Mainstreaming nature-based solutions for climate resilient infrastructure in peri-urban sub-Saharan Africa

J.P.R Thorn,R Biancardi Aleu,A Wijesinghe,M Mdongwe,R.A Marchant,S Shackleton

doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2021.104235

Abstract

Despite a growing recognition of the importance of designing, rehabilitating, and maintaining green infrastructure to provide essential ecosystem services and adapt to climate change, many decision makers in sub-Saharan Africa continue to favour engineered solutions and short term economic growth at the expense of natural landscapes and longer term sustainability agendas. Existing green infrastructure is typically maintained in more affluent suburbs, inadvertently perpetuating historic inequalities. This is in part because there remains a lack of fine-grained, comparative evidence on the barriers and enablers to mainstreaming green infrastructure in peri-urban areas. Here, we developed an analytical framework based on a review of 155 studies, screened to include 29 studies in 24 countries. Results suggest eight overarching categories of interconnected barriers to green infrastructure in peri-urban areas. Using a combinatorial mixed method approach, we then surveyed households in nine settlements in drought-prone Windhoek (n=330) and seven settlements in flood-prone Dar es Salaam (n=502) and conducted key informant interviews (n=118). Peri-urban residents in Windhoek and Dar es Salaam indicated 18 forms of green infrastructure and 47 derived ecosystem services. The most frequently reported barriers were financial (40.8%), legal and institutional barriers (35.8%) followed by land use change and spatial trade-offs (33%) and finally ecosystem disservices (30.6%). The most significant barriers in Dar es Salaam were legal and institutional (22.7%) and in Windhoek were land use change and spatial trade-offs (24.4%). At the household level, the principal barrier was financial; at community and municipal levels the main barriers were related to design, performance, and maintenance; while at the national level, the main barriers were legal and institutional. Embracing institutional cultures of adaptive policymaking, equitable partnerships, co-designing futures, integrated landscape management and experimental innovation have potential to scale long term maintenance for urban green infrastructure and foster agency, creativity and more transformative relationships and outcomes.

Highlights

Peri-urban informal settlements house an estimated 59% of the subSaharan African population and are expected to grow three-fold by 2050 (UN-HABITAT, 2019)
We address the following two questions: (1) What are the barriers to the mainstreaming of approaches and processes that ensure the maintenance and rehabilitation of urban green infrastructure (UGI) in peri-urban areas? (2) What are the enablers to overcome barriers and increase the implementation of UGI solutions? To address these questions, we employed an empirical comparative in-depth case study research design juxtaposing drought-prone Windhoek, Namibia with flood-prone Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Barriers aforementioned can lead to low aesthetic value health hazards through increased proximity to zoonotic diseases and contamination

Summary

Introduction

Peri-urban informal settlements house an estimated 59% of the subSaharan African population and are expected to grow three-fold by 2050 (UN-HABITAT, 2019). Peri-urban exposure to risk from increasingly variable and extreme climatic conditions is higher, and adaptive capacity levels are generally lower than residents living in formal urban areas (Lindley, Pauleit, Yeshitela, Cilliers, & Shackleton, 2018; Roy et al, 2018). This is the case for people living along riparian zones susceptible to flooding and water supply shortages (IPCC, 2018). In the last two decades many sub-Saharan African municipalities are increasingly recognising the role that urban green infrastructure (UGI) can play in just urban transitions towards resilience, by reducing ecological scarcities, social inequalities, and increasing wellbeing (Breuste, Artmann, Li, & Xie, 2015; Pelling, O’Brien, & Matyas, 2015)

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Results

Discussion

Conclusion