Browsing by Author "Fox, Ashley"

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    The political ecology of community-based adaptation to flood risk in informal settlements: the case of a local community organisation
    (2018) Fox, Ashley; Ziervogel, Gina; Scheba, Suraya
    As urbanisation rates increase in parallel with growing climate change concerns, African cities are increasingly required to explore and support adaptation planning that reduces climate risks for the most vulnerable. Informal settlements are particularly vulnerable to climate change due to their high density, limited service provision, and a lack of economic and political opportunities for residents. In Cape Town, informal settlements face disastrous floods every year in the rainy season due to their location on degraded, low-lying lands as a result of Apartheid spatial planning. This thesis explores how multi-scalar governance in Cape Town can either empower or undermine efforts at community-based adaptation (CBA) to flooding in informal settlements. Drawing on urban political ecology, this thesis assesses the potential for CBA to lead to wider transformation. Using a case study approach, it focuses on the informal settlement network (ISN), a community-based organisation of the urban poor. ISN members and other actors involved in flood management in Cape Town were interviewed to understand the flood management landscape and the relationships and dynamics that exist between the various actors. The analysis showed that the CoCT’s efforts at participatory planning reinforce the hegemonic power dynamics between government and communities, but that everyday governance practices can be used at a smaller-scale to enforce positive change. In reaction to top-down governmental processes, ISN uses insurgent planning to envision a more just city. They navigate sanctioned and un-sanctioned spaces of citizenship to drive development from the bottom-up. The community designed and spearheaded reblocking process (rearranging shacks in a settlement to allow for flood drainage and service delivery) is a powerful example of CBA and represents the potential of communitybased organisations to take steps towards transformation. In order to enable true transformative CBA, both the CoCT and ISN need to adjust the epistemological framing of their planning processes in order to address the drivers of vulnerabilities, rather than just the vulnerabilities themselves.