CLUVA- Climate Change and Urban Vulnerabilitiy in Africa
Background
The interaction between strong urbanisation and climate change creates unique challenges for African cities. Urban areas are frequently located in zones such as coastal and flood plains at risk from inundations or areas prone to droughts. These risks are strongly exacerbated by climate change leading to rising sea water levels, temperature increase and changing patterns of precipitation. In the semiarid zones, more frequent droughts have negative impacts on agriculture and rural livelihoods. Migration to the urban centres combined with high fertility rates can lead to growth rates of well above 5% of the urban population. Urban areas rapidly expand as a consequence.
Due to the lack of planning, the new settlements lack in basic social and technical infrastructures and supply of the increasing urban population with water, food and energy is severely constrained. The urban poor in informal settlements are particularly vulnerable to climate change.
Objective of the project
CLUVA – ‘Climate change and urban vulnerability’ - is a research project funded by the European Union within its Seventh Framework Programme (FP7). The overall objective of the project is to develop methods and knowledge to be applied to African cities to manage climate risks, to reduce vulnerabilities and to improve their coping capacity and resilience towards climate changes. Five African cities have been selected as case studies: St. Louis (Senegal), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), Douala (Cameroun), Addis Abbaba (Ethiopia) and Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania).
African and European research organisations collaborate to assess the climate change related risks of each case study city resulting from hazards such as rising sea levels, riverine flooding and temperature increase. Understanding the causes of vulnerability will be key to devising strategies for increasing the city’s adaptive capacity to cope with climate change impacts.
The Chair for Strategic Landscape Planning and Management explores the role of urban green structures to increase the resilience of cities by providing essential ecosystem services such as stormwater retention, mitigation of the heat island effect and provision of food, fuel wood and shelter in times of crisis. Characterising the city’s pattern of built and open spaces via the distinction of urban morphology types and assessment of their ecological functionality via modeled and measured data is an important element of this research. Scenarios will be developed in collaboration with urban planning to explore options for adaptation to climate change by development of the green infrastructure. The project will also study how climate change and urbanization will affect the city’s green structure and how these can be made more robust to these pressures.
Project partners
CLUVA is funded from 2010-2013 by the European Union within its Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).
Participating organisations:
Addis Ababa University Ethiopia; Ardhi University ARU, Tanzania; Centro Euro-Mediterraneo per i Cambiamenti Climatici Scarl CMCC, Italy; Council for Scientific and Industrial Research CSIR, South Africa; Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung UFZ UFZ, Germany; Københavns Universitet KU, Denmark; Norsk Institutt for By- Og Regionforskning NIBR, Norway; Technische Universität München TUM, Germany; Université de Ouagadougou UO, Burkina Faso; Université de Yaoundé I UY1, Cameroon; Université Gaston Berger de Saint Louis UGB, Senegal; The University of Manchester UM, United Kingdom
For further information:
Contact: Prof. Dr. Stephan Pauleit
Homepage: CLUVA
Book publication, 2015: Urban Vulnerability and Climate Change in Africa (Springer)