Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

173 including South Africa, have major immediate development challenges – compared to which the pursuit of resilience seems like a ‘nice to have’. The next section considers whether disaster resilience is likely to be translated into spatial planning practice in South Africa. CONTEXTUAL FRAMEWORK The South African planning context Pre-1994, apartheid had purposefully and systematically restricted black South Africans from meaningful participation in the economy. The assets of the majority of people were directly and indirectly destroyed and access to skills and self-employment was racially restricted (The Presidency 2009; Todes 2011). Despite solid and consistent economic growth for most of the past 18 years, and numerous policy and legislation changes, the present resilience of urban settlements in South Africa is endangered by spatial inequalities, fragmentation, urban sprawl, inequalities between rich and poor that are deepening, the overload on basic infrastructure and services, congestion on roads, social exclusion, increased crime, and pressure on ecosystem services (Biermann 2011:14). Despite having one of the largest public housing projects in the world, decent shelter near employment opportunities remains elusive for most people – many do not have access to housing or security of tenure, quality social services, public facilities and amenities, economic opportunities and livelihoods, and/or basic services. Moreover, the South African space economy is characterised by the coexistence of formal and informal economic activities, housing and transportation systems, and a dualism in quality of all aspects of life (Biermann 2011:14, 16; Oranje 2010:59; World Bank Institute 2012). The stark inequalities in the country threaten the fragile social cohesion, and have given rise to an increasing number of violent service delivery protests and xenophobic attacks. There are, furthermore, huge territorial disparities between rural and urban areas (Van Huyssteen et al. 2010:24–25, 35). Planning in South Africa With the rise of democracy in South Africa, expectations of the eradication of socio-economic imbalances, including equitable development and access to basic services, were high (Carmin, Anguelovski & Roberts 2012:21). A new path of reconstruction and development was cut out for a post-apartheid South Africa in the form of numerous green and white policy papers, Acts and regulations. Simultaneously, a new intergovernmental system was established with a strong focus on the process of inclusive planning rather than planning products (Biermann 2011; Oranje & Van Huyssteen 2011:8), thus Integrated Development Plans (IDPs), which promote the developmental government paradigm (including disaster management), became the dominant planning instrument in post-apartheid South Africa. These plans focus on stakeholder processes and institutional coordination but neglect the notion of using space to restructure settlements. Watson calls this preoccupation with intergovernmental coordination at the expense of transforming previously disadvantaged settlements the ‘marginalization of the spatial’ (in Biermann 2011:12). Oranje and Van Huyssteen (2011:6–7) describe post-1994 development planning in South Africa as being characterised by a conflict in intent, action and outcome between service delivery and transformation. ‘Servicing’ is ensuring a rapid response to a lack of housing and basic services. As such, it has a ‘very near-future perspective’, concerned with the number of houses completed and services delivered – often in areas where people should not even be living. Oranje and Van Huyssteen (2011:6) argue that the outcome has not necessarily transformed the post-apartheid space economy, but only addressed the symptoms. ‘Transformation’, on the other hand, is concerned with the restructuring of the entire space economy ‘through the pursuit of shared, sustainable, equitable and inclusive growth’. However, much more emphasis has been placed on servicing, which means that many communities may have houses and basic services, but the expansion of the economy into these ‘serviced’ areas has beenminimal and people remain far from social and economic opportunities; for it is often assumed by planners and politicians that it is possible to change the spatial pattern of economic growth and development through state intervention. Municipalities, furthermore, face a number of challenges in overcoming the apartheid spatial legacy: lack of funds; lack of technical, managerial, financial and planning skills and capacity to take up the developmental role; institutional transformation issues because of the amalgamation of municipalities; economic woes inherited from apartheid; huge service delivery backlogs; and intergovernmental misalignment and complexity (Oranje & Van Huyssteen 2011:8; Van Huyssteen et al. 2010:27). Thus the short-term focus on attaining ‘servicing’ targets (which are immediate and bottomless) often comes at the expense of long-term and transformative planning (Oranje & Van Huyssteen 2011) such as planning for disaster resilience. Translating disaster resilience into spatial planning practice in South Africa Before 1994, environmental management, disaster reduction and sustainability, amongst other concerns, received very little attention in South African policy. This changed after 1994 as the process of democratisation resulted in a revised development agenda (Roberts 2008:521). But the simultaneous, parallel development of many policies resulted in duplicated development application processes, competing bureaucracies, interests and agendas, and differences in training, discourse and practice (Todes 2011:123). There was also a growing tension between the need to expedite development to address inequalities, and the need to introduce sustainability concerns such as environmental management and disaster reduction into planning. As described above, development won out as the priority, so that long-term issues were of less immediate concern. There are exceptions, but for the most part this tension has still not been resolved, but has, in many cases, intensified due to the range of immediate and severe development challenges (Roberts 2008:523). For example, the author has found that planning for everyday disaster resilience is not a priority amongst planners in some municipalities