Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

171 Translating Disaster Resilience into Spatial Planning Practice in South Africa: Challenges and Champions by Willemien van Niekerk This article was originally published in Jamba: Journal of Disaster Risk Studies, 5(1), 2013. https://doi.org/10.4102/jamba.v5i1.53 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license ABSTRACT It is highly likely that hazards and extreme climatic events will occur more frequently in the future and will become more severe – increasing the vulnerability and risk of millions of poor urbanites in developing countries. Disaster resilience aims to reduce disaster losses by equipping cities towithstand, absorb, adapt to or recover fromexternal shocks. This paper questionswhether disaster resilience is likely to be taken up in spatial planning practices in South Africa, given its immediate developmental priorities and challenges. In South Africa, issues of development take precedence over issues of sustainability, environmental management and disaster reduction. This is illustrated by the priority given to ‘servicing’ settlements compared to the opportunities offered by ‘transforming’ spaces through post-apartheid spatial planning. The City of Durban’s quest in adapting to climate change demonstrates hypothetically that if disaster resilience were to be presented as an issue distinct from what urban planners are already doing, then planners would see it as insignificant as compared to addressing the many developmental backlogs and challenges. If, however, it is regarded as a means to secure a city’s development path whilst simultaneously addressing sustainability, then disaster resilience is more likely to be translated into spatial planning practices in South Africa. INTRODUCTION According to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), well-run cities can be amongst the safest places in the world from the impact of natural hazards if basic services, food security, policing, running water and sewerage are guaranteed, and building codes are respected. However, in reality, many cities in the world are the most dangerous places on earth. ‘The signs of our vulnerability to urban risk are everywhere’ (IFRC 2010:8): earthquakes bringing critical urban infrastructure and assets down with tragic consequences (for example, the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile in 2010, and Japan in 2011); a volcanic eruption in one country throwing city airports across the world into chaos (for example, the volcanic eruptions in Iceland in 2010 and Chile in 2011); the drug trade turning inner cities into war zones; epidemics turning into pandemics in the developing world; and streets in the slums of developing cities turning into open sewers during seasonal flooding. Over the past 40 years, 80 000 people have been killed on average each year and 200 million people have been affected by natural disasters (UNISDR 2010b; World Bank & United Nations 2010:23). Of greater concern than the current trends, is the increasingly clear prognosis from the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that hazards and extreme climatic events will occur more frequently in the future and will become more severe (IPCC 2007; UNISDR 2010a). Many international development organisations (IFRC 2010; IPCC 2007; UN-Habitat 2010; UNISDR 2010a; World Bank 2008) and several researchers (Wisner & Pelling 2009; Puppim de Oliveira 2009; Pelling 2003) warn us that as urbanisation and other global processes continue, a ‘strange new urban world’ (IFRC 2010:8) is developing – one that is increasingly at risk of experiencing natural, social and/or industrial disasters beyond many urban authorities’ experience and ability to manage (ICLEI 2010). The consequences are bigger losses more often, but also long-term implications for human settlements – settlements, particularly in the developing world, that are already challenged by a range of socio-economic development stresses (Parnell, Simon & Vogel 2007:359). ‘An emphasis on resilience, rather than just disaster response and recovery has become a mainstream idea in disaster reduction’ (Collins 2009:103). Whereas disaster reduction seeks to identify and reduce vulnerabilities and risks, resilience (defined below) is also partly defensive, but more creative in implying coping and adaptation. Planning for resilient cities thus involves more than merely being occupied with minimum standards or widely-accepted spatial designs, it involves accommodation of and adaptation to changing conditions over the long-term (Collins 2009:104). This article questions whether disaster resilience is likely to be translated into spatial planning practice in South Africa, given its immediate developmental priorities and challenges. The article starts by considering what risk, vulnerability and resilience mean conceptually; then discusses the planning context and spatial planning practices in post-apartheid South Africa; and concludes with a case study on the City of Durban to demonstrate how a ‘new’ policy paradigm has recently been mainstreamed into local planning