Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice

174 in South Africa due to the pressure of providing for immediate development needs, so that they do not even deem reducing the risk of natural disasters to be part of the planning process, but rather as part of what the ‘environmental people’ do (Faling, Tempelhoff & Van Niekerk 2012). What follows is a case study of the City of Durban in South Africa – a metropolitan city facing typical development challenges – and how they have started to mainstream climate change adaptation into their everyday planning. This serves as a hypothetical demonstration that the mainstreaming of disaster resilience in spatial planning can be accomplished if approached in such a way that it is seen as part of the immediate development agenda and integrated into existing planning strategies and everyday planning practices. CASE STUDY: CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION IN DURBAN Durban is a coastal city with the largest port on the east coast of Africa. The eThekwini Municipality manages the 2300 square kilometre municipal area that hosts a population of 3.5 million people and is South Africa’s third biggest urban economy (Carmin et al. 2012:20; Roberts 2008:521; SACN 2012:37). The City of Durban faces typical post-apartheid challenges as described above. It also experiences severe weather events such as flooding, storms, droughts and tornadoes. To this extent, a report commissioned by the Municipality on climate change suggests that over time Durban would experience minimum and maximum temperature increases; and rainfall would become more infrequent, but more severe – causing flooding and high tide levels. The report also indicates that the sea level is rising by 2.7 cm per decade. These changes in the climate and sea level will affect numerous sectors in the city such as food security, health, infrastructure, water security, biodiversity and the economy, and many people will become more vulnerable to disaster risks (Carmin et al. 2012:18–21; Roberts 2008:528). At that time, few strategies in eThekwini engaged proactively with each other to reduce the risk for disasters due to extreme weather events. Moreover, the disaster management sector was mostly responsive to emergencies, not focusing on proactively planning to minimise exposure and susceptibility, relocating people and infrastructure away from high risk areas, or on developing early warning systems. As severe weather events started to cause more damage to the city during the last decade – notably the severe flooding in 2007 and coastal erosion that caused significant damage to the coastline around Durban – the Municipality started to wake up to the consequences of these events, and realised that many of the post-apartheid development gains are already being undermined or lost, and will be exacerbated further by climate change. Climate change adaptation, or resilience-focused interventions, started to achieve prominence in Durban for the potential it offers for ‘development-linked co-benefits that are responsive to a context of poverty and underdevelopment’ (Carmin et al. 2012; Roberts 2008:532, 2010:398–399). It still took some time, and trial and error, for Durban to be recognised today as one of the leaders in climate change adaptation. To start with, the Environmental Management Department commissioned the development of an adaptation strategy, published in 2006, which summarised general adaptation actions that could be taken by sector departments. It was an important document to further the debate on climate change in the city, but it did not act as a catalyst for action – in part because it did not specify goals and actions for specific departments, and partly because many departments were dealing with work backlogs and overloads, as well as a lack of funding and capacity (Roberts 2010: 401). In 2008, the Environmental Management Department, whose name changed to the Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Department (EPCPD) – to indicate the priority given to climate change in the city – realised that to gain widespread support for an adaptation plan, they had to shift the emphasis from the threats climate change presented to presenting adaptation as a means to realise immediate development priorities. Work was started on individual plans for specific sector departments by embedding adaptation planning into existing business plans and development objectives. These plans formulated measures and protocols to maintain or improve the functioning of municipal systems, services and infrastructure given the projected impacts of climate change. ‘Essentially, the goal was to build increased resilience one adaptation intervention at a time’ (Roberts 2010:401). Climate change considerations were also factored into the overall long-term plans and budgets of the municipality (Carmin et al. 2012:21–23; Roberts 2008:533, 2010:401). Notwithstanding exogenous factors such as the growing demand from global and local civil society to address climate-related issues, or international treaties, three endogenous factors seem initially to have driven the adaptation initiatives in Durban. One is the efforts by a champion who pushed the adaptation agenda and creatively navigated the minefield that is local government. Two, the city came under the impression of the gravity of climate change impacts and the danger their residents were in if it became more severe. Three, the municipality realised that climate change adaptation was a means to secure the city’s development path whilst simultaneously addressing sustainability and resilience (Carmin et al. 2012:28). eThekwini found ways to link adaptation to existing policies and plans to ‘demonstrate that this is not an unfamiliar or inconsequential issue but one that was already part of current citywide priorities and initiatives’ (Carmin et al. 2012:29). Adaptation came to be seen as integral to the ongoing work of municipal departments and is starting to influence planning practices in the city. If the City of Durban managed to integrate climate change consideration into their various sector plans which are starting to have an impact on the way the city is planned, then surely other South African cities can attempt to mainstream disaster resilience (including climate change adaptation) into their spatial planning practices?