that information on the risks of climate change should be prepared to share with community members, based on participatory processes and communication rationality [68].…”

Disaster risk and its reduction: an agenda for urban Africa

“…These include disasters arising from extreme weather events, a broad spectrum of infectious and parasitic diseases and accidents, including shack fires and road accidents, which are all highly prevalent in Africa (HPN, 2006;Pelling and Wisner, 2009;IFRC, 2010;World Bank and GFDRR, 2010). Although disasters are considered to be exceptional events that cause significant losses to life, health and property, evidence suggests that the cumulative impacts of such everyday hazards and small disasters are actually greater than those resulting from what can be termed large disasters (or events that meet official criteria for being defined as a disaster) (Bull-Kamanga et al, 2003;UNISDR, 2009;2013).…”

“…Reflecting this spectrum, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction has developed the United Nations Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), which includes the concepts of extensive risk (i.e., risk of premature death, injury/illness and impoverishment from all events whose impact is too small to be classified as major disasters) and intensive risk (i.e., risk from major disasters with the potential for 25 or more deaths an d /o r 600 or more houses destroyed or seriously damaged in one municipality/local government area) (UNISDR 2009;2013). The lack of research on extensive risk in urban Africa presents an opportunity to learn from experiences elsewhere, in particular from Latin America, where the academic-practitioner network La Red has long worked collectively to document and map the scale and distribution of risk and its underlying causes (see Bull-Kamanga et al, 2003,198;also IFRC, 2010).…”

“…Research is needed that will not only generate stronger evidence on the nature and distribution of urban risk in Africa, but will also contribute to a better understanding of good practices in urban planning and governance, climate change adaptation and environmental and public health, and the institutional arrangements at the local government level that are required to reduce risk and build resilience to multiple hazards in specifically African urban contexts. African urban research leadership exists in the work of scholars such as Adelekan (2012), Kithiia (2011), Kiunsi (2013) and Lwasa (2010). This body of work is largely oriented towards case study research, hence a critical mass of material is being developed that opens opportunities for the systematic study of the particularities of African urban disaster risk and its reduction.…”