Climate resilience planning in the City of Johannesburg

Abstract

We live in an unpredictable world, with climate change and events like Covid-19 exacerbating this unpredictability. Climate change has affected service delivery in many parts of the world, with extreme weather events affecting energy, water, and food security. Planners globally are utilising concepts like resilience in order to prepare for the uncertainty of the world we live in. Whilst there is a growing body of literature on resilience, at the policy creation and implementation level there is a lack of clarity regarding what resilience means, except that it is ‘good’ to be resilient. This study makes use of the Rockefeller Foundation’s definition of resilience, as it was developed for the local City context. The aim of this study is to assess to what extent the City of Johannesburg (CoJ) embeds climate change resilience planning and relevant resilience implementation into City policy. The study also assesses the manner in which climate resilience is embedded in water management policy, as water is regarded as a fundamental link between the climate system, environment and human society. A scorecard was developed by utilising the principles of resilience as understood by the Stockholm Resilience Centre amongst others. This scorecard was used to assess the City’s strategic documents, as well as its water management policies. A series of interviews also took place to determine whether climate resilience is understood by CoJ officials and if there are any climate resilience projects being implemented in the CoJ. Resilience became a part of the planning discourse in the CoJ during the development of the GDS 2040and the word resilience was widely used in policy subsequently. This study found that, while the CoJ’s strategic policy documents incorporated climate resilience planning, the City does not holistically consider climate change or the environment. The CoJ’s water management policy landscape considers climate resilience planning; however, this was not by design for the most part, as most of the water management policies assessed by this study were promulgated before resilience became part of the planning discourse in the City. The study found that the ‘Policy by the way’ concept can potentially have a positive effect on the holistic embedding of the principles of climate change resilience in policy development. Mainstreaming of resilience planning principles are crucial for developing a resilient city, and education can play a major role in the mainstreaming of resilience