Urban planners can make a difference in responding to climate hazards
Urban planners can make a difference in responding to climate hazards
Lessons from Ethiopia's capital city
When we think about the challenges of inland cities, flooding and extreme heat often come up; problems that are especially acute in Sub-Saharan Africa. My research team collaborated with climate scientists at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and scholars at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts to explore the role that urban planners can play in addressing these kinds of challenges and we found some compelling results.
Our deep dive into the planning and policy underway in one inland African city, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, revealed that environmental threats are serious, but the lack of high-quality infrastructure, a poorly resourced planning staff, and a weak policy implementation system are the real culprits. While most Addis residents live in informal settlements, very little of the city’s planning and policy attention is focused in those areas. Our recently published paper highlights the importance of better planning systems to manage these very real dangers to highly vulnerable populations. We wrote:
Holistic, multi-stakeholder planning is inhibited by a lack of collaboration, limited stakeholder participation, and a reluctance to engage in productive dialogue. Resolving all four issues will only occur with sustained increases in social trust, expertise, governance capacity and capital.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590252024000229
The good news is that extraordinary energy and creativity are emerging from these same informal settlements:
To build climate resilient cities, city governments must incorporate bottom-up idea generation from informal settlements into their resilience plans. Informal settlements can be a testing grounds for innovative and creative climate resilience policies.
Our team is now working in Kampala, Uganda, and hope to continue studying ways that better planning can help save lives and reduce damage related to flooding and other hazards. Stay tuned for more updates and reach out if you want to learn more.
Sincerely,
Justin