Constructing resilience at three scales: The 100 Resilient Cities programme, Durban's resilience journey and water resilience in the Palmiet Catchment

Abstract

Resilience is a ‘re-emerging concept’ which is being applied to deal with the shocks and stresses facing society and the environment as a result of both human induced and physical hazards. Resilience thinking is shaping policy and practice across the world through global programmes such as the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR)'s Making Cities Resilient Campaign; UN Habitat's City Resilience Profiling Programme; and Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities (100 RC). The global post-2015 sustainable development and climate change frameworks and related agreements all have resilience embedded in them. However, the concept of resilience remains contested, with resilience reflecting a continuum of approaches from those that are more deliberative, political, systemic, relational and transformational, to those that are more consultative, post-political, systems based, sectoral and instrumental. Questions of how resilience is being constructed, by whom and for whom therefore need to be explored. This paper focuses on the construction of resilience at three scales: The Rockefeller Foundation's 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) programme (global), Phase 1 of Durban's 100RC journey (city), and the Palmiet Catchment Rehabilitation Project (sub-catchment within a city). It presents the different approaches adopted by global, city-scale and local programmes to build resilience using different framings, approaches and methodologies.

Strengths and weaknesses of the 100 Resilient Cities Initiative in Southern Europe: Rome and Athens’ experiences

“…Furthermore, both case studies highlight the sensitiveness of the resilience building process to the background of the selected cities in terms of available knowledge, previous involvement in international networks, leading capacities in promoting urban policies. Available scientific literature clearly underlines that while cities characterized by a long-term leadership in promoting urban policies on sustainability and climate change found in their engagement in the 100RC Initiative an opportunity to broaden the scope of their policies towards a sustainable and resilient urban development (Spaans and Waterhout 2016), cities characterized by a structural weakness of urban policies, as the examined ones or some cities from the Global South (Sutherland et al 2019), encountered significant difficulties along the path aimed at delivering the Resilience Strategy due, for example, to the lack of adequate knowledge, which resulted into a longer time for developing a deep understanding of the city's context, or to the low propensity for collaboration between different sectors of public administration.…”

“…The outlined structure of the resilience building process within the frame of the 100 RC Initiative, even though it provided cities all over the world with a systematic and common framework to assess and improve their resilience according to their own priorities, raised also some questions related, for example, to the influence of the CRF-considered as a universally valid frame of reference-in shaping local goals and actions, also when local issues did not neatly fit into the 100RC tools (Sutherland et al 2019) or, even, to the real importance assigned to the involvement of local stakeholders. The limited time given to cities to deliver the Resilience Strategies seems to conflict, in fact, with the large emphasis put on the stakeholders' engagement, especially for cities still predominantly characterized by top-down decision-making processes, as most cities in Southern Europe as well as in the Global South.…”

Water Resilience in a Changing Urban Context: Africa's Challenge and Pathways for Action

“…This also set a foundation for the creation of Durban's resilience strategy, which involved extensive participatory stakeholder engagement and integration of local knowledge. The resulting commitment highlights cross-sectoral priorities targeted at systemic changes, with buy-in across a wide breadth of groups (Roberts et al 2020;Sutherland et al 2014Sutherland et al , 2019. At the national level, the African Green Stimulus Programme, launched in late 2020, announced ambitious strategies on nature-based solutions, restoration and biodiversity efforts, and climate action (UNEP 2020b(UNEP , 2021).…”

“…Sources: Roberts et al 2020;Sutherland et al 2014Sutherland et al , 2019 Furthermore, national governments need to increase their commitment to the urban development agenda. In African countries, urban development is often detached from national economic development and investment planning, rarely articulated in countries' national development policy and strategy.…”

“…Source: Authors, based on Ceriops n.d.;Chu et al 2019; IUCN 2020; KDI n.d.;Sayers and Smith 2018;Sutherland et al 2019; UNEP 2020a. …”