Governing climate change for a just city: challenges and lessons from Maputo, Mozambique

Abstract

As new forms of governance for climate change emerge in African cities, will they enable emancipatory and socially progressive transformations or will they exacerbate existing inequality, poverty and vulnerability patterns? This paper presents one of the case studies developed by UN-Habitat Cities and Climate Change Initiative in Maputo, Mozambique. The case analyses first, the production of urban vulnerabilities under climate change, and second, the existing governance arrangements for climate change in the city. Building on the lessons of the case study, the paper argues that to ensure that new forms of climate change governance lead to socially and environmentally just outcomes climate change interventions should, at least, meet two conditions: first, they should consider the close interactions between social and ecological elements and, specially, how patterns of urban inequality interact with environmental factors; second, they should recognise the opportunities in African cities through a broad notion of governance that looks beyond the government as the sole agent of urban change.