Sibusiso Sithole · threaten people’s livelihoods and the sustainability of the city’s...

In December 2013, Durban embarked on a new path joining the first cohort of cities to respond to the 100RC challenge of harnessing the resilience dividend to transform cities into engines of global change and innovation while tackling the challenges of the 21st Century. Durban is well placed to play a significant role in this new global resilience conversation as it is a city of opportunity and diversity with significant assets in its people and natural environment. It is also a city increasingly in the global eye for its forward thinking approach to some of the world’s most intractable problems: poverty, sustainable development, biodiversity loss and climate change. Standing as a gateway to Africa, Durban will again welcome the world to African soil at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.

But Durban also faces significant economic, social, environmental and governance challenges that threaten people’s livelihoods and the sustainability of the city’s development path. Within this evolving socio-institutional context it is critical to understand what resilience means and what is needed to strengthen or fundamentally alter the city in order to meet the challenges of current and future change. Durban’s participation in 100RC provides this opportunity and allows the city and it’s citizens to connect with others around the world and to hear and learn from their resilience experiences. For Durban, a key focus is to help build an African cohort of cities that can give voice to the specific challenges facing our continent and that can build collective capacity to address these in a way that is meaningful within our unique context.

As we face an increasingly difficult and uncertain future, platforms that shine new light onto old challenges, that provide alternative ways of addressing the new risks of the 21st Century and that ensure just, equitable and sustainable outcomes, are increasingly critical. 100RC provides such a platform and has the potential to lay the foundations for an important new, integrative global development agenda. Durban’s Preliminary Resilience Assessment represents an important moment in this journey, providing a resilience ‘Rosetta Stone’ that helps us interpret more accurately the direction and speed at which we need to move if we are to address the challenging and unpredictable path ahead. We look forward to sharing our journey with our fellow 100RC cities as we move forward into the second phase of our work.

Sibusiso SitholeCity ManagereThekwini Municipality, Durban, South Africa

Message from the City Manager

Durban’s selection to 100 Resilient Cities (100RC) in 2013 was an important achievement for our city and for the nation building process that we all embarked on in 1994. Our new democracy has encouraged us all to be involved in solving the problems created by our difficult past, and Durban’s participation in 100RC builds on that commitment and encourages us all to bring that same spirit of Ubuntu (togetherness) to dealing with our complex and unpredictable future. The challenges of the 21st Century require us to look not only for new and innovative solutions amongst ourselves, but also to look beyond our boundaries into the rest of the world for transformative experiences that will help us create a just, equitable and sustainable future for all residents in Durban. 100RC provides us with an opportunity to engage with these new challenges in the company of 99 other forward thinking and brave cities who will lead the global resilience revolution.

I am delighted to see that the 100 RC process has created the opportunity to bring together a broad and diverse range of Durbanites to discuss what resilience means to them and to better understand what needs to done to build a resilient city – particularly given our challenging context and the large developmental challenges facing our city today. I would especially like to congratulate Durban’s CRO and the Project Management Team on the completion of the Durban’s Preliminary Resilience Assessment (PRA). The PRA is a pivotal first step in Durban’s resilience journey and I would encourage you to engage with it and find out more about what was done and learned through the many resilience conversations sparked in our city. I am confident that Durban will become Africa’s champion for resilience, extending and integrating our already ground breaking work in fields such as climate change adaptation, sustainable service provision and biodiversity planning, and provide an example for other cities in 100RC to learn from.

As Durban’s resilience journey’s moves into the second phase of work, I would urge you all to become involved in taking this initiative forward and adding your voice to the development of our city’s first Resilience Strategy.

Councillor James NxumaloMayoreThekwini Municipality, Durban, South Africa

Message from the Mayor

Contents

An Exploratory Non-Paper

Abstract

An Introduction to Durban

Step 1: Preparing for the Resilience Journey

Step 2: The Scoping Phase

Step 3: Stakeholder Engagement

Step 4: Risk Assessment

Step 5: Durban’s Resilience Focus Areas

Exploring the Transformative Potential of New Ideas

Step 6: The Way Forward

A Summary of Learnings from Durban’s Resilience Journey

References

Notes

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5An Exploratory Non-Paper

Understanding resilience through an African lens of ‘sticky systems’, ‘wicked problems’ and ‘clumsy solutions’

Why does understanding resilience in the African context matter?

At the heart of the resilience concept lies a response (automatic or conscious – proactive or reactive - autonomous or collective) to a disruption that enables a system to return to the same (or perhaps a better) state. The persistence of a particular state may, however, not always be desirable. Apartheid was an example of an extremely resilient system that did not build a healthy society or a sustainable environment. This suggests that resilience is not value neutral or apolitical and that striving for resilience without questioning who or what could be affected is inappropriate, and in some cases, harmful. Resilience practitioners therefore need to be able to facilitate an increase in systemic resilience, but also (and when appropriate), be agent provocateurs working with other stakeholders to reduce resilience when pursuing higher order goals such as equity, sustainability and justice (e.g. the move to democracy in South Africa required a revolution). As such, resilience practitioners need to be both political entrepreneurs capable of initiating or capitalising on ‘forcing events’ to drive change (often under conditions of uncertainty and contestation), as well as adept social entrepreneurs managing trade-offs in ways that do not make losers of the vulnerable (e.g. women) and voiceless (e.g. natural systems) in the world’s cities. This is critical given that the pursuit of resilience will not always produce “win-win” scenarios. There may also be variable impacts across different time scales. What might be resilient in the short term may not be so in the long-term. ‘Do no harm’ should therefore always be the first principle of resilience, regardless of whether the response is to a ‘hard knock’ (shock) or a ‘slow drip’ (stress).

Resilience is thus not only about “being strong in a world where things go wrong” (Rodin, 2014), but about being flexible and innovative and recognising that in a highly unequal and unsustainable world there will be occasions when maintaining systemic strength is counterproductive. In instances where the resilience limits of existing systems have been met and where there is a need for a complete state change, ‘transformation’ provides a useful framing concept that speaks to the level of difficulty that may be involved in effecting a revision of existing norms and principles. Resilience is therefore not an end goal, but much more a boundary state between resistance (the ability of a system to prevent adjustment and change) and transformation (an alteration in the fundamental attributes of a system) (Solecki et al, in review).


7An Exploratory Non-Paper6 An Exploratory Non-Paper

Globally the 21st Century has created a “planet of cities” (Angel, 2012). Already 54% of the world’s population live in cities, and this is expected to increase to 66% by 2050. This could add another 2.5 billion people to urban populations by 2050, with close to 90% of the increase concentrated in Asia and Africa (UN DESA, 2015). In Africa - the least urbanised continent, but with the highest rate of urban growth in the world (Pieterse and Parnell, 2014) - this urban transition will result in 1000s of new towns and cities and will drive increasing levels of urban informality. Already Africa has the highest percentage of urban slum dwellers in the world (Pieterse and Parnell, 2014) and almost all of the projected urban growth in Africa over the next two decades will take the form of slum growth (UN- Habitat, 2008). The resulting mix of poverty, informality and weak governance that is the hallmark of African urbanism is producing an underfunded and undermanaged urban state that is very resilient and difficult to change. The lack (or scarcity) of conventional institutional and governance structures also raises questions about what mechanisms are available to drive systemic change in these unorthodox urban conditions? A further complicating factor is that Africa has the youngest population in the world. With 200 million people aged between 15 and 24, current projections suggest that this figure will double by 2045 (AFDB, OECD, UNDP, UNECA, 2012). The resulting youth bulge will require the provision of sustainable services and stable employment at a continental scale.

This confluence of Africa’s demographic and urban transitions is occurring at a time of global environmental crisis, creating a ‘perfect storm’ of challenges for the continent and its cities. Scientists have identified and quantified nine planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and ensure well-being for all, however, crossing these boundaries could generate abrupt or irreversible environmental changes. Humanity is already on a high risk/low resilience trajectory given that four of the nine planetary boundaries have now been crossed. These are: climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land-system change and altered biogeochemical cycles (phosphorus and nitrogen) (Steffen et al., 2015). Respecting these boundaries, while addressing a significant development deficit, is a key resilience challenge for African cities like Durban.

What is risk?Risk also cannot be defined normatively. As noted by David Ropeik (2010), the author of “How risky is it, really?” “Facts, in and of themselves, are meaningless, in the purest and fullest meaning of that word. We interpret them, judge them, screen them through subconscious mental processes, qualify them based on the trustworthiness of the source, and weigh them in the context of our own life circumstances and views and values. Alone, facts are lifeless stones on the ground.” The realisation that risk will be perceived differently by different societies, and by different members within the same society (Ropeik describes this distance between fear and facts as the “perceptions gap”), indicates that working to understand the local ‘context’ is a critical element of any city’s resilience journey. This concern for context, recognition of the importance of societal judgment, acknowledgement of the political nature of resilience and acceptance of the need for state change have informed the evolving understanding of resilience and risk in Durban. It has encouraged the development of ongoing, flexible and inclusive learning process where knowledge is co-produced as the basic architecture for resilience strategy development.

Resilience during an African TransitionDurban is a South African city and thus a participant in a still evolving nation building project; it is located on a continent experiencing multiple transitions and is a member of a global community challenged by Earth System thresholds during the most rapid period of urbanisation in the world’s history. Acknowledging and addressing these different drivers and contexts is a critical part of understanding Durban’s resilience challenges and opportunities. In many ways there are multiple ‘Durbans’ depending on the scale, sector, stakeholder or timeline being analysed.

9An Exploratory Non-Paper8

1 Ecological infrastructure refers to naturally functioning ecosystems (eg. flood attentuation, water provision, climate regulation) to people.2 The city is located in one of the world’s 35 biodiversity hotspots


Despite the under-provision of conventional infrastructure, Durban is still richly endowed with ecological infrastructure1. As with many cities in the global South, ecological infrastructure plays a critical role in Durban in supporting human wellbeing and development, particularly in poor and rural areas where there are higher levels of direct dependence on the free ecosystem services such as water provision, flood attenuation and waste treatment that are delivered by the natural environment. Approximately 33% of Durban is regarded as being conservation worthy2, but these natural areas are threatened by ongoing development. This, together with the current water supply crisis; the city’s growing inability to treat and manage waste water without compromising rivers and estuaries; the inability to meet national conservation targets for critical ecosystems and the growing water quality and air pollution challenges, all suggest that Durban’s current development path is exceeding environmental thresholds and is therefore more prone to collapse than it is to achieving resilience or transformation to an improved state.

Under-development and the lack of environmental sustainability are further exacerbated by the fact that the policy, political, societal and institutional environments are still evolving and, twenty one years into democracy, many of the stakeholder groups and governance structures one might expect in a more established society do not yet exist in any stable form. This limits the agency of all parties and creates a survivalist mentality that is not conducive to transformative thinking. This combination of socio-economic, environmental and governance challenges creates a ‘city on the edge’ that could spiral downwards to collapse or that could be pulled back from the brink through careful and informed decision-making aimed at achieving more equitable, resilient and sustainable development. Realising this latter scenario will, however, require that tough decisions are made and that it is recognised that there are limited opportunities for ‘win-win’ outcomes. This is politically difficult given that much has been promised in the post-1994 period, and yet not

Durban – A City on the Edge

The local contextAs a post-apartheid city, Durban’s challenges are exacerbated by a legacy of formalised racial division that has created widespread environmental injustice, unsustainability, inequity and exclusion (Roberts & O’Donoghue, 2013). The transition to democracy in 1994 brought with it expectations that the socio-economic imbalances of Apartheid would be addressed and that past divisions would be replaced with social equality, equitable redistribution of resources and access to basic services such as housing, water, electricity, and sanitation (Carmin et al., 2012). As a result, eThekwini Municipality (the local government responsible for Durban) has invested heavily in socio-economic development and basic service provision. To date, 183,537 homes have been delivered (M. Byerley, pers. comm.), but a backlog of 391,992 units remains (as of June 2015). This backlog will take between 41 and 80 years to address, depending on the subsidies available (EThekwini Municipality, 2015). A similar situation exists with regard to other key services such as water, sanitation and electricity, with backlogs exacerbated by rapid urbanisation and rising levels of informality. These underlying socio-economic issues are a product of a history of inequality that continues to divide Durban society, seen most recently during the violent xenophobic attacks that shook the city and the rest of South Africa during March 2015.

African cities therefore present a unique opportunity to advance the resilience debate at the global level. Their ‘sticky systems’ and ‘wicked problems’ require unconventional and ‘clumsy’ solutions’ (i.e. “policies that creatively combine all opposing perspectives on what the problems are and how they should be resolved” (Verweij etal, 2006)). As such, they will act as a reality check within 100RC and provide lessons applicable and relevant to the vast majority of the world’s urban residents. Durban is the poorest of South Africa’s major metropolitan areas, and is the most African in terms of its structural and social-economic characterisitics, such as competing forms of governance (traditional and contemporary), widespread poverty, growing inequality and stubbornly high levels of unemployment. The city therefore provides an excellent starting point for the resilience debate on the continent.

So what is this place we call Durban?

“Durban is still richly endowed with ecological infrastructure”

11An Exploratory Non-Paper10 An Exploratory Non-Paper

Emerging ideas from Durban on ‘resilience’

Early discussions in Durban have shown that there are multiple ways in which ‘resilience’ can be understood. Key ideas emerging are that urban resilience is about how cities prepare for current and future change, and that preparing for this change requires the integration of agendas such as climate change adaptation, climate change mitigation, disaster risk reduction, biodiversity, equity, sustainable development and poverty reduction (Figure 1). This integration should aim to increase the probability of retaining and enhancing strengths, while incrementally improving existing systems and, where necessary, “bouncing forward” to a better state.

Durban’s evolving understanding of resilience also suggests that resilience needs to be seen not as an end point, but as a step in a broader journey towards transformation (Figure 2). This will involve strengthening foundational elements that are good and non-negotiable (e.g. functional natural ecosystems; ethical leadership) whilst also having the flexibility and willingness to weaken resilient systems (e.g. inappropriate economic development models and societal inequality) that could undermine transformative progress. In some instances, this transformation may require radical shifts in systems, people, institutions and regimes if the end goal is a development path that is sustainable, equitable and just. Resilience is therefore not a standalone concept, but rather part of a continuum of responses that cities will have to deploy in negotiating the challenges of the 21st Century. The key challenge for resilience practitioners lies in determining when to effect these changes in appropriate and incremental ways within the context of the existing development paradigm, and when to drive more radical interventions to achieve catalytic and strategic state change.

Figure 1: Resilience provides an opportunity to integrate multiple agendas to advance systems

all policies and interventions have translated into improved wellbeing and opportunity, particularly for the vulnerable. Durbanites are therefore sceptical about the future and new ideas, and new opportunities and new promises are approached with cautious optimism.

Bringing the conceptual framework and context specific reality together in the development of Durban’s Resilience Strategy What this points to is that the single most important thing to understand during the development of Durban’s Resilience Strategy is: context, context, context. It also means that no a priori assumptions can be made about the structure or content of Durban’s resilience strategy. Durban is an evolving city where emerging resilience priorities are linked to unfulfilled development objectives; systemic challenges associated with addressing past imbalances; unprecedented and unpredictable rates of current and future change; limited resources and under-developed governance systems. This concentration of problems has significant implications for the strategy development process such as stakeholder engagement (which must be broad and inclusive) and decision-making where single committees cannot claim to make decisions on behalf of others. Durban’s context also means that citizens have high expectations and are sceptical of programmes that promise to deliver change. A resilience focused process that does not address day-to-day problems or is not sustainable, will only serve to heighten the lack of trust that already exists between government and citizens. There is therefore a need from the outset of the process to identify ways of integrating the outcomes of the resilience strategy into the work of existing and future structures and processes in order to ensure maximum mainstreaming and sustainability, but also to secure the greatest chance of transforming those structures and processes, should there be a need to do so. These ideas are summarised in Table 1.

CONTEXT OF A ‘CITY ON THE EDGE’ IMPLICATIONS FOR DURBAN’S 100RC JOURNEY

Governance and stakeholder structures are still evolving

Citizens are sceptical because of under-delivery on past promises

In evolving cities, resilience challenges and risks are often systemic and developmental in nature

Understanding the local context provides an important lens for understanding resilience

There is a need to integrate new ideas into local government planning

There is a need for transformation from the current state to one that is more just, equal and inclusive

Stakeholder engagement needs to be broad and inclusive. Representative forums and steering committees are not possible.

Stakeholders need to be heard and they need feedback rather than one-way ‘tick-box’ presentations from local government.

Systemic and developmental challenges increase vulnerability regardless of the risk being faced and therefore the key to resilience is to respond in a systemic, rather than sectoral, way.

Every element of the strategy development process must be approached in a critical way to ensure that the decisions made and the approaches adopted are in the best interests of the city and its residents.

There a need for careful consideration of possible avenues available to embed and mainstream the ideas emerging from the resilience strategy process.

Resilience is seen as a step in a longer journey towards transformation.

RESILIENCE

NEWNEGATIVEFUTURE

COLLAPSE

Adapt to change incrementallywithin existing systems/paradigms

• Potential for improved state• Heavy emphasis on infrastructure

Protect existingaccumulated resilience

TRANSFORMATIONChange people, institutions, world views,lower thresholds between regimes/states

NEWPOSITIVEFUTURE

RESISTENCE /PERSISTENCE

COLL

APSE

100R

CIN

CREM

ANTA

LCH

ANGE

MAI

NTAI

NST

ATUS

QUO

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ION

The value of 100RC in Durban

An important question to ask within this complex local context is ‘what value does a global initiative like 100RC bring to a city like Durban?’ Importantly, Durban’s participation in 100RC provides an opportunity to take a step back, to gain new perspectives on endemic problems to ‘re-understand’ the city and to gain new insights in a context where the overwhelming nature of many of the challenges faced does not facilitate reflection. Providing this ‘politically neutral’ space for debate and reflection creates opportunities for new thinking and action and underscores the fact that process is often as, if not more, important than the product in such initiatives. Building better linkages and networks can also help to address local and global challenges by bringing people together in interdisciplinary and inclusive ways (Leach et al., 2013) that provide opportunities for existing knowledge to be integrated in a new, innovative and ultimately transformative way (Bahadur & Tanner, 2014). In this regard, Durban’s ongoing participation in 100RC could play a critical role in catalysing the ‘bouncing forward’ momentum that is needed for the city to become more resilient. Durban’s Preliminary Resilience Assessment (PRA) provides an important opportunity to share the city’s 100RC experience to date and the insights and learning that have been gained, not only about the meaning of resilience, but also about 100RC as a potentially powerful global programme for change.

Figure 2: Resilience is not an end goal but a boundary state between resistance and transformation. (based on Solecki et al, in review.)

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How to read Durban’s Preliminary Resilience Assessment (PRA)

Durban’s has produced two versions of its PRA: The short version contains a comprehensive summary of the work done during Phase 1 in order to build institutional memory and to provide existing and new 100RC cities with detailed insights into the process that has been followed in Durban. In addition to these elements, the longer version includes critique and learnings relating to the 100RC tools and process. Durban’s 100RC journey has not been a linear one. The timeline therefore provides a graphical summary of the key elements of the journey with the ‘Intentions and outcomes’ and ‘Lessons learned’ boxes providing a summary of different aspects of learning for each section. Further detail is contained in the body of the text in each section for those who want to better understand Durban’s process. Given the critical role that Durban’s context has played in directing the course of its 100RC journey, ‘context boxes’ are also included in the text to explain which contextual element influenced decision making. A list of supporting reports has been included at the end of the PRA. The Durban team is happy to share these reports on request.

An Exploratory Non-Paper12

Understanding Durban’s context is key to understanding the city’s resilience journey. Durban is a South African city and a participant in a still evolving nation building project. As such, it faces significant developmental challenges including under-provision of basic services and high levels of inequality and unemployment in a context where the policy, political, societal and institutional environments are still evolving. A distinguishing factor for Durban is that it is richly endowed with ecological infrastructure, which provides a critical foundation for human wellbeing and development. This complex context has important implications for the resilience strategy development process in Durban, requiring for example that stakeholder engagement processes are broad and inclusive, that single committees are replaced with multiple decision-making bodies and that, from the outset, Durban focuses on ensuring the sustainability of the work beyond the life of the city’s participation in 100RC. As a city that represents the challenges faced by many cities in Africa and beyond, understanding what might be required to drive systemic change in a city like Durban is key to the broader resilience debate and to the learning of other cities in the 100RC network.

There have been a number of key steps along Durban’s resilience journey. In ‘Preparing for the resilience journey’, emphasis was placed on the need to embed the resilience function in local government structures to ensure its sustainability, and to establish a Steering Committee that could provide strategic guidance and support to the Chief Resilience Officer (CRO) and Project Management Team. This resulted in the appointment of a municipal official to the position of CRO and the allocation of additional officials to perform a Project Management function, the creation of an external Secretariat function for programme support and the establishment of a range of technical and advisory groups to collective constitute the role of a Steering Committee in providing strategic direction and insights to the CRO and Project Management team. To date this model has been extremely effective.

During the ‘Scoping’ step a ’light touch’ approach was used to gather perspectives on ‘resilience’ from Durban’s citizens and provide initial insight into the issues that might influence Durban’s Resilience Strategy. For citizens, issues such as access to basic services and livelihood opportunities were seen as fundamental to their resilience at an individual level, while issues relating to social cohesion and the role of active and engaged citizens were highlighted as important at the level of communities. At the level of systems, citizens emphasised the environment, reliable infrastructure, governance, financial systems, knowledge systems and leadership as foundational prerequisites for resilience. A challenge was that this more nuanced list of issues could not be neatly fitted into the 100RC tools designed to assess resilience perceptions and city actions. This raises important questions about the value of generic tools intended for use across a range of city contexts.

Abstract

15Abstract

In consolidating the outcomes from both the stakeholder engagement and risk assessment processes, it was recognised that all the resilience issues raised are important, that prioritisation amongst them is not possible, and that all will need to be taken forward if Durban’s significant resilience deficit is to be addressed. The sixteen resilience issues were instead clustered into six Resilience Focus Areas based on the linkages that exist between them: Bold and Participatory Governance, Knowledge-centred City, Innovative Place-making, Sustainable and Ecological City, Catalytic and Transformative Economy and Equitable and Inclusive Society. The outcomes of this deeper engagement confirmed that, in an evolving socio-institutional context such as Durban, resilience is about dealing with chronic stresses and deep systemic challenges that affect the basic functioning of society rather than about addressing stochastic shocks and discrete sectoral issues.

The indications from the start of Durban’s resilience journey have been that the city’s resilience issues would be complex and cross-cutting and that radically new approaches would be needed to address some of these challenges. During Phase 1, the CRO and Project Management team therefore initiated a number of pilot projects that could generate early insights into what it would take to effect the systemic shifts that might ultimately be required by Durban’s Resilience Strategy. These parallel projects have: provided important insights around leveraging and brokering new partnerships in conflicted spaces; generated important research that has sparked interactive discussions around key resilience challenges in Durban; disrupted the thinking of the CRO and Project Management Team and helped shape new ideas; developed tools to measure the city’s performance across a range of indicators; and explored the integration of new and challenging ideas into city planning processes. It is intended that these learnings will help inform and shape how Durban approaches the development of its resilience strategy in the next phases of the 100RC process.

Abstract 17Abstract16

The ‘Stakeholder engagement’ step used the outcomes from the scoping as the starting point to gather deeper insights from a broad range of stakeholders around gaps and resilience priorities for the city. Broad engagement was undertaken to gather perspectives from groups as diverse as city leadership, religious organisations, environmental entities and business. Through careful use of ‘discourse analysis’ as an analytical social science methodology, sixteen resilience issues were identified from this feedback, ranging from governing systems, leadership, stakeholder engagement and environment, to issues such as innovation, African urbanism, spatial planning and economy. Durban’s risk assessment workshop re-confirmed that key risks for Durban lie predominantly in the arena of chronic and systemic stresses and also highlighted a level of risk acceptance amongst citizens, who have adopted on-going high risk conditions as the ‘new normal’. The workshop was framed around a risk position that challenged the conventional and linear approach to risk analysis and instead offered a more nuanced perspective that emphasised the subjectivity and systemic nature of risk, particularly in urban areas.

What is clear from Durban’s resilience journey to date is that, in a context where the Resilience Focus Areas are complex and connected, systemic challenges will require systemic solutions and that key questions for Phase 2 should focus on: how to drive a systemic ‘problem-solving’ approach; identification of actions that have multiple systemic benefits; engaging relevant and appropriate stakeholders and generating outcomes that are different and more effective than past practices. Durban’s emerging Resilience Focus Areas also suggest the high level of ‘agency’ that will be required from many stakeholders in the next phases of 100RC in order to translate complex and challenging ideas into practical opportunities for implementation. Finally, Durban’s journey has revealed important insights about what ‘resilience’ means in the context of an African city. What has emerged is that resilience is fundamentally about how cities prepare themselves to respond to current and future change and that, as an integrative (rather than stand-alone) concept, resilience has the potential to provide a framework to synergise a range of agendas in a way that increases the probability of cities “bouncing forward” to an improved state. What is also clear is that in the context of cities like Durban, resilience needs to be seen as part of a broader journey towards transformation and that part of this journey may require a weakening of inappropriate systems (e.g. poor governance structures and inequality) that threaten to undermine the resilience agenda. In this regard, dealing with chronic systemic and developmental issues has to be a key part of the resilience agenda for cities like Durban.

Within this challenging and complex context, Durban’s participation in 100RC has provided a critical opportunity to take a strategic step back within a politically neutral space and to reflect on what might be required for a resilient city. This is an opportunity that is seldom possible in cities that are caught up in dealing with multiple, and often overwhelming challenges. For a ‘city on the edge’, this opportunity, if used wisely and with informed decision-making, could provide a catalyst for the kind of change that will make Durban a more equitable, resilient and sustainable city.

Abstract18

An Introductionto Durban

21An Introduction to Durban

Durban is an African city located on the east coast of South Africa in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) (Figure 3). The current metropolitan area was created in 2000 by incorporating the previous municipality of Durban and several surrounding local government entities. Durban is currently home to approximately 3.44 million people and covers an area of 2297 km2. EThekwini Municipality is the local government body responsible for governing and managing metropolitan Durban.

Durban is a multifaceted city, with landscapes ranging from rural to urban, forest to grassland, formal to informal, terrestrial to marine and has an ethnically and culturally diverse society facing a complex mix of social, economic, environmental and governance challenges. All of these are drawn into sharp focus by the city’s apartheid past and the pressures created by unpredictable drivers of change manifesting in the 21st Century (e.g. climate change, rapid urbanisation and globalisation). As such, Durban is a microcosm of global sustainable development challenges, and enhancing its resilience will require the emergence of new development pathways that ensure equity, sustainability and justice for all and that provide hope and opportunity for an ever growing, poor and youthful population.

Durban demonstrates a degree of exceptionalism by virtue of three important and distinctive features. Firstly, Durban is a city in which there are still substantial rural areas under the control of traditional leadership systems. The urban development line, which demarcates where urban development is permitted in Durban in the long term, divides the eThekwini Municipal Area into an urban development corridor and a rural periphery or hinterland that has different service needs. Approximately two thirds of the municipal area is rural, with much of this falling under traditional leadership through the administration of the Ingonyama Trust Board (ITB). This means that the city is still intimately connected to its rural hinterland both spatially and culturally, creating a mix of governance and planning challenges that will influence the success of the resilience strategy.

Figure 3: The location of eThekwini Municipality in South Africa.

Secondly, as in all African cities, the natural environment in Durban plays a critical role in supporting human wellbeing and development. Durban is unusual, however, in that it is located in a global biodiversity hotspot and as a result, approximately 33% of the municipal area has been identified as important from a biodiversity protection perspective. Ongoing development pressures threaten this ecological infrastructure and the services it provides (e.g. water supply, flood attenuation). Already more than 54% of the city has been transformed, with the remaining natural areas declining on an annual basis. This has significant implications for Durban’s ability to sustain growth and development and to meet the basic needs of the poor and vulnerable who are directly dependent on ecological infrastructure for their survival. This is particularly so in the large rural areas of the city. This suggests that rural and ecological considerations will play a stronger role in influencing the resilience agenda in Durban than in many other cities around the world.

Thirdly, Durban’s apartheid past means that structural inequity remains a central challenge in all aspects of city life and function. A Gini coefficient of 0.63 points to high levels of income inequality (amongst the highest in the world) and highlights the priority that must be given to addressing these imbalances as part of ensuring greater resilience in the city and amongst its citizens.

In a city where the distinction between rural and urban is blurred, where nature is rich and people are poor, careful consideration must therefore be given to the type of resilience path that is chosen.

An Introduction to Durban22

Our Intention and Key Outcomes

Given the complex institutional and governance systems in Durban and the many competing priorities, it was necessary to build support for Durban’s participation in 100RC prior to submitting the city’s application to the first international call. Following Durban’s selection it was also important to negotiate a process of delivery that would be locally relevant. Critical considerations in this regard included the need to embed the resilience function in local government structures and to build a long-term and context-sensitive vision and understanding of resilience in order to ensure the sustainability of the work beyond the life of the city’s participation in 100RC. Durban also recognised the need for appropriate support structures to provide strategic guidance and support to the Project Management Team in this new and very broad-ranging area of work.

The first outcome of this locally grounded approach was the adoption of a Chief Resilience Officer (CRO) model that involved the appointment of an existing local government official to the CRO position. This appointment was accompanied by the creation of a dedicated project management team to assist the CRO. In addition, a range of technical and advisory groups (drawing from stakeholders internal and external to local government) were set up to provide the necessary guidance to the CRO and Project Management Team. To date, this model has been extremely effective in providing strategic direction and insights regarding how best to embed the resilience function within local government structures and in helping the CRO and Project Management Team (who are originally from one of local government’s environmental functions) to identify and analyse the wide range of social, economic, political and environmental issues that contribute to Durban’s resilience (or lack thereof).

Preparing for the Resilience Journey

STEP 1 STEP 2 STEP 3 STEP 4 STEP 5 25

SU

MM

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YSTEP

1 Preparing for the Resilience Journey

Building support for Durban’s participation in 100 Resilient Cities

Key to the success of 100RC is ensuring that there is appropriate technical, city leadership and political support for the initiative. Starting in September 2013, a number of local government technical departments were convened by the individuals who would become the CRO and Project Management Team in order to critically discuss Durban’s potential participation in 100RC and the nature of the proposal to be submitted. The intent was to initiate the process in a manner which established the inclusive approach that the team would adopt throughout the life of the project. This has helped to build local government support for 100RC, including from the City Manager who leads the city administration. Reporting to political committees and full Council at the programme’s inception and at relevant points along the journey, has also kept political leadership in Durban abreast of progress during the city’s participation in 100RC.

Establishing the CRO model and Project Management function

Prior to the submission of the city’s 100RC application, concerns were raised within local government regarding the appointment of an external candidate to the position of CRO. These included the time needed for an external appointee to become familiarised with local government institutions and their processes; the difficulties in establishing strategic links with high-level decision-makers in such a complex political environment; the challenge of developing sufficient professional credibility in a short space of time and potential local labour and union issues. It was therefore proposed that an internal local government official be nominated for the position of CRO and that additional internal and external support should be secured to assist the nominated individual. This approach was also seen as creating a critical and necessary level of institutional redundancy, so that in the event of one of the core team leaving, the work could proceed with little interruption.

Current StructureThe CRO position is currently held by Dr Debra Roberts (Deputy Head: Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Department) who has a direct line of communication with the City Manager and relevant Deputy City Manager, and has significant influence locally, nationally and internationally in the environmental field. She is supported by staff from the Environmental

Planning and Climate Protection Department (EPCPD) who assist with the strategic planning and management of the programme and act as the Project Management Team. Funding that would have been allocated to the appointment of an external CRO has been used to secure an external Secretariat3 to support the CRO and Project Management Team with administration, logistics relating to stakeholder engagement, input into strategic planning and the outsourcing of any additional specialist work required.

In addition to the CRO, Project Management Team and Secretariat, a number of groups have been established with the intention of collectively achieving the functionality of the ‘Resilience Steering Committee’. These include a local government Technical Committee and a ‘Critical Thinkers’ group (drawing on stakeholders internal and external to local government). Further details on these structures are included in the next section and are shown in Figure 4.

Durban’s ‘Steering Committee’ model

Twenty years into democracy, Durban is still a relatively new city in terms of its policies, government structures and politics. Given this, and the diversity of views that exist in the city, it would be impossible to establish a single 100RC Steering Committee that claimed to represent the diverse views of all stakeholder groups. Instead, Durban has chosen a Steering Committee model with a number of different stakeholder interaction points. These include a local government technical committee, a ‘Critical thinkers’ group and relevant city planning and leadership structures. Existing stakeholder fora are used for interacting with the public. Final sign-off on the city’s Resilience Strategy will come from the “Strategic Management Executive Team” (previously known as the Deputy City Manager Forum) which is chaired by the City Manager.

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Figure 4: The current coordination structure for 100RC in Durban

What Did We Do?

Preparing for the Resilience JourneyPreparing for the Resilience Journey

STEP 1STEP 1 STEP 2STEP 2 STEP 3STEP 3 STEP 4STEP 4 STEP 5STEP 5

3 The Secretariat function is filled by a local consultancy called FutureWorks

Identifying global strategic support

Dalberg is Durban’s global strategy partner and provides a conduit for communicating Durban’s work into the international resilience discussions in the 100RC network and providing feedback to the local level. In order to supplement this global support with locally relevant strategy support, an individual from the University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, has been appointed (through Dalberg) to undertake this role and will also monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of Durban’s 100RC Programme in locally embedding and advancing transformative resilience thinking and action.

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STEP 1 STEP 2 STEP 3 STEP 4 STEP 5

Building local strategic support

Local Government Technical CommitteeThis cross-sectoral team consists of key individuals from a number of departments, including: Human Settlements Unit, eThekwini Transport Authority, Durban Solid Waste, Health Department, Economic Development Unit, Disaster Management Unit, eThekwini Water and Sanitation Unit, Architecture Department, Natural Resources Department, Engineering Unit, Energy Office, Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Department and Treasury. This group works closely with the CRO and the Project Management Team to provide expert input.

Critical Thinkers GroupThis group is made up of individuals that have a reputation for not being afraid to speak truth to power and includes representation from the business, local government, creative, environmental activist and inter-faith communities. Meetings are convened at key points during programme development and provide a space for alternative and disruptive inputs that help the CRO and Project Management Team think critically about their approach.

City LeadershipAt key points in the programme, the CRO and Project Management Team report to the ‘Strategic Management Executive Team’ which is chaired by the City Manager. This reporting line keeps city leadership informed of project progress and provides an opportunity for them to evaluate outputs and to provide guidance on the way forward. Regular reporting is also undertaken to the Economic Development Committee. This is a political committee comprising 30 councillors and is chaired by the Deputy Mayor.

About Durban’s Resilience Strategy:

• CONTEXT SHOULD INFORM STRATEGY: In any strategy process it is critical to consider local context and to design strategy development processes to respond to this in order to ensure sustainability.

• THE NEED TO BUILD BUY-IN FROM THE START: Large amounts of time were invested in building widespread support within local government for Durban’s participation in 100RC before the proposal was submitted.

• EARLY IDENTIFICATION OF THE NEED FOR ADDITIONAL SUPPORT: Responding to the need for additional resources in the form of a supporting Secretariat and cross-departmental technical team, has been invaluable in providing the correct level of conceptual, technical and project management support.

• THE VALUE OF DISRUPTIVE THINKERS: The ‘Critical Thinkers’ group has helped to introduce alternative views into project planning. Inputs that ‘disrupt’ existing thinking can help to promote innovation and creativity and build outcomes that have the potential to chart a different path.

About 100RC:

• AN EFFECTIVE RESILIENCE FUNCTION NEEDS CAPACITY: The issue of resilience is a potentially broad and complex one for any city to address. It is unrealistic for a single person to hold the necessary expertise and project management capacity to be able to operate effectively across this spectrum, especially in politically charged environments. If the resilience agenda is to be embedded within cities over the long term, it is necessary to think about the human resources and finances that are required to sustain such work.

• REDUNDANCY IS KEY TO ENSURING RESILIENCE AND SUSTAINABILITY: A key consideration relates to building resilience capacity over and above the CRO in order to ensure appropriate levels of redundancy and to increase the likelihood of institutional continuity.

• CITY CONTEXT SHOULD INFORM APPROACH: It is critical for cities to have the flexibility to consider their own context in creating a bespoke approach to strategy development.

What Did We Learn?

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(Source: Metro, ezasegagazini, August 2015)

How does Durban Understand ‘Resilience’?

STEP 1 STEP 2 STEP 3 STEP 4 STEP 5 31ST

EP 2 The Scoping Phase:

How Does Durban Understand ‘Resilience’?


Resilience is a term that is not easily defined or understood. For this reason Durban’s citizens were engaged right at the outset in order to gather their perspectives on ‘resilience’. This exercise was purposefully designed as a ‘light touch’ that could help provide initial insight into the issues that might influence Durban’s Resilience Strategy and that could be used to inform a more comprehensive and focused stakeholder engagement process at a later point.

Given the broad range of developmental challenges facing Durban, ‘resilience’ is understood differently by different people. For individuals living in conditions of poverty and unemployment, resilience is about securing access to jobs and basic services; for others it is about rebuilding the fabric of society and rebuilding trust and communication between government and citizens; for those operating at strategic levels in the city, the focus is on systemic issues related to governance, leadership and the protection of the natural environment - all of which are recognised as foundational prerequisites for resilience. The reality is that all of these issues are directly or indirectly relevant to achieving resilience in Durban. But where will the city get the most ‘resilience bang for its buck’, enabling it to respond to the broadest range of issues in locally appropriate, collective and innovative ways? Also allowing people to articulate their own understanding of resilience meant that in many instances, the more nuanced list of issues identified could not be neatly fitted into the 100RC tools designed to assess resilience perceptions and city actions. This raises important questions about the value of generic tools intended for use across a range of city contexts, and demonstrated that important insights can be gained when a critical and context-specific approach is taken to understanding resilience.

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and negative), the challenges and opportunities that could arise from these changes and how ready they felt the city is to respond to these. For the expert interviews, additional questions focused on definitions of resilience and understanding the characteristics of a resilient city.

The Resilience Agenda-setting workshopA Resilience Agenda-setting Workshop was held on the 4th September 2014 to formally introduce a broad and representative group of city stakeholders to 100RC and to initiate the process of developing a Resilience Strategy for Durban. The event was well attended by a variety of stakeholders from different sectors, including non-governmental organisations and civil society, academia, business, traditional leaders and local government. Staff from 100RC, the Secretariat and Dalberg also attended the workshop. The workshop agenda included presentations from Durban’s CRO and from the New York based 100RC team, as well as ‘catalytic conversations’ prompted by a keynote intervention from Richard Wilkinson5 on the issue of inequality (identified as an emergent resilience issue in Durban in the initial community consultations). Various small group discussions were convened to provide participants with an opportunity to consider the meaning of ‘resilience’ and to reflect on areas where Durban is either doing well, or needs to improve, in terms of the drivers6 outlined in the 100RC City Resilience Framework (CRF). An external facilitator was used to manage the workshop in order to allow the Project Management Team and CRO to fully engage in the discussions.

Expert meetingsAdditional focused meetings were held with the Local Government Technical group and the ‘Critical Thinkers’ to gain their feedback on a similar set of questions.

Completing the Resilience Perceptions Assessment Tool

The input from 110 public vox pops, 78 public depth interviews, 4 public focus groups, 38 expert interviews and 3 consultation meetings was used to complete the Resilience Perceptions Assessment required by 100RC.

Speaking to Durban’s citizens

In a city as diverse as Durban, an important part of the 100RC journey has been to use as many voices as possible in developing the resilience narrative for the city. These voices came from a ‘community perspectives snapshot’, expert interviews, the Resilience Agenda-setting Workshop and other meetings.

The ‘community perspectives snapshot’ and expert interviewsTo develop the ‘community perspectives snapshot’, focus groups and Voxpops4 were used to engage with commuters at taxi ranks and people in their homes and places of work in order to hear what the public thought were key resilience issues in Durban. The sampling was designed to be geographically and demographically representative. A total of 38 in-depth expert interviews were also held with individuals from local government, academia, civil society, NGOs and the private sector to gain insights into specific resilience challenges and opportunities in Durban. For the community perspectives snapshot, the concept of ‘change’ was used as a proxy for ‘resilience’ as this most closely captured the core concept of resilience, that is, responding effectively and sustainably to current and future change. Using the word ‘resilience’ also created the risk of alienating those who could not understand it, particularly given that the word has no direct translation into isiZulu which is the predominant local language.

In both the community perspectives snapshot and expert interviews, the questions were framed around understanding what changes individuals anticipated would take place in the city (both positive

What Did We Do?

4 Vox pop is a tool used in many forms of media to provide a snapshot of public opinion. Random subjects are asked to give their views on a particular topic and their responses are presented to the viewer/reader as a reflection of popular opinion.

5 Richard Wilkinson is a British social epidemiologist, author and advocate. He is Professor Emeritus of Social Epidemiology at the University of Not-tingham, having retired in 2008. He is also Honorary Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London and Visiting Professor at University of York. He is best known for his book with Kate Pickett , The Spirit Level, first published in 2009, which argues that societies with more equal distribution of incomes do better than those that are more unequal.

6 That is, actions cities can take to improve their resilience.

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How does Durban Understand ‘Resilience’?How does Durban Understand ‘Resilience’?


This consolidation (using the driver categories of the CRF) highlighted the following resilience issues as being important in Durban:

• Ensures social stability, security and justice: Durban’s citizens spoke about the need to address high levels of crime, drug and substance abuse, corruption, lawlessness and the inadequacy of enforcement and policing.

• Supports livelihoods and employment: Feedback focused on the current high levels of unemployment and poverty and the need to improve the standard of living for people in Durban. Issues relating to vulnerable groups (particularly the elderly and child-headed households) were also raised as critical challenges, as was the importance of retaining skilled technical human resource capacity within institutions such as local government.

• Meets basic needs: The need to address basic service delivery in the areas of housing, water, sanitation and energy was emphasised.

• Fosters economic prosperity: Emphasis was placed on the need for increased opportunities for employment and improved business opportunities.

• Fosters long-term and integrated planning: Feedback focused on the need for long-term, integrated planning across a range of sectors. Specific concerns included the rate of urbanisation, population growth and rising densities, as well as the corresponding need to find appropriate ways to address informality, largely from a human settlement perspective. The declining sustainability of the city’s financial and revenue base, as well as the need to improve existing legislation, was also raised as a resilience challenge.

• Provides reliable communication and mobility: Durban’s stakeholders felt there was a need for an effective and cost-effective transport system in order to facilitate peoples’ ability to access employment and other opportunities in the city.

• Promotes leadership and effective management: Critical resilience issues were seen to be the role of politics in influencing strategic decision-making processes, distrust of government and the need for capacitated, bold and visionary leaders who are able to move the city forward.

• Promotes cohesive and engaged communities: The importance of building social cohesion and encouraging community participation in finding innovative and locally-relevant solutions was highlighted.

• Ensures continuity of critical services: Stakeholders emphasised the need for maintenance of assets (mostly in relation to water supply and waste water infrastructure) as well as the importance of protecting and maintaining ecological infrastructure, particularly in relation to addressing the city’s growing water crisis.

• Maintains and enhances protective natural and man-made assets: Issues that were highlighted included the foundational role of ecological infrastructure in supporting human wellbeing and development. Specific concerns related to environmental degradation, pollution, the need for improved environmental awareness amongst Durban’s citizens, the importance of securing water supply and the challenge of addressing climate change.

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Consolidated outcomesThe graphs (Figure 5) below (outputs from the Resilience Perceptions Assessment Tool) depict the consolidated stakeholder feedback generated by entering the resilience perspectives from the various engagements into the Resilience Perceptions Assessment template.

Figure 5: Consolidated resilience issues emerging from the community perspectives snapshot, expert interviews and workshops

Providing a critique of the Resilience Perceptions Assessment Tool and the City Resilience Framework (CRF)

Critique of the Resilience Perceptions Assessment ToolThe Resilience Perceptions Assessment Tool provided a means to consolidate and reflect on the high level resilience issues emerging from the scoping phase of Durban’s 100 RC Programme. Despite its usefulness however, a number of challenges were experienced in using the tool.

• Some of the issues raised by Durban stakeholders could not be aligned with the CRF drivers and sub-drivers that are the basis of the tool:

Inequality: It might be suggested that the issue of inequality could be linked to Driver 6 (fosters economic prosperity). However, while inequality is linked at some level to economic prosperity it is, increasingly being recognised as a separate issue that focuses more on the growing divide between the rich and the poor, rather than simply on economic growth, job opportunities and income. In many cases this divide continues to grow despite increased levels of employment. The high levels of inequality in Durban (Gini coefficient of 0.63) are partly symptomatic of the country’s political history and will thus require specific and targeted interventions to address the challenges.

Politics: The issue of politics could be linked to Driver 10 (promotes leadership and effective management) of the CRF. However, the issue of politics (both party political politics and broader societal politics) is, extremely complex and is distinct from the issue of leadership as it often operates as a ‘parallel force’ that can over-ride existing leadership and governance processes and structures. This has significant implications for planning and decision-making in highly politicised cities like Durban. A specific focus on politics is necessary if this issue is to be adequately addressed.

Climate change: The issue of climate change could be linked with Driver 12 (fosters long term and integrated planning) or with Driver 7 (maintains and enhances protective natural and man-made assets) but this does not give it the required emphasis. Climate change is a major global and local challenge, particularly for Africa which is amongst the most vulnerable continents to climate change. Climate change adaption specifically is likely to be a key part of the resilience response for cities like Durban.

• The detail and depth of the resilience issue is lost through allocation to a specific CRF driver and sub-driver:

This became a major challenge in Durban because of the frequency with which important details from the stakeholder feedback were lost when allocated to a pre-defined driver and/or sub-driver. For example, issues such as drug and substance abuse could only be allocated to ‘enforcement’ and ‘policing’ sub-drivers (under Driver 5: Ensures social stability, security and justice). This, however, misses the fact that the root cause of such problems is in fact related to poverty, inequality and lack of employment. The essence of the societal resilience challenge highlighted by an issue such as drug abuse and related crime is therefore completely lost.

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• Empowers a broad range of stakeholders: Concern was expressed that Durban’s citizens are currently disempowered and that the growing dependency of society on government to solve problems and deliver services has undermined human resourcefulness and innovation. Other contributing factors include poor partnerships between government, business and communities and political ‘gatekeeping’. Stakeholders felt that improving levels of education and empowering citizens through capacity building and training would help to build more proactive engagement.

• Ensures public health services: Citizens emphasised the need to access adequate health care facilities within a reasonable distance from their homes and places of work.

Interestingly, citizens across all the groups involved in the scoping phase commented that the term ‘resilience’ had negative and defensive connotations, rather than signaling a positive or proactive response.

What is clear is that Durban faces a wide range of resilience challenges, from those that affect citizens at an individual level (e.g. basic services and livelihood opportunities) to community level challenges (e.g. addressing social cohesion) and systemic issues (e.g. sustainable transport, ecological viability, governance and leadership). Many of these are chronic stresses that have the potential to undermine the city’s resilience and to increase the impact of acute shocks. Use of the Resilience Perceptions Assessment tool to analyse the input of each group (i.e. community perspective snapshot, expert interviews and the Resilience Agenda-setting Workshop) also showed that resilience priorities differ between stakeholder groups, with community members focusing primarily on issues such as basic service delivery, social cohesion and crime, and experts and local government officials placing greater emphasis on issues such as the need to strengthen integrated planning, governance and leadership. The relative lack of emphasis placed on the role of the natural environment in strengthening the city’s resilience suggests a poor understanding of the critical role of the natural environment in ensuring resilience.

“Durban faces a wide range of resilience challenges”

The need for active critique of new tools and approaches in terms of their relevance to the Durban context

In cities like Durban, decisions tend to be reactive rather than strategic. This is because the need is large, the pressures to meet basic needs are significant and as a result the emphasis tends to be on short term implementation rather than on considered and strategic decision-making. The process of developing Durban’s Resilience Strategy must be alive to this reality and ensure that the approaches adopted to strategy development allow some of these existing shortfalls to be addressed rather than reinforced. This will require a critical analysis of the approach proposed for all stages of the strategy development process, including the prescribed tools that have been developed.

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Similarly for ‘environmental preservation’, although there are drivers that indirectly address the natural environment (Driver 7: Maintains and enhances protective natural and manmade assets and Driver 8: Ensures continuity of critical services) its inclusion with man-made infrastructure and assets makes it difficult to distinguish the specific issues that are of concern to stakeholders.

• The level of subjectivity employed in allocating resilience issues to drivers and sub-drivers:

The process of allocating stakeholder feedback to drivers and sub-drivers is highly subjective and context specific. For example, the issue of informal housing could be allocated to the ‘housing’ sub-driver under Driver 1 (Meets basic needs) or to the ‘strategies and plans’ sub driver under Driver 12 (Fosters long-term and integrated planning) depending on whether one sees the issue as one of formal housing provision, or whether the issue is one that requires a reappraisal of how informality is treated within the context of an emerging African urbanism. In a similar way, the issue of water scarcity could be allocated to the ‘water’ sub-driver under Driver 1 (Meets basic services) or to the ‘ecosystem management’ sub-driver under Driver 8 (Ensures continuity of critical services) depending on the way the resilience challenge is interpreted.

Early critique of the City Resilience Framework (CRF)The practical challenges in using the Resilience Perceptions Assessment Tool point to some key challenges associated with the current structure of the 100RC CRF and its drivers and sub-drivers. Apart from the points raised above, additional concerns regarding the CRF are outlined below:

• Drivers and sub-drivers are presented in a ‘sectoral’ way: This means that the CRF does not speak to the complexity and inter-relatedness of many resilience issues. For example, many of the issues that undermine social cohesion and stability (e.g. drug-related crime and prostitution) are deeply rooted in issues relating to livelihoods and inequality. Challenges of basic service provision are closely related to challenges such as urbanisation, population growth and the decline of the natural resource base, all of which are linked to long-term and integrated planning. The CRF tends to simplify a series of very complex and connected issues in a way that prevents an adequate description of the typology of resilience challenges facing the city.

• Environment is missing as a critical foundational element in the CRF: The CRF currently frames the natural environment as a sub-component within drivers that focus predominantly on infrastructure and manufactured services, rather than recognising the natural environment as a critical foundational element that underpins all human wellbeing,

development and resilience. Global research indicates that the last 50 years have seen the most rapid transformation of the human relationship with the natural world in the history of humankind (Steffen et al., 2004: 131). In order to build resilience, society and the economy need to develop within the limits of earth’s life supporting systems (Steffen et al 2015). Despite this, the feedback from the stakeholder engagement ‘scoping’ exercise revealed that Durban’s citizens were not as concerned with system issues such as the natural environment. The environmental ‘oversight’ in the CRF is therefore similarly reflected in local societal perspectives – and represents a major conceptual shortfall in both.

• Ordering the drivers: One of the conceptual challenges of the CRF is that it infers that all drivers are equal in influence and impact. This, however, does not mirror the reality on the ground. As an example, ‘bold and visionary leadership’ is an essential prerequisite to meeting many other resilience challenges. Similarly, addressing fundamental governance issues such as improving the way in which government engages citizens and involves them in planning and decision-making could support and enhance resilience efforts in other areas. From an implementation perspective, such issues should be prioritised over those that are less catalytic.

Completing the City Resilience Actions Inventory

The methodologyThe City Resilience Actions Inventory was developed to help member cities identify existing plans, programmes, practices and initiatives that contribute to building resilience in the city. The CRO and Project Management Team used eThekwini Municipality’s Integrated Development Plan or ‘IDP’ (2012-2017)7 as the basis for populating the City Resilience Actions Inventory. The IDP contains an 8 point plan which includes a comprehensive list of plans, strategies and programmes covering the economy, society, the natural and built environment, finance and governance in Durban. The relevance of each of the plans, strategies and programmes in the IDP was assessed in terms of whether they addressed the resilience issues highlighted by the city’s stakeholders during the scoping phase. These resilience issues included basic service provision, livelihood opportunities, social cohesion, engaged citizens, environment, infrastructure, governance, leadership and financial and knowledge systems and are elaborated further in the next section. On this basis, a total of 43 out of 83 programmes, policies and actions in the IDP were included in the City Resilience Actions Inventory Tool.

7 In South Africa local governments are legally mandated to compile IDPs which outline the development priorities of the municipality over a five year period.

The outputsThe outputs from the City Resilience Actions Inventory tool (Figure 6) indicate that most of the city’s actions are focused on four key areas: ‘Fostering economic prosperity’, ‘Ensuring the continuity of critical services’, ‘Meeting basic needs’ and ‘Supporting livelihoods and employment’. This correlates well with the outputs from the Resilience Perceptions Assessment tool where these same focus areas emerged strongly. For most of the remaining drivers, there is also a correlation between the number of plans, programmes and strategies in the IDP and the level of priority that was assigned to these issues by stakeholders. An interesting exception relates to ‘Ensuring stability, security and justice.’ Although stakeholders ranked this issue highest on the list of resilience issues for Durban (particularly because of the city’s high levels of crime), this is not similarly prioritised in the city’s actions, with there being relatively few policies, strategies and programmes that specifically address this issue.

Critique of the City Resilience Actions InventoryAlthough the City Resilience Actions Inventory provided a useful way of collating data relating to city policies, strategies and actions, there were a number of challenges:

• Inherent subjectivity in adjudicating what is included or excluded: It is impossible to capture the full range of plans, programmes, practices and initiatives in the city that might be relevant to the CRF drivers and sub-drivers. A high level of subjectivity is therefore involved in determining the detail to be captured and whether it is appropriate to include initiatives and actions undertaken by non-governmental stakeholders. In Durban, a decision was made to focus only on government actions given the limited time and resources available.

• The level of influence of policies, plans and actions: There is no distinction made between the differing levels of impacts and influence of various policies, plans and actions. The tool also does not take into account that some policies and plans are not being implemented, or are being undermined by conflicting priorities in the city.

• Ongoing challenges linked to the structuring of the CRF: As highlighted in the previous section, there are a number of challenges with the way in which the CRF is structured. These same issues carry through into the use of tools such as the City Resilience Actions Inventory which are based on the CRF. This limits the ability to correlate actions with the context-specific resilience issues that have been identified.

These limitations raise questions about the outcomes of both the Resilience Perceptions Assessment and the City Resilience Actions Inventory and their reliability and relevance in identifying focus areas for Durban’s Resilience Strategy.

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Figure 6: The output from the City Resilience Actions Inventory Tool in Durban

Consolidating the emerging resilience issues in Durban

Given the challenges experienced in using the Resilience Perceptions Assessment Tool and the City Resilience Actions Inventory Tool, it was agreed that using the CRF as the framework for capturing and categorising the resilience issues raised in Durban would not provide an accurate representation of the full range of issues identified and would result in important details being lost.

An alternative approach was therefore developed in order to address these limitations. The elements of this approach are described below:

• Local data analysis: In order to deepen the understanding of the issues raised by Durban’s citizens, local datasets were interrogated to determine if the resilience challenges raised could be confirmed by trends in the available and relevant data sets.

• Global trends research: To further triangulate around these local issues, Dalberg was

commissioned to explore key emerging global trends in the governance, environment, social and economic arenas, to confirm if similar issues were highlighted at the global level and to determine if global responses provided clues about how these issues could be responded to in Durban.

• Consolidation into a ‘Resilience Narrative’ for Durban: The resilience issues that were

identified during the scoping phase, together with the insights gained from the local and global research, were then incorporated into a ‘Resilience Narrative’.

• Development of summary infographics: The Resilience Narrative was used to inform the development of ten summary ‘infographics’ that were grouped according to whether they affected individuals, communities or systems. These were used as the basis for a second and more detailed phase of stakeholder engagement and are summarised below.

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Durbans Resilience Infographics

Individual resilience: Access to basic servicesWhile there has been significant investment in the provision of basic services in Durban there are still growing backlogs, with the exception of water provision at the household level. This has significant implications for resilience at the level of the individual. The backlogs could be attributed to factors such as urbanisation and natural population growth. A key challenge is whether the ongoing provision of free basic services is financially sustainable. These trends are also reflected at a global scale.

“There are still growing backlogs”

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Community resilience: Rebuilding a fractured societyDespite the improved employment rates, there are high levels of inequality and vulnerability in Durban. As an example, the number of child-headed households doubled between 2001 and 2011. Crime also has a significant and negative influence on society and, although cases of violent crime appear to have decreased, issues such as drug-related crime have increased. Globally, inequality is currently one of the most debated issues because of the recognition that the greater the inequality in society, the greater the threat to economic development, governance, political stability and individuals’ sense of fulfilment. A global trend towards rising conservatism and nationalism has also led to increased xenophobia. Rebuilding social cohesion is therefore seen to be a key factor in enhancing Durban’s resilience.

Individual resilience: Access to livelihood opportunitiesAlthough the unemployment rate appears to have decreased, Durban still has the highest percentage of people living in poverty of any of the major cities in South Africa and this is seen to be a key factor in undermining resilience. A recent study commissioned by the eThekwini Municipality also indicates that Durban has generally been less successful in retaining or attracting adults with higher levels of education. This loss of skilled personnel could have a significant impact in curtailing the level of innovation needed for Durban to address its multiple developmental challenges. An important consideration going forward relates to the future nature of Durban’s economy. Globally, there are also moves to consider new forms of economy. The growth of the Green Economy, for example, is an important global trend and indicates an effort to decouple economic growth from resource consumption. There are also growing global debates regarding the usefulness of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as an indicator of development and whether alternative indicators that focus more on human wellbeing (and that also include a consideration of natural capital) should be used.

“Globally, there are also moves to consider new forms of economy.”

“There are high levels of inequality and vulnerability in Durban.”

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System resilience: EnvironmentThe natural environment is recognised by Durban’s citizens as playing a critical and foundational role in supporting human wellbeing and development and in helping cities to adapt to climate change. On-going development pressures threaten this system and the ecosystem services it provides (e.g. water supply), with 54% of the municipal area already having been transformed. This has significant implications for the poor and vulnerable who are reliant on nature’s services for their survival. Ensuring a sustainable supply of water and water quality is also a significant challenge in Durban and is a major factor in potentially undermining Durban’s future resilience. The impacts of climate change are likely to impact and exacerbate this situation with changes in temperature and rainfall affecting water availability and food security. At a global scale, global science suggests that thresholds have already been exceeded for both biodiversity and climate change which could have significant consequences for planetary health.

Community resilience: Promoting active and engaged citizensCitizens are increasingly frustrated with systems that do not facilitate human resourcefulness, community-led innovation, creativity and access to decision-making. In a society facing significant challenges, enhancing the ability of people to engage in governance processes and to find solutions to the problems they face, will be an important part of building societal resilience. Globally, there is a trend towards a much more active and engaged citizenry, particularly around economic issues and inequality. This has been facilitated in a significant way by the rise of social media.

“Thresholds have already been exceeded for both biodiversity and climate change”

“Citizens are increasingly frustrated with systems that do not facilitate human resourcefulness”

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System resilience: GovernanceThere is a strong sense from Durban’s citizens that governance plays a critical role in supporting or undermining resilience efforts. In this regard, there is a need to re-think the nature of governance in Durban, from the way in which local government interacts and rebuilds trust with citizens, to looking critically at the role of politics in influencing strategic decision-making. Partnerships will also play a particularly important role in building resilience. Globally there is a rise in citizen movements and different forms of engagement between government and civil society.

System resilience: Reliable infrastructureEnhanced access to reliable and affordable transport and energy security are seen as key to resilience in Durban. Reliable and sustainable transport systems allow people to connect in an inexpensive way with other parts of the city to access jobs and work opportunities. Of concern is that the average trip length for private and public vehicles has increased and there is a perception that the cost of transport is high. Global trends indicate moves towards eco-mobility and the use of regional energy pools to address sustainability challenges in these areas.

“There is a need to re-think the nature of governance in Durban”

“Reliable and sustainable transport systems allow people to connect”

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System resilience: Knowledge systemsKnowledge, data and information play a key role in informing planning and decision-making. There is recognition amongst Durban’s citizens that these areas will need to be strengthened and better integrated in order to ensure proper monitoring and evaluation of city progress as part of building resilience. Globally these ideas are reflected in a growing focus on “Big data” and the role of citizen science in informing planning and decision making.

System resilience: Financial systemsThere are growing financial challenges in balancing and sustaining property rates income, grant funding and service provision related to expenditure. The questionable sustainability of the city’s current financial policies and systems is seen to be a key factor in potentially undermining Durban’s resilience and there is a need to determine whether there are different ways in which this challenge could be addressed. At a global scale the economic recession exacerbates these local impacts and many developing countries are challenging financial institutions to find new alternatives and financing mechanisms.

“Questionable sustainability of the city’s current financial policies”

“Knowledge, data and information play a key role in informing and planning and decision-making”

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• EARLY SCOPING CAN PROVIDE CRITICAL INSIGHTS: Speaking to Durban’s citizens early in the process provided an indication that Durban’s resilience priorities would focus on a range of chronic socio-economic and environmental stresses rather than extreme events or disasters. These insights have since informed the strategy development process and the related stakeholder engagement processes.

• DEVELOPING A MEANINGFUL STRATEGY REQUIRES FLEXIBILITY: The original submission to 100RC focused predominantly on the need to explore the water-biodiversity-climate nexus as a key part of Durban’s Resilience Strategy. It soon became evident that the scope of Durban’s resilience work would need to be significantly broader and this has required a modification of the programme’s direction. This flexibility has been critical in ensuring that the Resilience Strategy is properly reflective of the broad systemic resilience challenges in Durban.

• ADOPTING A CRITICAL APPROACH CAN REVEAL IMPORTANT INSIGHTS: Thorough critique and analysis of the conceptual framework and analytical tools used in understanding the resilience challenge can reveal context specific and nuanced resilience issues within each city.

About 100RC:

• GENERIC ‘ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL’ TOOLS HAVE LIMITED USEFULNESS: There is a limit to the usefulness of generic tools. In the Durban case, the Resilience Perceptions Assessment tool was useful in collating information and in providing high-level guidance on possible resilience issues. It did not, however, allow for all context specific insights to be captured and this was determined to be detrimental to the strategy development process.

What Did We Learn?

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System resilience: LeadershipA very different future requires leadership that is able to listen to and engage with a range of issues and perspectives, make difficult (and sometimes unpopular) decisions, often with very little precedent to follow. Such a skills set needs to be enhanced and developed in current and future leaders in order to enhance Durban’s resilience. This trend is reflected in a growing global questioning of leadership.

“Different future requires leadership that is able to listen to and engage, make difficult (and sometimes unpopular) decisions”

Prioritising Resilience Issues in Durban: Stakeholder Engagement


STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT


The scoping process highlighted a range of resilience issues that were considered significant by Durban’s citizens. The subsequent stakeholder engagement step was initiated to build out from this initial understanding and to gather deeper insights from a broad range of stakeholders in order to identify any gaps and to help determine what the resilience priorities of the city might be.

The outcomes of this deeper engagement confirmed the observation made during the scoping process that, in an evolving socio-institutional context such as Durban, resilience is about dealing with chronic stresses and deep systemic challenges that affect the basic functioning of society rather than about addressing stochastic shocks and discrete sectoral issues. The resilience issues that were prioritised during this process were clustered into six resilience focus areas namely: Bold and Participatory Governance, Knowledge-centred City, Innovative Place-making, Sustainable and Ecological City, Catalytic and Transformative Economy and Equitable and Inclusive Society. Through the process of analysing stakeholder feedback, it also became clear that it was not possible to prioritise one resilience issue over another – they are all interconnected and therefore will all have to be addressed in order to build a functional urban system and address the significant resilience deficit in the city.

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3 Prioritising Resilience Issues in Durban:

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Engaging with stakeholders

The purpose of the stakeholder engagement (conducted between March and May 2015) was to provide stakeholders with background to Durban’s participation in 100RC, share key resilience issues identified by stakeholders during the scoping phase and to discuss (a) the possible gaps in the issues identified and (b) the possible resilience priorities to be addressed in Durban’s Resilience Strategy.

In order to ensure that the consultation process was comprehensive, a stakeholder mapping exercise was undertaken to understand the range of stakeholders in Durban that would need to be consulted and what forums existed to facilitate this. A range of stakeholder groups (including traditional leaders, city departments, non-governmental organisations, academic institutions, the private sector and political representatives) were identified (Table 2). In some instances, dedicated workshops were held, while in others existing forums and meetings were used for consultation. The first three groups listed in the table were consulted prior to the initial formal stakeholder engagement process in order to keep them informed of the process and to test the presentation and facilitation plans. Detailed minutes were captured at each meeting and these became the basis for a comprehensive analysis of the stakeholder feedback.

What Did We Do?

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Engaging stakeholders in Durban: the challenges of a diverse city with ‘engagement fatigue’

Durban is a diverse city with a number of stakeholder groups. It is also a divided city with high levels of inequality. Stakeholder engagement therefore needs to be broad in order to take these differences into account and to ensure a degree of representivity in discussions. What is also important in the Durban context is that citizens are involved in numerous engagement processes because of the emphasis that has been placed on consultation and participation in the post-1994 period in South Africa. Many of these have, however, not generated significant changes in peoples’ day-to-day realities, leading to despondency and a lack of trust in such processes. As a result, ‘stakeholder engagement fatigue’ is a real challenge in the city. This has significant implications for how the Project Management Team engages with such groups in future phases of 100RC.

Prioritising Resilience Issues in Durban: Stakeholder EngagementPrioritising Resilience Issues in Durban: Stakeholder Engagement


Table 2: A summary of the stakeholder groups consulted between March and May 2015

STAKEHOLDER GROUP AND DESCRIPTION

The City Planning CommissionThe City Planning Commission (CPC) was established to act as an advisory think tank to the city’s leadership and administration. The CPC comprises 17 city commissioners from various sectors in Durban, including business, civil society, academia and planning. The CPC has been tasked to develop a long term plan for Durban based on the priorities of South Africa’s National Development Plan.

Biodiversity Forum The Biodiversity Forum represents a broad range of local stakeholders who are engaged in the conservation and management of biodiversity in Durban.

EThekwini Municipality’s Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Department The 100RC Project Management Team is based in this department and this workshop was used to test the workshop process and facilitation.

KwaZulu-Natal Inter-religious Council A provincially based forum made up of representatives from different faith groups.

Women’s GroupsThe Commission for Gender Equality, Agenda Feminist Media and other Women’s representative groups from Durban.

Academia Durban based university and research institutions were invited to attend, including University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), Durban University of Technology (DUT), Mangosuthu University of Technology (MUT), the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), University of South Africa (UNISA), University of Zululand, DUT’s Urban Future’s Centre.

100RC Local Government Technical Meeting A cross cutting group of approximately 30 eThekwini Municipality officials from different departments were invited to attend this workshop.

Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (DCCI) Non-profit Organisations Forum A forum for Durban-based Non-profit organisations with varied interests.

KwaZulu-Natal Environmental Network A progressive environmental group in its infancy. Includes organisations like Earthlife, Groundwork and the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance.

EThekwini Conservancies Network (ECN)ECN is comprised of 25 registered conservancies in eThekwini Municipality.

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Economic Development Committee MeetingThe 100RC CRO and Project Management Team report to the Economic Development Committee, which is a political committee comprising 30 councillors. The committee is chaired by the Deputy Mayor and meets monthly.

Informal economy representative groupsThis group consists of organisations that work actively with informal traders including Asiye eTafuleni, Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) and Street Net.

Inanda Ntuzuma and KwaMashu (INK) Public MeetingA public meeting was held with key NGOs in the INK Area Based Management District. The INK area is made up of three former township areas and is regarded as a priority area for development under the city’s Area Based Management (ABM) Programme.

Informal human settlements representative groupsThis group consists of organisations that work actively with people living in informal settlements including the Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC) and the Federation of the Urban and Rural Poor (FEDUP).

Traditional Leaders Meeting Durban has a dual governance system: a formal system and a traditional system. The traditional leaders play a key role in managing some of the rural and peri-urban areas in Durban. This meeting was convened in the Abathembu Traditional Authority area and was attended by the local Inkosi (Chief), Induna (Headman/advisor) and tribal authority representative.

Strategic Management Executive TeamA city leadership meeting attended by the six Deputy City Managers of eThekwini Municipality and chaired by the City Manager.

Durban Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Business ForumThe Economic Affairs Committee of the Durban Chamber of Commerce is made up of representatives from various businesses in Durban.

Pinetown Public MeetingThis meeting was set up by eThekwini Municipality’s Community Participation Unit which is responsible for engaging with public stakeholders on behalf of the Municipality.

The CreativesThis meeting was attended by artists, writers, sculptors and architects based in Durban.

Diakonia Council of Churches The Diakonia Council of Churches represents a number of Christian churches from Durban.

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A presentation was developed which formed the basis of the stakeholder engagement and structured the more detailed discussions. This presentation included the ten infographics depicting the resilience issues from the scoping phase and questions focused on identifying gaps and emerging resilience priorities.

Analysing the outcomes: Key resilience issues

Following the stakeholder meetings, the CRO and Project Management Team discussed how to consolidate the extensive comments and multiple issues raised by the stakeholders and captured in the detailed minutes of each workshop. Prior experience with the city’s climate change work suggested that social science tools could be useful in helping structure and order the feedback. Subsequent discussions with a local university resulted in ‘discourse analysis’ being suggested as a useful way of bringing a level of theoretical analysis into the work and helping the CRO and Project Management Team understand the key ideas and concepts framing the different resilience arguments raised. The team subsequently approached a Durban-based planning and environmental consultant familiar with Hajer’s discourse analysis methodology (Hajer, 1995) to assist the team in undertaking a detailed discourse analysis of the stakeholder meeting minutes.

“Social science tools could be useful in helping structure and order the feedback”

Discourse analysis of stakeholder meetingsA discourse approach to the development of environmental policy, in this case the development of the Resilience Strategy, is based on the premise that policy-making is a not a straightforward sequential activity, but is political. This means that policy-making involves a wide range of actors with diverse and often competing viewpoints or arguments (discourses), some of which may be more widely supported or more powerful than others. Hajer’s argumentative discourse analysis approach provides a methodology to review the discourse of stakeholders (as expressed in the stakeholder meetings) to determine the dominant stakeholder views and perspectives, which can then be used to shape the strategy development process going forward.

The discourse analysis involved a review of the minutes of the stakeholder meetings to identify three key elements or ‘terms of policy discourse’: epistemic notions, policy vocabularies and storylines (Hajer, 1995). Epistemic notions are dominant ideas or concepts that influence policy formation, but without being specifically formulated for that purpose. These broadly applicable ideas can be appropriated by a range of policies and stakeholders in different fields. In contrast, policy vocabularies are concepts that have been deliberately crafted within specific disciplines or policy fields to provide the conceptual basis of a policy. Storylines are arguably the most powerful of the terms of policy discourse. These are short narratives that “help people to fit their bit of knowledge, experience or expertise into the larger jigsaw of a policy debate” (Hajer, 1993: 104). For the purpose of the 100RC analysis of stakeholder meetings, storylines were defined more narrowly as a short argument or point of view on an issue. Some of these storylines are shared by a range of stakeholders, while others may only represent the view of a small set of stakeholders.

Following a training session by the consultant on the discourse analysis methodology, the Project Management Team and the Secretariat worked on the initial stage of the discourse analysis. This involved working through each of the minutes of the stakeholder meetings to identify epistemic notions, policy vocabularies and storylines. Ultimately, these were consolidated across all stakeholder groups and refined into thematic areas in one master spreadsheet. These in turn have been translated into the key resilience issues for the Resilience Strategy. A summary report was developed for each resilience issue and also for each of the stakeholder groups that were engaged.

Key resilience issues for DurbanThe process of discourse analysis revealed sixteen key resilience issues for Durban:

Resilience Issue 1: LeadershipBold and ethical leadership is required to engage with the wide range of issues and perspectives affecting Durban and to make decisions that are in the best short- and long-term interests of the city and its citizens. Leadership issues were raised by stakeholders from the government, civil society, academia, business, and public and city leadership groups. The main views expressed by stakeholders relating to leadership in Durban were:

• Leaders need to be bold, visionary, strategic, responsive, value-based and informed• The capacity of leaders needs to be enhanced• Champions need to be identified to drive the resilience message in Durban• The youth must be capacitated to become future leaders.

Resilience Issue 2: Governing systemsThe critical role that governing systems play in supporting or undermining city resilience was identified by a range of stakeholders. Governing systems was raised as an issue by stakeholders from government, civil society, academia, business, and public and city leadership groups. The main views expressed by stakeholders relating to governing systems in Durban were:

• The importance of aligning city policy and legislation with national and international policy and legislation

• Challenges linked to current institutional structures, including the dual governance system (i.e. formal and traditional)

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“Bold and ethical leadership is required”

Resilience Issue 4: InnovationThe city needs to be proactive in promoting innovation and in encouraging the development of alternative approaches to address current and future challenges and opportunities. Often innovation is born out of necessity when cities are exposed to stresses and shocks. In other instances, citizens themselves demonstrate innovation in the way they respond to societal pressures, such as unemployment and crime. Innovation was raised as an issue by stakeholders from academia, civil society and government. The main views expressed by stakeholders regarding innovation in Durban related to:

• The need to adopt an innovative approach to a changing city• The need to look proactively for ways to facilitate innovation in Durban• The need to recognise that individuals in Durban are innovative and have already demonstrated

their ability to respond to change in creative and innovative ways.

Resilience Issue 5: Information and knowledgeThe value of information and knowledge in building an understanding of resilience and directing appropriate action was raised as an issue by stakeholders from civil society, business, the public, government and city leadership groups. The main views expressed by stakeholders regarding information and knowledge were:

• The importance of providing equal access to information for all citizens• The importance of knowledge and information sharing between different sectors and groups• That existing data and research gaps need to be further explored in order to better inform

planning and decision-making in Durban.

Resilience Issue 6: Education and capacity buildingThe importance of education and capacity building as a foundational element in developing Durban’s resilience was highlighted by a number of stakeholders. Education and capacity building was raised as an issue by stakeholders from the government, civil society, academia, business, public and city leadership groups. The main views expressed by stakeholders regarding education and capacity building in Durban were:

• The need to provide training for political leaders• The importance of capacitating local government officials to make better decisions• The need to capacitate communities as a means to support self-sufficiency• The importance of raising community awareness around the consequences of their decisions• The need to focus on the youth as a key group to educate and capacitate • The importance of highlighting the loss of skilled people from Durban to other cities nationally

and abroad as a key threat to resilience.

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• Challenges linked to the institutional systems of eThekwini Municipality that are perceived to be inaccessible to stakeholders

• The recognition of an internal disconnect between local government departments and between local government officials and councillors which has impacted on city management

• Poor enforcement of legislation and city-bylaws• The need for improved and sustainable financial systems• The disconnect between eThekwini Municipality officials and leadership and various city

stakeholders which has resulted in growing mistrust between citizens and government• Higher levels of protest relating to the city’s inability to respond to the needs of its citizens• City governance systems that have made citizens dependent on the state and undermined

human creativity and resourcefulness• The value of developing partnerships in order to develop an integrated response to resilience• The role of citizens in decision-making and in active urban management.

Resilience Issue 3: Stakeholder engagementStakeholder engagement in city processes and decision-making is an important part of a democracy. Citizens require accessible and equitable platforms to be able to interact with the state to advocate for their needs to be addressed and to contribute to developing a more resilient society. The need for such engagement was raised as an issue by stakeholders from the academia, government, civil society, business, and public and city leadership groups as a key resilience issue. The main views expressed by stakeholders regarding stakeholder engagement in Durban were:

• The value of stakeholder engagement in informing city decision-making and developing creative responses

• The importance of representative engagement platforms in promoting dialogue and problem solving

• The contribution of community engagement to empowering citizens • The poor state of communication between local government and its citizens• The insufficiency and ineffectiveness of existing engagement processes • The need to capacitate communities to engage effectively with local government, for example

in planning and budgeting processes.

“The city needs to be proactive in promoting innovation”

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Resilience Issue 7: African urbanismThere was a clear call from stakeholders for a distinct ‘African urbanism’ and for Durban, as an African city, to respond to its challenges in ways that are context specific and not modelled only on the experiences of the developed world. African urbanism was raised as an issue by stakeholders from the civil society, academia, business, and public groups. The main views expressed by stakeholders regarding African urbanism in Durban related to:

• Addressing inequality in the post-apartheid era• Implementing context relevant development • Acknowledging informality as a valid form of development in Durban • Valuing Durban as a space of opportunity and creativity• Valuing tradition and culture.

Resilience Issue 8: Services and infrastructureDurban has seen significant improvements in the provision of services and infrastructure since 1994 and the advent of democracy. The infrastructure backlog is, however, still large, and in some cases increasing, with a significant portion of the population still not having access to quality housing, water, electricity and transportation services. Services and infrastructure was raised as an issue by stakeholders from government, civil society, academia, city leadership, and public groups. The main views expressed by stakeholders regarding services and infrastructure were:

• The need for the provision of basic services to all residents• The challenges relating to the provision of housing, transport, and water services• The need to develop sustainable infrastructure and services.

Resilience Issue 9: Spatial planningAlthough racially based spatial planning no longer exists in South Africa, social divisions are still a reality and Durban remains a segregated city. Spatial planning was raised as an issue by stakeholders from government, civil society, business, public, and city leadership groups. The main views raised by stakeholders relating to spatial planning processes were:

• The impact of rural-urban processes related to development and rising urbanisation• The need to address inequality in the way the city is developed• The need to ensure that a locally informed approach to planning is adopted• The need to focus on integrated community development to promote social integration • The opportunity for public spaces to contribute towards societal interaction, safety and social

cohesion.

Resilience Issue 10: Arts and cultureArts and culture have an important role to play in building social cohesion and identity in a city. Arts and culture was raised as an issue by civil society groups. The main views expressed by stakeholders regarding arts and culture related to:

• The lack of prioritisation of arts and culture in Durban• The exclusion of the creative sector in decision-making• The need to acknowledge the city as a space of opportunity

and creativity.

Resilience Issue 11: EnvironmentThe natural environment plays a critical role in underpinning human wellbeing and sustaining development in Durban. It is also critical in increasing the adaptive capacity of the city and its people in relation to the challenges posed by global environmental change. More than 54% of Durban’s municipal area has been developed and the remaining natural ecosystems continue to be impacted and to decrease in spatial coverage. This threatens the sustainable supply of important ecosystem services, such as flood attenuation and water supply. The environment was raised as an issue by stakeholders from government, civil society, public, business, and city leadership groups. The main views expressed by stakeholders were:

• The need to recognise the importance of the environment as a foundational element of a resilient city• The need to incorporate the environment and sustainability into policy and legislation • The need to acknowledge the threat of climate change to Durban’s future resilience • The challenges relating to securing water resources and ensuring good water quality • The need to facilitate recycling and good waste management practices• The opportunity of environmental education to improve Durban residents’ understanding of the

value of natural resources and the services they provide to society as a whole.

“Arts and culture have an important role to play in building social cohesion”

“There was a call from stakeholders for a distinct ‘African urbanism’” (Source: The Mercury, 2015)

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Resilience Issue 12: EconomyEconomic development and the associated job creation is a key focus area of national and local government. Although the latest Census 2011 statistics suggest that unemployment rates in Durban have decreased, the city still has a higher unemployment rate than the other metropolitan municipalities in South Africa and faces ongoing challenges in the creation of decent jobs. The economy was raised as an issue by stakeholders from government, civil society, academia, business, and city leadership groups. The main views expressed by stakeholders regarding the economy were:

• The importance of the economy in creating livelihood and employment opportunities • The need for the development of an alternative economic model that benefits all residents • The need for a focus on green business opportunities and the development of the green

economy• The importance of valuing the role of the informal economy in providing employment

opportunities • The need to focus on both big and small business development• The need to promote local economic growth• The opportunity to facilitate access to resources, including land, to improve wellbeing • The need to provide support to women and vulnerable groups to access economic opportunities.

Resilience Issue 13: Social cohesionDurban’s history of segregation and racism is still apparent and high levels of inequality continue to divide society. Further work is required to promote social cohesion. Social cohesion was raised as an issue by stakeholders from the government, civil society, business, and public and city leadership groups. The main views expressed by stakeholders regarding stakeholder cohesion were:

• The need to recognise that social cohesion is a foundational element for a resilient Durban• The need to develop a better understanding of the different barriers to social cohesion,

including socio-economic conditions, xenophobia and racism• The need to facilitate social cohesion to build city resilience.

Resilience Issue 14: InequalityDurban experiences high levels of inequality and global research indicates that there is a correlation between inequality and a variety of social ills. Inequality poses significant threats to Durban’s economic development, governance and political stability, affects personal fulfillment and undermines social cohesion. Inequality was raised as an issue by stakeholders from the civil society, public, and city leadership groups. The main views expressed by stakeholders regarding inequality related to:

• The importance of societal inequality in the resilience debate• The on-going existence of institutional inequality, particularly in relation to gender representivity.

Resilience Issue 15: GenderDespite significant progress in achieving gender equality (e.g. through legislative means), women are still marginalised and victimised in Durban and are not able to access the same resources and facilities as their male counterparts. Gender was raised as an issue by civil society groups. The main views expressed by stakeholders regarding gender were:

• The critical role women play in society and the need to include gender issues in Durban’s resilience strategy

• The importance of implementing progressive policy and legislation • The ongoing marginalisation of women• The ongoing victimisation of women• The importance of mainstreaming gender concerns into city policies and plans • The need to empower women to take responsibility for their actions and rights.

Resilience Issue 16: Societal valuesDurban’s stakeholders emphasised the importance of improved societal values in building a resilient city and noted the value of instilling morals and values in citizens from an early age. This issue was raised by stakeholders from the government, civil society, academia, business, and public and city leadership groups. The main views expressed by stakeholders regarding societal values were:

• The need to acknowledge that there is a decline in values and morals in Durban• The need to educate the city’s citizens regarding morals and values• The need to rebuild societal values through different role players such as religious and

traditional groups.

Consolidating Durban’s Resilience Focus Areas

Given Durban’s understanding that resilience is an integrative (rather than standalone) concept that increases the probability of retaining and enhancing strengths, incrementally improving existing systems and, where necessary, “bouncing forward” to a better state, it was not possible to prioritise one resilience issue over another. All the resilience issues raised by stakeholders therefore constitute important pieces of the ‘resilience jigsaw puzzle’ (see Figure 1).

A decision was therefore taken to carry all sixteen resilience issues forward into the next phase of the strategy development process. This was done through clustering the issues based on the linkages that exist between them. Six ‘Resilience Focus Areas’ were thus identified for Durban: Bold and Participatory Governance, Knowledge-centred City, Innovative Place-making, Sustainable and Ecological City, Catalytic and Transformative Economy and Equitable and Inclusive Society. It was also recognised that despite the alignment of many of the resilience issues, there were also inherent

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“Women are still marginalised and victimised in Durban”

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tensions between them and therefore these tensions were recorded. As an example, stakeholders argued that there is a need for a more active and engaged citizenry, but also raised concerns around high levels of political gatekeeping that limited opportunities for this to happen. Finally, a series of key questions were articulated for each Resilience Focus Area in order to provide provocations for future work in these areas.

The Resilience Focus Areas, resilience issues, tensions and ‘path-finding’ questions are summarised in Table 3.

Table 3: The Resilience Focus Areas, resilience issues, tensions and ‘path-finding’ questions.

RESILIENCE FOCUS AREA

RESILIENCE ISSUES

UNDERSTANDING THE RESILIENCE FOCUS AREA

POSSIBLE TENSIONS

POSSIBLE ‘PATH-FINDING’ QUESTIONS FOR PHASE 2

Bold and Participatory Governance

There is a need for bold, visionary and capacitated leadership that facilitates effective and inclusive governance. Leadership needs to come from all parts of society (traditional leadership, youth and community members) and there is a need to actively seek out, empower and build leaders who can meet the challenges of the 21st Century and encourage an active citizenry. Government needs to be accessible, accountable and coordinated to rebuild trust with citizens and facilitate participatory governance.

‘It is important to rebuild trust in governance. Citizens should view government as an institution that serves the public.’ (Business)

‘Politicians need to be brave and make the decisions that may not be popular in the short-term but which will have important long-term implications.’ (Local government)

‘EThekwini Municipality is fearful of engaging with stakeholders. There is a need for platforms to be opened up for eThekwini Municipality to debate key issues.’ (Academia)

• How do we build future leaders who are capacitated to meet the significant challenges of the 21st Century?• What are the new skills that local government needs to translate ideas into action?• How do we bridge the gap between traditional and City Hall governance?• How do we rebuild the ability of government to interact meaningfully with citizens?• What platforms already exist that might help facilitate this process of rebuilding engagement and trust?• How do we de-politicise governance?

Tension 1:There is a need for a society where everyone leads but political gatekeeping often reduces opportunities for citizens to engage in processes and access opportunities.

Tension 2:High levels of dependency of citizens on government reduce the ability for self-organisation and resourcefulness.

RESILIENCE ISSUES


RESILIENCE ISSUES




POSSIBLE TENSIONS

POSSIBLE TENSIONS



Innovative Place-making

African urbanism | Services and Infrastructure | Spatial planning | Arts and culture

Knowledge-centred City

Innovation | Information and Knowledge | Education and capacity building

How we think about innovative place-making is key to informing the city’s development path. There is a need to realise the unique opportunity provided by Africa’s urban transition to build cities that are integrated, promote equality and that link sustainably with their rural hinterlands. A key part of this involves finding ways to address informality in a way that responds to its challenges and builds on its opportunities, as well as acknowledging the need to create a financially and environmentally sustainable development path. There is also a need to recognise that innovative place-making is not just about physical space but also about facilitating spaces for creativity and human expression. Small, locally based interventions can be catalytic within this context.

‘There is a need to acknowledge that Durban is an African city that requires different responses to development.’ (Civil society)

‘Approach things differently – There is a need to break the mould, one can’t keep responding in the same way and expect a different outcome.’ (Civil society)

In order to innovate around 21st Century challenges and to drive a transformative African urban agenda that is bold enough to consider alternative approaches, citizens need equal access to knowledge, information and capacity building across a range of areas. Equally, there is a need to address data gaps and move towards evidence-based decision-making that drives informed strategic planning. Fundamental to success is the need to ensure sufficient capacity in local government and in society. This requires an active focus on foundational education and on active skills retention in the city.

‘Innovation is needed to respond to a very different world.’ (Civil society)

‘There are many different sources of knowledge and information in Durban but it is very difficult to know how to access relevant knowledge and information.’ (Civil society)

‘Skilled people are not staying in Durban.’ (Academia)

• What does this new African urbanism look like when we translate it into spaces and plans?• What are the mechanisms to facilitate creativity and human expression through urban design?• What is the new financial model that facilitates sustainability and equity in service delivery?

• How do we as a city tap into global knowledge networks that can inform strategic decision-making?• How can we generate the data required for decision-making?• How can we make information and data accessible to all citizens and leadership?• How can we establish an understanding of the city’s current failure to attract and retain skills,

particularly amongst the youth?• What can the city do (if anything) to address the fundamental skills gaps in the youth and young graduates?

Tension 1:There is a need to acknowledge our African context as well as remaining responsive to global trends.

Tension 1:There is a tension between the need to have well managed and accountable systems (which can result in rigid policies) and the need to create a policy and legislative framework that facilitates innovation and experimentation.

Tension 3: There is a need to determine appropriate and financially sustainable development models in both urban and rural areas of the city.

Tension 2: There is a significant gap between what we traditionally understand a ‘good city’ to be and the reality of high levels of informality. How do we create space for this?

“It was not possible to prioritise one resilience issue over another”

Leadership | Stakeholder engagement | Governing systems

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RESILIENCE ISSUES

RESILIENCE ISSUES


POSSIBLE TENSIONS


Sustainable and Ecological City

Environment

Key challenges for Durban involve recognising the central role that the natural environment plays in the new African urbanism, centralising challenges like climate change in the development debate and harnessing the opportunities provided by the environment to improve wellbeing, build social and economic resilience, and provide cost-effective and sustainable responses to global environmental challenges.

‘The current city vision promotes economic and social development but does not include a focus on the environment.’ (Civil society)

‘Water is a scarce resource and the supply and quality of water has been identified as a crisis at a national and international level.’ (Civil society)

‘We need to protect our natural resources that provide us with ecosystem services, and we need to be able to respond quickly to issues that pose a threat to these services.’ (City leadership)

• What does an alternative development model that simultaneously promotes human wellbeing and respects environmental limits look like?

• How do we establish and articulate the foundational role of the natural environment as outlined in the National Sustainable Development Strategy?

• How can we bring the environment into the political agenda in a meaningful way?

Tension 1:The belief that built capital is a substitute for natural capital.

Tension 3: The need to simultaneously meet economic and environmental needs in the context of a developmental model that doesn’t facilitate this.

Tension 2: There is a tension between the need to invest now in protecting the natural environment (as a key component of our African urbanism) and the belief that it is possible to postpone dealing with environmental challenges until the development deficit has been dealt with.


RESILIENCE ISSUES


POSSIBLE TENSIONS


Equitable and Inclusive Society

Social cohesion | Inequality | Gender | Societal values

There are still significant social and economic divisions in Durban society, with many people feeling that they do not belong, that they are isolated from opportunities and that they are actively victimised. Bridging these divisions (across race, gender, sexual identity, ethnicity, religion, age and ability) and building a society that is founded on mutual respect and the rule of law, is a fundamental requirement in building societal strength and collectively responding to the challenges of the 21st Century.

‘There are still racial barriers that exist in Durban and people don’t always want to mix with people of different races. How do we take down racial barriers and get people to mix with each other? ‘ (Political leadership)

‘The recent xenophobic attacks are an outcry from communities, and are also indicative of the presence of deeper issues that are fuelling division in society.’ (NGO)

‘There is a poor understanding of gender issues in the eThekwini Municipality and a lack of gender mainstreaming in City policies.’ (Civil society)

• How can we create a city that promotes societal engagement and interaction through appropriate urban design?

• How do we engage all people in finding ways to improve gender equality?

Tension 1:The goal of building a united society is undermined by levels of inequality that are amongst the highest in the world.

Tension 2: It is difficult to build a new and cohesive society from a society that is still experiencing the effects of a long history of structural discrimination.


POSSIBLE TENSIONS


Catalytic and Transformative Economy

Economy

There is a need to create an economy that prioritises human wellbeing, decouples development from natural resource exploitation and localises opportunity through new patterns of economic growth. To create an economy that works for everyone, local government must enable a broad range of stakeholders (from informal to small and big business, including the creative industries) to realise opportunities, particularly for vulnerable groups.

‘A different economy needs to be developed that focuses on investment for everyone rather than on financial return only.’ (Civil society)

‘The informal sector cannot be ignored but rather needs to be better facilitated.’ (Local government)

‘Women require support to access the informal and formal economy.’ (Civil society)

• How can we build an understanding of the tension between the formal and informal economy and facilitate ways to support both?

• What is needed to begin the required transition to an economy that is more diverse, innovative, ecologically sustainable, inclusive and less carbon intensive?

• How might we better measure economic success in a way that prioritises wellbeing, inclusivity and sustainability?

Tension 1:Balancing the needs of the formal and informal sectors while facilitating local economic growth.

Tension 2: The need to provide opportunities for improved livelihoods and at the same time drive the transformative economic transition that is required in the 21st Century.

Consolidating recommendations for action

A number of recommendations were made by stakeholders to guide action across these Resilience Focus Areas. Examples are summarised below:

Focus Area: Bold and Participatory Governance• Pilot projects in communities – Given the challenges of understanding existing patterns of

governance and how best to change these, pilot projects in specific areas would facilitate a more detailed analysis of alternative forms of governance to take place at a manageable scale.

• Platforms for conversation – There is a need to create platforms that provide an opportunity for interaction and debate around key issues.

Focus Area: Knowledge-centred City• Strengthening partnerships between the Municipality and research institutions – There

is work being done by the Municipal Institute of Learning (MILE) to build such partnerships. This needs to be extended to focus on building platforms for trans-disciplinary research that can inform policy and practice in the Municipality.

• Understanding the ‘brain drain’ – There is a need to understand the reasons for the loss of skills from Durban and where these skills are going.

• Identifying key data gaps – There are key data gaps in Durban and this limits opportunities for well-informed decision-making to take place. Key data gaps need to be identified and appropriate research commissioned to fill these.

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• Exploring platforms to facilitate access to information – Broader WiFi access would increase opportunities for all citizens to access the information needed to enhance livelihoods.

Focus Area: Innovative Place-making• Localised plans - There is a need to enhance community level planning. • Infrastructure/service audits – There is inadequate understanding of the services deficit and a

full audit should be done to inform future planning and services development.

Focus Area: Sustainable and Ecological City• Revisiting the waste management strategy - Waste is a significant environmental issue and

there is a need to revisit waste policies in the city.• Exploring links between ecosystems and water security – There is a need to better

understand the foundational role that the environment plays in delivering key ecosystem services such as water provision in order to prioritise ecosystem protection.

Focus Area: Catalytic and Transformative Economy• Developing alternative financial models – There is a need to explore alternative financial

models such as social financial systems and local exchange practices.• Research – Research should aim to explore alternative business models that are more

environmentally sensitive, with a specific focus on beneficiation options for waste types.

Focus Area: Equitable and Inclusive Society• Spaces for interaction - How do we create spaces that bring people together in new ways?


• PRIORITISATION DOESN’T ALWAYS MAKE SENSE: When issues are systemic and connected, prioritising one issue over another may not be meaningful.

• IN EVOLVING SOCIO-INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXTS LIKE DURBAN, CHRONIC STRESSES AND SYSTEMIC ISSUES NEED TO BE ADDRESSED AS PART OF RESILIENCE: In cities where there is a development deficit these issues need to be considered during the development of the resilience strategy.

• RECOGNITION THAT THE RESILIENCE JOURNEY IS PART OF A BIGGER SOCIETAL JOURNEY TOWARDS TRANSFORMATION: The range of resilience challenges in Durban suggests that the resilience journey needs to be part of a much broader process towards a deeper societal transformation.

• IT IS IMPORTANT TO CAREFULLY CONSIDER WHO TO ENGAGE AND HOW TO ENGAGE WITHIN THE LOCAL CONTEXT: Durban’s complex stakeholder context required broad engagement and a consideration of language preferences and cultural issues as part of the engagement process.

• IN POTENTIALLY CONTESTED SPACES, RIGOROUS ANALYTICAL METHODOLOGIES CAN LEND CREDIBILITY TO THE PROCESS AND PROVIDE USEFUL INSIGHTS: The use of discourse analysis to consolidate stakeholder feedback and provide an objective perspective on the outcomes has lent credibility to the process and has provided useful insights into the issues raised by stakeholders.

• ADDITIONAL RESEARCH AND PERSPECTIVES MAY BE NEEDED TO ADDRESS THE ‘STAKEHOLDER PERCEPTIONS GAP’: It is important to consider that stakeholder perceptions do not necessarily correlate with reality. In Durban for example, the priority given to basic needs and livelihoods over environmental protection does not align with emerging global research that warns of the challenges of following development paths that do not consider and protect the natural environment.

About 100RC:

• IN CERTAIN CONTEXTS, THE DEVELOPMENT DEFICIT HAS TO BE ADDRESSED FIRST AS PART OF BUILDING RESILIENCE: Stakeholder feedback suggests that this is the case in Durban

• UNDERSTANDING RESILIENCE AND BUILDING SUPPORT FOR THE WORK REQUIRES TIME – Durban’s experience demonstrates that the work phase time allocations by 100RC are significantly less than what is required in more complex contexts.

What Did We Learn?

Prioritising Resilience Issues in Durban: Risk Assessment


RISK ASSESSMENT


In this phase of work, the CRO and Project Management Team explored the concept of ‘risk’ in order to understand what this would mean in the Durban context and how a risk perspective could add value to the resilience strategy development process. Part of this exploration involved commissioning a risk ‘concept piece’ that challenged the conventional and linear approach to risk analysis. The concept piece offered a more nuanced perspective that emphasised the subjectivity and systemic nature of risk, and highlighted the fact that risk management is a process of socio-institutional learning. These ideas resonated strongly with the Resilience Focus Areas emerging from Durban’s stakeholder consultation. Using this understanding as a starting point, an exploratory risk assessment workshop was convened with multiple stakeholders to begin a conversation around key risks in Durban.

The outcomes from this process demonstrated that, despite framing the conversation specifically around ‘risk’, stakeholders still emphasised the issues that were raised as part of the earlier ‘resilience’ conversations, thus re-confirming that in Durban, key risks lie predominantly in the arena of chronic and systemic stresses. In addition, the workshop highlighted the need to add ‘health’ as a key risk under the ‘Innovative Place-making’ Resilience Focus Area and ‘crime and safety’ under the ‘Equitable and Inclusive Society’ Resilience Focus Area. The risk assessment process also highlighted a level of ‘risk acceptance’ amongst stakeholders, with some of the more conventional shocks and disaster-related risks not being raised at the workshop. This suggests a level of risk acceptance in an already high-risk society. What is significant about these outcomes is that they reiterate that in cities like Durban, getting the basics right is foundational to building a more resilient and safer city.

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4 Prioritising Resilience Issues in Durban:

Prioritising Resilience Issues in Durban: Risk AssessmentPrioritising Resilience Issues in Durban: Risk Assessment

STEP 1STEP 1 STEP 2STEP 2 STEP 3STEP 3 STEP 4STEP 4 STEP 5STEP 5 7776

Exploring the Assets and Risk Assessment Tool

The Assets and Risk Assessment Tool was developed to assist member cities to “identify and assess risks to city resilience and understand the physical assets that contribute to resilience across a city”. The CRO and Project Management Team undertook a preliminary review of the tool to determine if it would be useful in the Durban context. Although the tool provided a useful checklist for identifying possible shocks and their impact on assets, Durban’s emerging Resilience Focus Areas indicated the need for a stronger focus on the underlying systemic issues that exacerbate both shocks (and their impact on assets) and stresses. The tool did not appear to allow for such a complex analysis and was not helpful in understanding stresses and their interactions with shocks. The questions posed in the tool, however, were useful in guiding a consideration of risks and assets and in helping think about how the links between stresses and shocks might be articulated under different future scenarios. Given the limitations of the tool, the CRO and Project Management Team recognised the need to explore the concept of risk further before developing a risk assessment process for Durban.

Broadening our understanding of risk in the Durban context

Since risk is understood differently in different contexts, a thought piece (Cartwright, 2015) was commissioned in order to stimulate discussion about how best to approach the risk assessment process in Durban. The following ideas were highlighted as central in assessing risk in complex urban environments.

All risk is subjective

“Recognise that all risk (but particularly those risks that are not traded in markets) is subjective. Being clear on ‘risk of what’, ‘risk to whom’ and ‘risk when’ can assist risk communication and risk management. As far as possible, assessments should avoid the conflation of valuable information into a single risk number. A single risk number is unlikely to represent everybody’s perception of a hazard in a country such as South Africa with high-levels of socio-economic inequality.”

Urban risk is usually systemic and identifying systemic amplifiers of risk is critical

“At the urban scale, risk manifests via the underlying social, infrastructural and natural environment. Urban risk is usually systemic. Understanding which aspects of the underlying urban system amplify risk and which mitigate it, can be important in designing programmes of risk reduction. In the context of poverty and inequality, for example, many biophysical risks result in an aggravation of human deprivation and an increase in inequality. Addressing, or at least factoring in, these systemic amplifiers of risk, is critical to effective risk management. For this reason effective risk assessments are often better at identifying focus areas rather than specific projects.”

Predicting how a hazard will impact on a complex urban system is not easy

“The insult or damage that is the second essential component of quantified risk analyses is also problematic. Cities represent a nexus of people, commerce, institutions, infrastructure and the natural environment. Predicting how a hazard will impact on this complex system is not easy. One of the underlying difficulties is that initial impacts have knock-on effects.”

‘Quantification bias’ can hide important information regarding what people really fear

“Risk analyses too easily disregard these difficulties and present seemingly precise numbers that actually conceal important information and misrepresent what people really fear. Such analyses lead to the misallocation of resources. The problem for a municipality such as eThekwini, is that these biases tend to reflect societal fault lines such as gender and ethnic discrimination, inequality and the difference between formal and informal work, that are themselves amplifiers of risk.

What Did We Do?

“Risk manifests via the underlying social, infrastructural and natural environment”



Unless acknowledged, the quantification biases that creep into risk estimates undermine effective risk management.”

Risk-proof cities and societies do not exist and risk management is a socio-institutional learning process

“Risk management is, at its core, a socio-institutional learning process. There is no such thing as a risk-proof city or society. A degree of risk management involves identifying a socially tenable degree of risk, and who within society should be responsible for which portions of risk. Crucial in this regard is effective communication and the relationship between government – which risk they are able to address; society – what are they doing already and how might this be strengthened, and the institutional risk managers (the insurance market) - how their underwriting can better reflect the available information on threats and be extended to more people.”

Risk as a concept can be useful in helping to facilitate conversations across multiple sectors

“Risk, as a concept, offers fungibility. As a result it allows city officials to address different sectors of the economy, spheres of governance and strata of society in a common language. For the same reason, the risk discourse offers valuable convening power. The process of sharing and collecting risk perspectives from disparate sources can be valuable in creating the governance compacts required to manage systemic risks at the urban scale.”

Adopting an alternative risk assessment approach

The ideas contained in the risk concept note provided the basis for convening a multi-stakeholder group to begin a conversation about risks in Durban.

The methodologyThe CRO and Project Management Team convened a focused workshop with a selected group of stakeholders who work in the area of risk and disaster reduction and management or who could provide a governance, social, environmental or economic perspective on risk. The workshop had three components:

1. A brief framing presentation was made on how to understand risk. 2. Participants were then asked to identify the risks that they were most concerned about in

Durban. For each risk they were asked to identify the impact of the risk, who was affected by the risk and the drivers of the risk. These questions were formulated partially based on the idea that “all risk is subjective. Being clear on ‘risk of what’, ‘risk to who’ and ‘risk when’ can assist risk communication and risk management” (Cartwright, 2015). Answers were written on cards and presented to the group, after which they were grouped and stuck on the wall by the facilitators. An example is presented in Figure 7.

3. An overview of the Resilience Focus Areas and issues that had emerged from the earlier stakeholder engagement workshops was presented and participants were invited to identify additional risks related to these and comment on whether key Resilience Focus Areas and/or issues had been overlooked.

Figure 7: Example of risks/threats identified by stakeholders in the Risk Assessment workshop



OutcomesDespite the session being framed from a risk perspective, stakeholder feedback highlighted the same issues that were raised in the ‘resilience-focused’ workshops held previously. This is not surprising given that in Durban the socio-institutional challenges are so extreme that they constitute the primary risks to the city, rather than just providing the context within which various biophysical risks manifest themselves. Increased resilience requires that these systemic and foundational issues are addressed, ensuring a close relationship between risk identification and resilience response in the minds of stakeholders (Figure 8).

In addition, workshop participants identified the need to add ‘health’ as a key issue under the ‘Innovative Place-making’ Resilience Focus Area and ‘crime and safety’ under the ‘Equitable and Inclusive Society’ Resilience Focus Area. The risk assessment process also highlighted a level of ‘risk acceptance’ amongst stakeholders, with some of the more conventional shocks and disaster-related risks not being raised by those at the workshop despite an opportunity being made available by the facilitators for this. This suggests a level of risk acceptance amongst the participants and the possibility that in high risk environments the lack of baseline security may affect society’s perception of what constitutes acceptable risk. The intention is that this work will be elaborated in future stages of the strategy development process using the metric of human benefit to prioritise risk and risk reduction interventions. This will be an evolution of an approach pioneered in Durban’s climate change adaptation work.

Figure 8: There is a close relationship between risk identification and resilience response in Durban


• RISK IDENTIFICATION AND RESILIENCE RESPONSE MAY BE CLOSELY RELATED – In Durban, the socio-institutional resilience challenges identified by stakeholders are so extreme that they are also seen to be the primary risks facing the city.

• ADDRESSING THE SYSTEMIC DRIVERS OF RISK IS KEY - Durban faces a number of chronic stresses which create risk. Although shocks may not be an immediate priority for stakeholders in Durban, addressing the city’s underlying socio-institutional issues will be critical in reducing the risk associated with extreme events.

• ADDRESSING RISK IS A COMPLEX PROBLEM WITH MULTIPLE ENTRY POINTS – A systemic approach is needed that can address multiple risks and the drivers of risk simultaneously.

• RISK IS A SOCIETAL CONSTRUCT - The Risk Assessment workshop demonstrated the benefit of convening stakeholders from a range of contexts in order to ground truth and deepen the emerging conceptual framing of risk.

• RISK ACCEPTANCE MAY AFFECT THE PRIORITISATION OF RISKS IN DURBAN – As citizens are exposed to on-going high-risk conditions, this condition may have become accepted as the ‘new normal’ and as a result affected society’s perception of risk.

• RESEARCH INTO ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTUAL FRAMINGS CAN ASSIST IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A LOCALLY APPROPRIATE UNDERSTANDING OF A PROBLEM - The risk concept note laid the foundation for the development of a Durban based understanding of risk and assisted in the design of a locally appropriate risk analysis workshop.

About 100RC:

• TOOLS CAN SPARK LOCALLY APPROPRIATE APPROACHES - Although the CRO and Project Management Team elected not to use the Assets and Risk Assessment Tool provided by 100RC, testing the tool stimulated discussions which provided the basis for the development of a locally appropriate approach.

What Did We Learn?

RISKIDENTIFICATION

RESILIENCEFOCUS AREAS

STAKEHOLDER INPUT


In this phase of work, the intention was to consolidate feedback from the stakeholder engagement and risk assessment phases to arrive at clearly articulated Resilience Focus Areas for Durban. Important insights were gained when the CRO and Project Management Team shared these focus areas with stakeholders and these have influenced proposals for Phase 2 of the strategy development process. The consolidation process confirmed the observation made during the scoping and subsequent stakeholder engagement phase that in a city like Durban that already faces significant developmental challenges, addressing these chronic and systemic issues is more important than dealing with sectoral issues and shock events. The recognition that all the resilience issues raised are important and that prioritisation amongst them is not possible, acknowledges the complexity of addressing the significant resilience deficit in the city. This holistic rather than reductionistic approach has implications for how Durban responds to the emerging Resilience Focus Areas, suggesting the need to prioritise systemic interventions with multiple, integrated resilience benefits. These early outcomes also suggest the high level of ‘agency’ that will be required from many stakeholders in the next phases of 100RC in Durban in order to translate complex and challenging ideas into practical opportunities for implementation.

Durban’s Resilience Focus Areas


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5 Durban’s Resilience Focus Areas

Consolidating Durban’s Resilience Focus Areas

The outcomes from the stakeholder engagement and risk assessment processes were consolidated and are summarised in Figure 9 and detailed in Figures 10 (a-c). What is clear when reflecting on the emerging focus areas is that resilience needs to be understood as an integrated (rather than standalone) concept that synergises agendas such as climate change adaptation, climate change mitigation, disaster risk reduction, biodiversity, equity, sustainable development and poverty reduction in a way that increases the probability of retaining and enhancing strengths, incrementally improving existing systems, and where necessary, “bouncing forward” to a better state. All the resilience issues raised by stakeholders are therefore important pieces of the ‘resilience jigsaw puzzle’ (see Figure 1).

What Did We Do?

Durban’s Resilience Focus AreasDurban’s Resilience Focus Areas


Figure 9: A summary of the Resilience Focus Areas and resilience issues emerging for Durban



Figure 10 (a): A description of the ‘Bold and Participatory Governance’ and ‘Knowledge-centred City’ Resilience Focus Areas emerging for Durban and the questions that will help guide the work of Phase 2.

Figure 10 (b): A description of the ‘Innovative Place-making’ and ‘Sustainable and Ecological City’ Resilience Focus Areas emerging for Durban and the questions that will help guide the work of Phase 2.



Consulting with stakeholders on Durban’s Resilience Focus Areas

The Resilience Focus Areas were presented to the Local Government Technical Committee, the City Planning Commission, the Strategic Management Executive Team, the Economic Development Committee and to members of the public in separate meetings and workshops in order to receive feedback on the proposed focus areas and the suggested way forward. A public document was also released for comment. To date, all stakeholders have expressed their support for the emerging focus areas. The key ideas emerging from this final consultation process (as at mid-October 2015) have been incorporated into the section ‘Considering the way forward’ below.

Considering the way forward

A number of ideas emerged during the discussions with stakeholders and as a result of the reflections of the CRO and Project Management Team regarding how best to take Durban’s Resilience Focus Areas forward into the next phase of the resilience strategy development process:

• Systemic challenges will require systemic solutions – Given the systemic nature of Durban’s Resilience Focus Areas, a sectoral approach to addressing these challenges is not appropriate. The CRO and Project Management Team received support from stakeholders for the proposal to consider the development of ‘flagship’ projects that can address multiple Resilience Focus Areas in a systemic and simultaneous way. This approach also needs to provide a way to narrow the focus of the broad range of Resilience Focus Areas into manageable areas for intervention. A key part of this work will be a ‘systems analysis’ that helps to articulate the linkages between the resilience issues so that strategic intervention points can be identified.

• Recognising existing work – The development of flagship projects needs to consider that there is already good work that is happening within Durban. Part of the final consultation process involved asking stakeholders to identify existing projects they felt would address the Resilience Focus Areas in a systemic and potentially transformative way. Further research is needed to compile a more complete listing of such projects in the city. Linked to this idea, public feedback also highlighted the importance of existing resources and organisations that could be utilised and partnered with in the development of the resilience strategy.

Figure 10 (c): A description of the ‘Catalytic and Transformative Economy’ and ‘Equitable and Inclusive Society’ Resilience Focus Areas emerging for Durban and the questions that will help guide the work of Phase 2.

• There is a need to align (where relevant) with strategic processes to ensure that the resilience agenda is integrated into city planning – Consultation with the City Planning Commission (CPC) suggests that there could be alignment between the emerging Resilience Focus Areas and the key issues that the CPC needs to address in preparing the city’s long-term development plan. A key gap that the CPC currently sees in the Resilience Focus Areas is the limited focus on other elements of the economy, for example, the need to build productivity, ensure economic agility, and responsiveness, facililate investment in Durban, and promote economic transformation in a new way that maximises job creation potential for Durban citizens. Although these issues were not specifically raised during the 100RC consultations, the CRO and Project Management Team have committed to take further discussion with the CPC to assess whether they can be incorporated into the existing Resilience Focus Areas. Finding ways to synergise the work of the CPC and that of the CRO and Project Management Team could be a critical step in helping to ensure the integration of resilience issues into city planning and decision-making. It is, however, important to consider that the resilience agenda may be broader than that associated with traditional strategic planning which could lead to a disjuncture between these processes.

• Consider how to articulate the resilience ‘value add’ – It will also be important to be able to articulate what value the ‘resilience’ agenda brings to city development and how this relates to existing city initiatives and strategies. This will be critical in helping to frame the way forward for 100RC in Durban.

• Communicating around ‘resilience’ – The term ‘resilience’ is not easily understood and can isolate people from engaging with this agenda. There is a need to consider how to communicate in a way that connects to the ‘lived experiences’ of Durban’s citizens.

• The framing of Durban’s Resilience Strategy – Given the systemic nature of Durban’s Resilience Focus Areas, Durban’s resilience strategy will not focus on specific sectoral issues. Rather, the intention will be to enable the city to put in place critical processes, programmes and institutions to be able to respond effectively to a range of current and future changes. An important part of this will be the provision of opportunities for open and constructive interaction and debate regarding the nature of the resilience responses that are required.

• Strengthening stakeholder engagement in Phase 2 – The stakeholder engagement process for Phase 1 was deliberately broad, rather than deep in order to collate a wide range of perspectives. Given that Phase 2 will lead to implementation, careful consideration regarding the nature of stakeholder engagement in Phase 2 is needed, in order to ensure that there is appropriate input into, and support for, the process and its outcomes. Specific thought needs to be given to how best to engage with the Traditional Authorities in Durban, given the challenges relating to access, politics and language barriers

• Incorporating the youth more strongly into the 100RC process – The youth are emerging as a key group to involve in Phase 2 of the strategy development process. There is a need to find a way to harness the energy and ideas they bring to the table in a meaningful way so that this contributes to real innovation.



• Understanding implementation gaps – Linked to the previous point, stakeholders also cautioned that despite the good work that is happening, most initiatives do not have the transformative impact on society that would be expected. They also raised concerns around the barriers that exist when trying to ‘upscale’ positive projects. This highlights the need to interrogate existing work to understand why such ‘implementation gaps’ exist so that these challenges can be addressed as part of the process of developing Durban’s resilience strategy.

• Understanding the starting point for intervention - In a complex environment where the Resilience Focus Areas and issues are all connected, it is important to consider where the most appropriate and catalytic starting point for intervention might lie (Figure 11). This will involve understanding the systemic connections between the Resilience Focus Areas and issues.

Figure 11: Identifying the most strategic and catalytic entry point for action in the resilience landscape will be a critical part of Phase 2 of 100RC.


• UNDERSTANDING THE SYSTEMIC CONNECTIONS THAT EXIST BETWEEN RESILIENCE FOCUS AREAS WILL INFORM FUTURE ACTION – Given the range of interconnected resilience issues that Durban’s citizens have raised under each Resilience Focus Area, an important next step will be to examine these issues in a systemic (rather than sectoral) way during the next phase of 100RC in Durban.

• CONSIDERING THE RESILIENCE ‘ENTRY POINT’ IS KEY - In a context where all issues are important, there is a need to consider where to begin resilience interventions in a way that will maximise benefits

• THERE IS A NEED TO BUILD AGENCY THROUGH THE RESILIENCE JOURNEY – Developing the resilience strategy and ultimately implementing it will require commitment and involvement of a range of stakeholders. Building connections and involving people in the development of the resilience strategy contributes towards enhanced ‘agency’ for the next phases of the journey.

• THE NEED TO CONSIDER HOW NEW STRATEGIES ALIGN WITH EXISTING ONES: The breadth of issues that have been raised during Durban’s resilience discussions means that many are already the focus of existing city strategies. It is important to carefully consider how the city’s Resilience Strategy will be positioned relative to these and how to articulate the ‘resilience dividend’ in having a resilience strategy that complements these.

About 100RC:

• 100RC PROVIDES AN OPPORTUNITY TO TAKE A STRATEGIC STEP BACK – This is particularly important in contexts where the overwhelming nature of many of the challenges does not readily create the space for reflection and understanding.

• 100RC PROVIDES A POLITICALLY NEUTRAL SPACE FOR EXPLORATION AND ACTION – This can be powerful in creating opportunities for new thinking and action to facilitate the fundamental and foundational shifts that are needed in cities like Durban.

What Did We Learn?• Considering the expertise required for Phase 2 – The feedback on the Resilience Focus

Areas and proposed way forward highlighted the importance of carefully considering the expertise that will be required in Phase 2 in order to ensure that the Resilience Strategy is technically sound, but also has support from a range of groups. This is likely to require that a range of expertise is engaged including: external experts (who can bring new ideas into the local context), disruptive thinkers (who can challenge ideas) and critical local voices such as the youth (who can bring a grounded perspective on how the process interacts or doesn’t with their lived reality).

• The need to consider possible ‘indicators’ of a functional or dysfunctional society – A number of the issues raised by stakeholders point to the degree of societal breakdown in the city. One example is the emphasis on xenophobia as a symptom of the myriad social and economic challenges that exist in the city and which create fertile ground for violence. There may be value in articulating these sorts of indicators in the next phase of work.

• Monitoring and evaluation – It will be important to consider what kind of monitoring an evaluation system will be needed to assess progress in implementing the Resilience Strategy.

• Contextualising the Resilience Strategy within emerging global trends – The Strategic Management Executive Team emphasised the importance of adequately considering the changing global landscape in relation to issues such as environmental sustainability, climate change and the need for fundamental shifts towards a low carbon economy. This context needs to be considered when finalising the Resilience Strategy and in considering the institutional structuring that will be required for implementation. Ongoing capacity building for city leadership and politicians is also key in this regard.



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The scoping phase of Durban’s resilience journey provided early indications that the city’s resilience issues would be complex and cross-cutting and that radically new approaches would be needed to address some of these challenges. The CRO and Project Management Team thus initiated a number of pilot projects that could generate early insights into what it would take to effect the systemic shifts that might ultimately be required by Durban’s Resilience Strategy. Each pilot project was related to a clearly identifiable resilience challenge.

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Pilot Projects

Building platforms for new patterns of governance: The Biomimicry8 pilot project

The Biomimicry pilot project was initiated to explore the role of ecological systems in delivering services that can reduce risk and enhance resilience. The Biomimicry approach challenges ideas around how the built and natural environments should interact and the pilot project was designed to be a disruptive force using these new ideas to leverage and broker a new partnership between three key stakeholders (local government, a large corporate, and a large parastatal) focused on achieving a more resilient development path for the northern section of the city. The project required that local government officials and developers come together to find a way forward that would simultaneously: protect key natural systems and their contribution to resilience (particularly from a water security and flood attenuation perspective); enhance the design of the built environment to minimise impacts on natural systems; and meet the needs of the developers in terms of facilitating economic growth in an area where development had previously been contested on environmental and sustainability grounds. Although the project is still ongoing, early insights point to: the important role that a ‘crisis’ situation can play in bringing stakeholders together in new ways to generate innovative ideas; the value of external agents (in this case the Biomimicry team, who played a key facilitation role throughout the project) in lending a different dynamic and viewpoint to conflict situations; the critical role of science in informing policy decisions; and the possibility for new partnerships to facilitate alternative forms of solution-seeking over the medium to long-term.

8 Biomimicry is an approach to innovation that seeks sustainable solutions to human challenges by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies


Generating insights through focused research: The Micro-economic trends pilot project

The micro-economic trends pilot project was initiated to build insights around socio-economic trends at the level of households in Durban. This was driven by the need for ‘human wellbeing’ to be a key part of Durban’s resilience conversations and the resulting information has been used to catalyse conversations around these issues and identify areas for further research. The objective of the research was to describe socio-economic patterns and trends (from 2001 to 2011) in Durban using demographic and labour force characteristics of city dwellers and household information and to understand how these compare with similar trends in the two other major metropolitan cities in South Africa (Johannesburg and Cape Town). The findings of the research revealed Durban’s relatively poor performance in areas such as skills retention, levels of poverty and unemployment, household earnings and levels of education when compared with the other major metropolitan areas. The research was useful in surfacing these important and challenging socio-economic trends and providing the basis for an interactive discussion between a range of stakeholders around these issues and possible responses. The pilot project highlighted the important role that research plays in generating new information that can be used to help identify important trends, provide new perspectives on critical issues and stimulate interaction and debate that can ultimately inform better decision-making. The pilot project also encouraged cross-sectoral interaction between the economic and environmental functions of local government, encouraging more proactive and systemic discussions than are generally possible.

Exploring the value of decision-shaping tools: The Sustainable Horizons Project

The Sustainable Horizons Project was initially inspired by emerging global thinking around planetary boundaries and environmental thresholds (Rockstrom et al, 2009; Steffen et al, 2015) and the need for human activities to remain within these in order to ensure sustainability. This approach links strongly to the environment-focused resilience issues that were raised by stakeholders. The project was intended to provide an indication of whether Durban’s current development trajectory is likely to remain within, or to exceed, local environmental thresholds. This work has since evolved to focus on developing a tool that can help to show progress towards a viable and improved future in Durban, with the intention being to develop and implement an integrated indicator system that measures sustainability performance across social, economic and environmental indicators. The model has been developed, but is still undergoing further exploration to determine whether its outputs are useful in guiding more strategic decision-making that can contribute to greater resilience. The next iteration of the model will also aim to draw from the planetary boundaries work to build the concept of ‘thresholds’ into key indicators.

Disruptive thought shapers: Using volunteers as catalysts for new perspectives

Given that resilience is about dealing with change (often by catalysing more change), it is important that the process is constantly enriched and challenged by alternative perspectives and new ideas. During Phase 1 of Durban’s resilience journey a number of platforms were created (such as the ‘Critical Thinkers‘ group) to maximise the opportunities for fresh ideas to influence the process. In this regard, the Durban team accepted a request from an international volunteer to work with the 100RC team over a three month period. This individual came with extensive experience in the built environment field and a specific interest in using urban design, public space and the built environment as a catalyst for resilience. In his words, this engagement was ‘unrestrained by pre-conceived outcomes, objectives and deliverables so as to create a space for innovation and experimentation’ within the context of 100RC. He was tasked with being deliberately ‘disruptive’ and bringing his own ideas and reflections on the city to challenge and strengthen the thinking of the Durban team. This experience was particularly effective in: identifying previously unrecognised resilience synergies, resources and opportunities through a range of interviews and research; drawing connections between disciplines in which the CRO and Project Management team had little experience (e.g. architecture and urban planning) and opening new channels of dialogue between the CRO and Project Management team and key stakeholders. The real value of the work of the volunteer was in shining new light on ‘old notions’ and bringing a fresh perspective to issues such as informal human settlements, the informal economy and the use of public space, all of which will be further explored as part of Durban’s resilience strategy development process. This demonstrates the value of bringing in a disruptive force to explore unfamiliar new areas within the resilience landscape.

Integrating foundational resilience issues into local government planning: The Strategic Environmental Assessment

An important part of Durban’s resilience journey will be to ensure that key ideas and principles emerging from the resilience work are ultimately mainstreamed into local government planning and decision-making. An opportunity to test the integration of new and challenging ideas into such planning processes exists through the proposed Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) of the city’s Spatial Development Framework. The SEA is a legislated process for all local governments and will be used to improve understanding around the role of natural ecosystems in contributing to human wellbeing and development and identify ecosystems where the city is at risk of approaching and exceeding key environmental thresholds. A dedicated learning focus has been included in the project to provide an opportunity for those involved to reflect, question and better understand if and how the process is ultimately accepted and integrated into the broader process of city planning and decision-making. These insights will be important in helping to influence other such processes related to the city’s Resilience Strategy.

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9796 Exploring the Transformative Potential of New IdeasExploring the Transformative Potential of New Ideas

Our Intention

In the Durban context, where the Resilience Focus Areas are systemic, complex and connected, key questions for Phase 2 should focus on: how to drive a systemic ‘problem-solving’ approach; identification of actions that have multiple systemic benefits; engaging relevant and appropriate stakeholders and generating outcomes that are different and more effective than past practices. It is also important during this process not to lose sight of the good, and potentially transformative, work that is already taking place and to question why such initiatives have not had broader impact and how the resilience strategy might enable the full potential of this work to be realised. Finally, careful consideration needs to be given to how best to align the resilience work with existing city processes to ensure the integration and long-term sustainability of the resilience agenda. This section summarises the key next steps for Durban in Phase 2 focused on exploring opportunities for ‘flagship projects with multiple resilience benefits’.

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The Way Forward: Key Next Steps for Phase 2 of Durban’s Resilience Journey

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What Are We Planning To Do?

With the above in mind, the process of developing the resilience strategy will be implemented through the following steps:

Step One: Gap analysisAs part of the process of assessing the potential alignment of the work of the CPC with that of 100RC, the CPC will be undertaking a ‘gap analysis’ to assess whether there are additional issues not covered by the Resilience Focus Areas that would need to be considered when preparing a long-term development plan for Durban. Although the CPC will drive this process, the CRO and Project Management Team will provide relevant input at various points. The outcomes from this process will be used to determine the extent to which alignment of the two processes is possible.

Estimated timeline: September to November 2015

Step Two: Systemic analysis of the Resilience Focus AreasThe purpose of this step would be to undertake an analysis and diagnostic of the six Resilience Focus Areas and to follow this with a cross-focus area analysis and synthesis in order to identify key opportunities for interventions that systemically address Durban’s Resilience Focus Areas.

Estimated timeline: November 2015 to February 2016

Step Three: Identification and review of existing projects with transformative potentialThe purpose of this step would be: (a) to identify and document local government and external projects that are systemic in nature and that have transformative potential in the intervention areas identified in Step Two, and (b) to review these projects with a view to understanding the blockages or gaps that prevent these projects from fully addressing the range of Resilience Focus Areas and issues highlighted in the Preliminary Resilience Assessment. Estimated timeline: March to April 2016

Step Four: Preparation for Resilience Charrettes The outcomes from the systemic analysis will be used to frame further research, information gathering and consultation around the proposed intervention points. This will be consolidated and will be used as a key input to guide and inform the discussions of the Resilience Charrettes.

Estimated timeline: May to July 2016

Step Five: Implementing the Resilience CharrettesThe purpose of this step would be to convene relevant groups of local stakeholders and national or international experts for each of the key intervention areas (identified in Step Three) with a view towards designing one or more initiatives to address the key challenges and opportunities associated with the intervention area and identifying the roles and responsibilities of the various relevant stakeholders. The selection of initiatives should consider the research undertaken in Step Three, in case there are opportunities to build on or enhance existing work. It may, however, also be necessary to implement new interventions.

Estimated timeline: August 2016

Step Six: Prioritising areas for systemic interventionA ‘human-benefit’ analysis of each of the proposed interventions emerging from the Resilience Charrettes will be used to prioritise areas for intervention in order to ensure the greatest good for the greatest number of people. This is based conceptually on previous work done to prioritise areas for local government climate adaptation action.

Estimated timeline: November 2015 to September 2016

Step Seven: Documentation of Resilience Goals and InitiativesThe purpose of this step would to review the work of the Resilience Charrettes and consolidate this into proposed programmes and projects. This step is likely to be accompanied by presentations to the new Council (following local government elections estimated to take place around June/July 2016) to share what is emerging from this work and to seek their endorsement.

Estimated timeline: September 2016

Step Eight: Convene working groups around proposed action areas The purpose of this step will be to build out from the Resilience Charrettes and to convene multi-stakeholder working groups tasked with implementation. In some cases, this may involve further research and consultation, while in others it may involve detailing workplans and financing options.

Estimated timeline: October 2016 to January 2017

Step Nine: Final Resilience Strategy DevelopmentThe purpose of this step is to develop a draft resilience strategy based on the resilience goals and initiatives and the working group outcomes. A draft will be released for public comment.

Estimated timeline: February to March 2017

The Way Forward: Key Next Steps for Phase 2 of Durban’s Resilience JourneyThe Way Forward: Key Next Steps for Phase 2 of Durban’s Resilience Journey

About developing a resilience strategy

• In order to ensure sustainability it is important to consider how to embed the resilience function in local government structures and what might be required from the outset of strategy development to help facilitate this. In Durban’s case, this meant developing an alternative CRO model that would build resilience capacity within the local government institution.

• Context is key. Every city is different and context needs to play a central role in determining the direction of the resilience strategy development process. In Durban, this meant undertaking a broad and inclusive stakeholder engagement process to canvas the different views in a diverse city. It also meant acknowledging the need for multiple forms of engagement that would collectively constitute a Resilience Steering Committee function, as an alternative to the ‘single steering committee’ model.

• Adopting a critical approach in all aspects of the strategy development process can help ensure that the final strategy is meaningful within the local context.

• Developing a resilience strategy requires adequate resourcing from a human and financial perspective. This includes ensuring that there is sufficient conceptual and technical input that can challenge thinking and strengthen core work. In Durban, the Local Government Technical Committee and the Critical Thinkers group have helped fulfill these roles and acted as institutional ‘canaries in a coal mine’ helping the CRO and Project Management Team avoid unforced errors in the strategy development process.

• Applying rigorous methodologies in all aspects of the strategy development process is important, particularly in contested spaces (like local government) where the outcomes may not be readily accepted.

• The resilience process is as important as the final product. In complex contexts, the process of connecting people in new ways, and learning and sharing ideas can be as important as the final ‘strategy product’ in building the foundations for a resilient city. Part of this process involves thinking carefully about who to engage and how.

• It is important to acknowledge potential stakeholder perceptions gaps and to address these through relevant supporting research to ensure that the strategic and potentially transformative value of the resilience strategy is maximised.

About resilience and risk

• Resilience is fundamentally about how cities prepare themselves at the level of individuals, communities and systems to respond to current and future change.

• Resilience is a integrative concept. If a number of agendas are synergised (e.g. climate change, disaster risk reduction, biodiversity, sustainable development and poverty reduction), there is a reasonable probability of increased resilience and of “bouncing forward” to an improved state. Resilience as a framing concept has the ability to play this synthetic role and create virtuous cycles of action.

• Resilience is not only about being strong in a world where things go wrong but also about being flexible and innovative and recognising where inappropriate systems (e.g. poor governance structures and societal inequality) may need to be weakened in order to advance a resilience agenda.

• In the context of cities like Durban that already face a range of challenges, resilience needs to be seen as part of a broader journey towards transformed cities that are sustainable, equitable and just and that are able to respond to the myriad challenges that face them.

• In certain contexts, resilience is closely related to risk. In Durban, the socio-institutional resilience challenges identified by stakeholders are so extreme that they were also identified as the primary risks facing the city.

• Risk cannot be defined normatively as it is perceived differently between societies and between members of the same society.

• In complex urban contexts the drivers of risk are usually systemic and therefore these issues need to be addressed first in order to enhance resilience and reduce risk. Under conditions where the predominant risks are socio-institutional, even bio-physical risks will manifest themselves through socio-institutional impacts.

• Africa is a continent where the resilience dividend is likely to pay off significantly.

Durban: A City on the Edge

What Did We Learn?

A Summary of Learnings from Durban’s Resilience Journey

103A Summary of Learnings from Durban’s Resilience Journey

About what resilience means in Durban

• Resilience is about multiple resilience issues that are all connected.• Durban’s resilience journey has highlighted Bold and Participatory Governance,

Knowledge-centred City, Innovative Place-making, Sustainable and Ecological City, Catalytic and Transformative Economy, and Equitable and Inclusive Society as priority Resilience Focus Areas.

• In evolving socio-institutional contexts, it is clear that chronic systemic issues are likely to emerge more strongly as resilience issues than shocks or extreme events.

• Developmental issues are a key part of resilience. In complex socio-institutional contexts, addressing the development deficit must be seen as a key part of building urban resilience.

• Given the systemic nature of Durban’s Resilience Focus Areas, Durban’s resilience strategy will not be one that focuses on specific sectoral issues. Rather, the intention will be to develop a strategy that enables the city to put in place critical processes, programmes and institutions to be able to respond effectively to a range of current and future changes. An important part of this will be the provision of opportunities for open and constructive interaction and debate regarding the nature of the resilience responses that are required.

About how we take our Resilience Focus Areas forward to develop a Resilience Strategy

• Systemic challenges will require systemic solutions and there is a need to understand the connections that exist between resilience issues in order to understand where intervention is needed.

• Considering the ‘entry point’ for resilience action will be important in maximising the catalytic impact of interventions. Investment needs to maximise the ability of the city to respond to the broadest range of issues in locally appropriate and innovative ways and in a way that generates the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

• It is important to consider opportunities to align the resilience work with other key city agendas in order to promote mainstreaming of the resilience agenda. This should, however, not be at the expense of issues that have emerged from the resilience strategy development process.

• Building agency in stakeholders and potential partners throughout the strategy development process will be key in strengthening the likely success of the implementation phase. It is hard for people to imagine solutions when they are not at the centre of a process. It is therefore critical to build on a broader sense of agency in Phase 2.

• Moving into Phase two requires careful consideration of the expertise required to support this phase of strategy development. This expertise is likely to range from external experts to disruptive and critical local voices, all of which are important in ensuring that the final resilience strategy is locally meaningful and that it has support from a range of groups.

About 100RC

• In contexts where there is generally little time for reflection, 100RC provides a critical opportunity to take a strategic step back within a politically neutral space and to reflect on what might be required for a resilient city.

• 100RC provides a potentially important platform to advance a global resilience agenda. The sustainability of this work will, however, depend on the ability of cities to generate sufficient resourcing to continue refining and implementing the strategy over time. This should be part of the conversations between cities in the 100RC network.

• City context needs to inform the strategy development process. Creating space for cities to create a strategy development process that is relevant in their context will add significant value to the learnings of the cities in the 100RC network.

• For many cities, embedding the resilience function and gaining support for the work takes time. This will vary from city to city and should be accommodated with the programme.

• Although generic tools have value in prompting thinking, they can be limiting when applied in a uniform way. 100RC should consider how best to deploy existing (and new) tools in a way that maximises their potential value.

105A Summary of Learnings from Durban’s Resilience JourneyA Summary of Learnings from Durban’s Resilience Journey104

References

African Development Bank Group (AfDB), OECD, UNDP, UNECA (2012). African Economic Outlook 2012. Special theme: Promoting Youth Employment. http://www.africaneconomicoutlook.org

Angel, S. (2012). Planet of Cities. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Bahadur, A., & Tanner, T. (2014). Transformational resilience thinking: putting people, power and politics at the heart of urban climate resilience. Environment and Urbanisation, 26(1), 200–214.

Carmin, J., Anguelovski, I., & Roberts, D. (2012). Urban Climate Adaptation in the Global South : Planning in an Emerging Policy Domain. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 32(1), 18–32.

Cartwright, A. (2015). Risk analyses and urban governance in the city of Durban, South Africa. Concept note, commissioned by the Environmental Planning and Climate Protection Department, eThekwini Municipality.

EThekwini Municipality (2015). EThekwini Municipality Integrated Development Plan. 2015/2016, (p.482).

Hajer, M. A. (1995). The Politics of Environmental Discourse. Ecological Modernisation and the Policy Process. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

Hajer, M. A. (1993). Discourse Coalitions and the Institutionalisation of Practice: The Case of Acid Rain in Britain. In Fischer, F. and Forester, J. (eds), The Argumentative Turn in Policy Analysis and Planning. Duke University Press: Durham.

Leach, M., Raworth, K., & Rockström, J. (2013). Between social and planetary boundaries: Navigating pathways in the safe and just space for humanity. In International Social Science Council and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, World Social Science Report 2013: Changing Global Environments, (pp. 1–7). OECD Publishing/Unesco Publishing.

Pieterse, E. and S Parnell, S. (2014). Africa’s urban revolution in context in E Pieterse and S Parnell (eds) Africa’s urban revolution. Zed Books, London.

Roberts, D., & O’Donoghue, S. (2013). Urban environmental challenges and climate change action in Durban, South Africa. Environment and Urbanization, 25(2), 299–319.

Ropeik, D. (2010). How risky is it, really? why our fears don’t always match the facts. McGraw Hill, USA.

Rodin, J. (2014). The resilience dividend. Public Affairs, USA.

Solecki, W., Dorsch, M. & Pelling, M. (in review), Resilience and Transformation in Response to Risk and Hazards in Urban Coastal Settings: Conceptual Framework for Scenario and Case Study Analysis. Ecology and Society.

Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockström, J., Cornell, S. E., Fetzer, I., Bennett, E. M., Biggs, R., Carpenter, S. R., de Vries, W., de Wit, C. A., Folke, C., Gerten, D., Heinke, J., Mace, G. M., Persson, L. M., Ramanathan, V., Reyers, B. & Sörlin, S. (2015). Planetary boundaries: guiding human development on ac hanging planet. Science 347(6223): DOI: 10.1126/science.1259855.

UN DESA (2015). World Urbanization Prospects: http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp

UN- Habitat (2008). State of the Worlds Cities 2008/9 – Harmonious cities. Earthscan, London

Verweij, M., Douglas, M., Ellis, R., Engel, C., Hendriks, F., Lohmann, S., Ney, S.,Rayner, S. & Thompson, M. (2006). Clumsy solutions for a complex world: the case of climate change. Public Administration Vol. 84, No. 4: 817–843.

List of supporting reports and documents

Report 1: Local City Context Report for DurbanReport 2: An overview of Durban’s 100RC Coordination Structure and Resilience Steering CommitteeReport 3: Stakeholder engagement reportReport 4: Discourse analysis methodologyReport 5: The City Resilience Perceptions Assessment ToolReport 6: The City Resilience Actions InventoryReport 7: Risk Assessment ReportReport 8: Scope of Works report for phase 2Report 9: ‘What you told us about resilience’ – A summary of Durban’s resilience themes for public comment

Additional documents:Durban’s ‘Resilience Narrative’Local and global research reports to inform the infographics

References106

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