Urban resilience

Disasters, climate change, and rapid urbanization pose a serious risk to the provision of urban water services including safe drinking water, sanitation, and safe drainage. Urban growth increases the risk for disasters because it often limits drainage capacity, while at the same time it increases pressure on urban water systems, especially affecting the poor. Thus, humanity is faced with serious challenges to achieve sustainable urban water management in light of growing risks.

Climate change affects urban areas by increasing water scarcity and floods, salinization of groundwater and increasing needs for green spaces for flood mitigation, shade and cooling. These different impacts and their solutions are interrelated, for example urban flooding can be mitigated by increasing green areas that also increase coolness. The complexity of the urban water system requires that it is approached in an integrated way. However, the urban water system is made up of multiple water networks, or sectors, that are often considered without cross-reference to the other systems. For example, the natural system, water supply, storm water (drainage) and sewer systems. The natural systems often link up to water resources and ecosystems at a river basin level where water flows are affected by land use, building distribution, and infrastructure. 

Population increase in urban areas means increasing pressures on scarce resources. This means an increasing need for integrated approaches connecting the different urban water systems. 

Questions that people in the network are asking is:

  • How you encourage residents to protect their own home against flooding? This is because the government cannot always prevent flooding.  What is the role of the residents themselves?

 

Have you got answers to the above questions? Please email wac@gca.org

Articles

Old town of Quito
Case Study

Quito, Ecuador: pioneering food as part of urban resilience

Quito is one of the very few cities to have institutionalised food within its urban resilience strategy. With a long history of urban agriculture and food system assessments, Quito has developed resilience capacities
to address multiple shocks and stresses.

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Image of XblocPlus on Afsluitdijk
Article

An example of concrete for coastal protection

Delta Marine Consultants developed concrete X-shaped blocs providing proven protection against waves and currents. DMC offers solutions for numerous challenges relating to water. Examples include stormwater drainage systems in urban areas, methods to control river runoff, flood and wave protection systems for both in marine and river environments.  

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Urban farming
Case Study

Nakuru's urban crop cultivators

More than a quarter of Nakuru households could be classified as ‘urban crop cultivators’ and about a fifth as ‘urban livestock keepers’. The cultivation of a vegetable, known as sukuma wiki, that is the local name for a green, leafy vegetable of the spinach variety (Spinacea oleracea) is very popular.
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Farming on the rooftop
Case Study

Micro-gardening in Dakar

Dakar houses approximately 25% of Senegal's population. To provide its inhabitants with alternative supply solutions, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation in collaboration with the government of Senegal, the Municipality of Dakar, and several NGOs launched the project for micro-gardening in 1999.

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freshwater
Event

Community Dialogue - mainstreaming water adaptation

08/11/2022 - 16:00

Water governance is often not fit to respond to the adaptation challenges, being fragmented and insufficiently integrated with climate change planning. National, provincial and municipal governments and water boards hold different responsibilities for putting in place good water governance but sometimes lack capacity and coordination. Therefore, the current water crisis is very much a governance crisis exacerbated by climate change

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Nursery
Case Study

Forest gardens and community forests in Chad

In Chad, farmers and traditional herders have planted a million trees to make up forest gardens and community forests in a unique agro-foresty initiative. Agro-forestry helps mitigate the impact of climate change. 

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Sanitation worker in Pakistan
Article

Making climate change real for vulnerable populations

The poor in Pakistan who live in informal settlements are the first to be hit by climate change. But they cannot understand the link, says Mary James Gill, a human rights lawyer and activist based in Lahore, Pakistan, because available information is bookish and not easy to communicate.

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Amphi Nest, India's first amphibious building prototype
Case Study

Amphi Nest, India's first flood-resilient amphibious pavilion prototype

Amphi Nest is India's first working prototype of a flood-resilient amphibious building. NestAbide is working on amphibious houses and other flood-resistant projects for people living in flood-prone areas. It rests on the ground like an ordinary house, but its buoyant foundation lifts it up and floats when floodwaters come.

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Biera Mozambique
Case Study

A patient process-oriented approach in Beira, Mozambique

Beira is a city in Mozambique with a municipal government that has worked with the Netherlands since 2012 in a long-term partnership to support urban resilience. The partners made a conscious decision to focus on process, allowing strategies to emerge and adapt to changing contexts.

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Antananarivo, Madagascar: skyline - view from the Haute Ville - Anosy Lake
Case Study

Antananarivo, Madagascar - Rapid Climate Risk Assessment

The Global Center on Adaptation has completed the city scoping and rapid climate risk assessment for Antananarivo, Madagascar. The study identifies different climate-related hazards for the city, including climate migration, informal settlements, social inequality and the socio-economic impacts of climate change.

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Oslo Vahlsgade at the Botanical Garden Credits Berit Roald NTB Scanpix
Case Study

Policy on open stormwater in Oslo - a game changer

The Oslo municipality policy on stormwater has turned out to be a game changer for the city's green spaces and water management. 

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Bartels and Vedder floating house in The Netherlands
Article

Supporting Regulations for Floating Development

Dutch regulations on floating development are often used by other countries. We republish here in Dutch the guide that maps the bottlenecks in being able to comply with the technical regulations in the Building Decree 2012 and indicate how these can be resolved.

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Cross Cutting

Eifel, Elz valley, flood disaster, July 15th 2021. Europe is highly urbanised and has too few natural buffers that can infiltrate extreme amounts of heavy rainfall. Markus Volk. istock.
Landing Page

Nature based solutions

Nature based solutions work with and enhance nature to restore and protect ecosystems and to help society adapt to the impacts of climate change. Adaptation calls for the increased use of nature based solutions with multiple benefits which at the same time provides for livelihoods, ecosystem life support and community resilience.

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A river basin in a mountanous region.
Landing Page

River Basins

Collaboration in a river basin is needed to share increasingly scarce resources, manage water related risks emerging from various land uses and prevent flooding by linking upstream and downstream activities. Upstream areas need to ensure spatial planning that is mitigating floods for downstream areas. 

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