Mainstreaming climate change adaptation into urban development : lessons from two South African cities

There is a risk that urban climate change adaptation planning - often led by city environmental agencies - will remain isolated from ongoing city decision-making processes, and thus irrelevant, unless adaptation is mainstreamed into municipal line functions' existing activities and planning processes. Yet little empirical research exists showing what the adaptation "mainstreaming" process actually looks like for a city government department. This thesis addresses this gap, and identifies key drivers, limiting factors, and implications of adaptation mainstreaming within municipal service departments. Specifically, I analyze progress toward climate adaptation mainstreaming by the housing and stormwater management departments in Cape Town and Durban, South Africa: two cities that are widely considered adaptation frontrunners in the Global South. The experiences of the departments analyzed lead to several conclusions about the adaptation mainstreaming process for departments faced with pressing short-term service delivery challenges and capacity constraints. Foremost, the process encompasses, and requires, both substantive and conceptual elements. Substantively, departments start with complying with mandates and accommodating requests from other departments that advance adaptation. Gradually, they move to more deeply internalize these and other push factors, initiating actions to "climate proof' core activities and processes. Culminating the process, they eventually see climate change as a reason to more heavily collaborate and engage external actors around managing climate risks. Substantive mainstreaming progress, meanwhile, both depends on and advances a department's conceptual embedding of the adaptation agenda. Several enabling factors advance the process, prominently including access to additional funding and support to supplement scarce and inflexible resources. Progress is also influenced by the innate longevity of a department's planning horizon, its decisionmaking autonomy vis-a-vis higher levels of government, and its degree of regulatory vs. serviceprovision focus, among other pre-existing departmental qualities.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Farrell, Leanne A. (Leanne Andrea)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• JoAnn Carmin.

• Urban Studies and Planning.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/59569

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/59569