Participatory urban planning for climate change adaptation in coastal cities: lessons from a pilot experience in Maputo, Mozambique

doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2014.12.005

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability

Volume 13, April 2015, Pages 11-18

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2014.12.005 Get rights and content

Highlights

•
Participatory urban planning ties climate change adaptation to local development.
•
Participatory urban planning in vulnerable cities requires a rights-based approach.
•
A practical experience in Maputo, Mozambique, offers practical lessons.

This paper proposes a rights-based approach for participatory urban planning for climate change adaptation in urban areas. Participatory urban planning ties climate change adaptation to local development opportunities. Previous discussions suggest that participatory urban planning may help to understand structural inequalities, to gain, even if temporally, institutional support and to deliver a planning process in constant negotiation with local actors. Building upon an action research project which implemented a process of participatory urban planning for climate change in Maputo, Mozambique, this paper reflects upon the practical lessons that emerged from these experiences, in relation to the incorporation of climate change information, the difficulties to secure continued support from local governments and the opportunities for local impacts through the implementation of the proposals emerging from this process.

Introduction

The report of the 2014 IPCC Working Group II (Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability) includes a chapter on urban areas highlighting that action for effective urban adaptation is both urgent and feasible [1^••]. Following calls to recognise the role of cities in climate change [2, 3, 4], the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) (the group working on a legally binding agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) applicable to all Parties no later than 2015) requested the constitution of the Forum on Cities and Subnationals (henceforth the Forum) at the UNFCCC Warsaw COP in November 2013. The Forum's main objective is to track the emerging opportunities for climate change adaptation and mitigation within cities and sub-national regions.

In its meeting at the UNFCCC in Bonn in June 2014, the Forum highlighted the importance of engaging citizens in participatory urban planning processes [5]. For those in attendance, the Forum transmitted a sense of ‘collective aspiration’ that, in cities, is fostered through the active exercise of citizenship. There were calls for moving away from an instrumental understanding of participatory urban planning as a means to extract information on citizens’ aspirations locally, seeking instead to promote participation in urban planning as a means to advance the rights of those urban citizens who are most vulnerable to climate change.

Calls for participation go hand in hand with a realisation that urban planning is a key mechanism to deliver effective climate change action. Planning emerges as a means to address structural vulnerabilities in urban areas, highlighting the interrelationship between climate change vulnerabilities and other aspects of the urban condition, such as poverty, inequalities, livelihood means and access to services [6, 7, 8]. The urban chapter of the 2014 IPCC Working Group II argues that effective urban adaptation strategies require local governments to work in partnership with low-income groups and vulnerable communities [1••, 9, 10••]. Participatory urban planning can also be a means to build such partnerships alongside other forms of cooperation at different levels of decision-making [11]. Overall, participatory urban planning emerges both as a framework for collective action to advance citizens’ rights and as a mechanism to establish deliberative institutions in which multiple concerns can be heard and acted upon.

This paper offers an appraisal of participatory urban planning for adaptation in practice, building upon a participatory experience in the neighbourhood of Chamanculo C, in Maputo (Mozambique) between 2011 and 2013. This work has already been reported elsewhere [7, 12, 13, 14] but in this paper, the experience is reassessed in relation to recent debates in development planning within the framework of the ADP mandate. The paper is divided into three parts. The first section explores the concept of participation in environmental and climate change planning, with a focus on underserviced areas and informal settlements in coastal cities. The second section explains our proposal for participatory urban planning in practice, following our experiences in Maputo. Finally, the third section exposes some of the challenges that emerge to deliver a rights-based process of participatory urban planning. Overall, this assessment suggests that participatory urban planning can lead to effective action for climate change adaptation but there are challenges that can only be addressed within the specific context of communities and places.

Section snippets

Planning and the adaptation challenge in coastal cities

Research on climate risk has paid attention to cities in coastal areas both because of their exposure to sea level rise, flooding and cyclones and because they are often inhabited by vulnerable populations [15, 16, 17]. Urban planning is most often seen as a means to evaluate and address the complicated interactions between climate change mitigation and adaptation that emerge in coastal areas [18, 19, 20].

The characteristics of coastal areas from Hat Yai in Thailand to Cartagena in Colombia

Participatory urban planning for climate change adaptation in Maputo, Mozambique

Our approach to participatory urban planning emerges from a three-year engagement with an action-research project in Maputo where we set out to deliver local climate change and development plans. In this engagement, we adapted an approach to adaptation planning proposed by one of the authors [39], in which deliberate emphasis is placed on rights-based participation to provide the conditions for collective action. We assumed that collective action depended on the recognition of these rights by

Conclusion: emerging challenges for participatory urban planning in practice

The example in Chamanculo C suggests that participatory urban planning has a role in tackling climate change challenges in coastal cities. Three lessons emerge in relation to the theoretical discussion above. First, the process led to a better understanding of structural inequalities in relation to climate change but there were challenges in understanding the relevance of climate change information at the neighbourhood level. Second, government organisations, especially FUNAB, provided

References and recommended reading

Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as:

• of special interest
•• of outstanding interest

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank all the people who supported this work in Maputo, and specially Charlotte Allen, Julio Parruque, Carlos Seventine, Domingos Augusto Macucule, David Nhancale and Felisbela Materula. Thanks to David Simon and Hayley Leck for their encouragement and editorial suggestions. We would also like to thank the reviewers for their comments. Part of this research was funded by the Climate Development Knowledge Network (CDKN); www.cdkn.org. The CDKN is based in the UK and funded by the UK

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View full text

Participatory urban planning for climate change adaptation in coastal cities: lessons from a pilot experience in Maputo, Mozambique

Highlights

Introduction

Section snippets

Planning and the adaptation challenge in coastal cities

Participatory urban planning for climate change adaptation in Maputo, Mozambique

Conclusion: emerging challenges for participatory urban planning in practice

References and recommended reading

Acknowledgements

Local Environ

Science

Proc ICE-Munic Eng

Environ Urban

Chapter 8: Urban areas

Cities and the governing of climate change

Ann Rev Environ Resour

UN-Habitat: Cities and Climate Change: Global Report on Human Settlements 2011

Work Plan on Enhancing Mitigation Ambition Forum on Experiences and Best Practices of Cities and Subnational Authorities in Relation to Adaptation and mitigation, Session on Tuesday. 10 June 2014, Summary by the CHAIR

Learning to adapt to climate change in urban areas. A review of recent contributions

Curr Opin Environ Sust

Connecting people and place: a new framework for reducing urban vulnerability to extreme heat

Environ Res Lett

Towards transformative adaptation in cities: the IPCC's Fifth Assessment

Environ Urban

Adapting Cities to Climate Change: Understanding and Addressing the Development Challenges

Fostering multiscalar collaboration and co-operation for effective governance of climate change adaptation

Urban Stud

Building collaborative cartnerships for climate change action in Maputo, Mozambique

Environ Plan A

Viewpoint: planning for climate change in the African city

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Environmentalities of urban climate governance in Maputo, Mozambique

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The rising tide: assessing the risks of climate change and human settlements in low elevation coastal zones

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Developing coastal adaptation to climate change in the New York City infrastructure-shed: process, approach, tools, and strategies

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