Building Resilience to Climate Change in South Africa’s cities

OneWorld was appointed by GIZ South Africa to support the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) in evolving their Cities Resilience Programme. This study was concerned with developing a climate resilience indicator framework for South African cities and their supporting institutions to regularly monitor and evaluate city-level progress toward achieving urban resilience, and to develop, against this, an investment plan for building resilience in South African cities.

Central to this project’s delivery was the development of a robust resilience indicator framework that was tested, and thus validated, by 15 project cities (eight metropolitan municipalities and seven secondary cities) in South Africa as well as building capacity in these 15 project cities to better understand the transversal nature of climate change. In doing so, this project built a strong link between climate change resilience, socio-economic development, disaster risk reduction (DRR) and infrastructure provision and access.

It was also critical in the replication of tested models of cities’ resilience. The assessment tool provides evidence to define the future steps to be taken, through the development of an implementation framework, especially in terms of investment into climate change adaptation and resilience at the municipal level. The identification of areas of collaboration between DEA and foreign development agencies, based on cities’ resilience needs, supports the development of a programmatic investment framework, specifically oriented to possible foreign aid investments.

The Indicator Framework developed under this project is currently being used as the basis for mainstreaming climate change indicators in the National Treasury’s Circular 88 which was established as the primary municipal reporting framework across South Africa’s metropolitan municipalities and which is currently being extended as the same to secondary municipalities across the country.

OneWorld carried out this project with subconsultants from CNdV Africa, and Sustainable Energy Africa (SEA).

PUBLICATIONS

Cities Resilience Indicator Framework and Investment Plan: Investing in Cities Climate Resilience
Cities workshop presentation