What we are doing
Designing inclusive climate-resilient African coastal cities research project considers recent cases of extreme flooding in South Africa and Mozambique as an opportunity for contributing to the evolving body of knowledge for informing proactive resilience municipal planning in coastal cities. The project team collaborates with local governments in each city to assess how urban coastal resilience, specifically in informal settlements, can be conceptualised and developed through a co-designed transdisciplinary framework that can ultimately be scaled to improve the proactive, adaptive and transformative capacities of (and within) coastal urban systems in Africa. Using Durban and Beira as case studies, the project aims to develop a Gender-responsive Coastal Cities Resilience Planning Framework led and owned by local governments. The research outputs will contribute to building proactive resilience in Beira and eThekwini Municipality’s pre-, during and post-event measures and long-term strategies, using the impetus and urgency instilled by the cities’ recent experiences with climate hazards. The co-designed Coastal Cities Resilience Planning Framework will inform the existing and planned municipal strategies around reliance such as the city's current early-warning systems. This framework will also be designed to inform other African coastal cities facing similar climate-related hazards to Durban and Beira. Proactive approaches with regards to extreme climate events are more cost-efficient than the observed reactive approaches and should enable other African coastal municipalities to plan for resilience more effectively. As ICLEI Africa supports African cities with technical assistance in adaptation planning through forums like the Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa (CoM SSA), they are well placed to support the scaling of the framework output across the region.
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