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Political Limits to Climate Change Adaptation Practices: Insights from the Johannesburg Case

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Limits to Climate Change Adaptation

Part of the book series: Climate Change Management ((CCM))

Abstract

Urban planning can play a potentially meaningful role in adapting cities to the effects of climate change. This, however, requires that planning itself changes in such a way that anticipated effects of climate change can be addressed, in addition to environmental risks to which cities are exposed today. In particular in the global south, adaptive planning options need to be mediated with responses to considerable pre-existing development challenges. This paper explores how the adoption of adaptive planning options is politically feasible in Johannesburg, a highly polarised metropolitan city in the global south. It brings to light political challenges in reconciling adaptation and development needs, both in potentially synergistic and non-synergistic options, and it outlines their potential implications for the possibility to realise local adaptive practices. The intention of this paper is to contribute to an emergent body of work that will progressively offer clearer insights into the extent to which adaptation practices are politically feasible, especially in cities with democratically constituted governments where negotiated prioritisation is required.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this study, adaptive planning options are policies or practices which have presumed adaptation benefits for the built urban environment.

  2. 2.

    Detailed examples of the housing designs are published online (Steyn City 2016).

  3. 3.

    More than 3 million give-away houses were provided since the start of the RDP programme (NPC 2012: 242).

  4. 4.

    The group of beneficiaries can be interpreted as being rather politically important, because their dissatisfaction about living conditions in post-apartheid South Africa has begun to become a considerable threat to social peace. In view of their social protests which originate in the marginalised townships and which have already turned violent in many cases in the past, it can be argued to be a collective interest to satisfy the demand for give-away houses or at least give the impression that the demand is being satisfied.

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Acknowledgements

This research has been partly funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the Funding Reference Number 01 LN 1316 A.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geography Institute, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Karen Hetz

  2. School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Karen Hetz

  3. Environmental and Regional Sciences Department, University Trier, Trier, Germany

    Karen Hetz

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  1. Karen Hetz
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Correspondence to Karen Hetz .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Germany

    Walter Leal Filho

  2. Griffith Institute for Tourism, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia

    Johanna Nalau

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Hetz, K. (2018). Political Limits to Climate Change Adaptation Practices: Insights from the Johannesburg Case. In: Leal Filho, W., Nalau, J. (eds) Limits to Climate Change Adaptation. Climate Change Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64599-5_8

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