ActionAid report on threat to urban poor of urban flooding following climate change

By 2030, the majority of Africa’s population will live in urban areas. Unfortunately, however, global warming is also bringing chronic flooding to the cities, which can be just as disastrous for poor urbanites as droughts are for farmers.

In participatory vulnerability analysis (PVA) with slum dwellers in six African cities, one of the major problems ActionAid uncovered is that there are few, if any, collective mechanisms either for reducing flood risks or for managing floods once they do happen. Instead, poor people are left to fend for themselves with whatever individual coping strategies they can muster.

In this report, available from the Reliefweb site, ActionAid argues that the solutions to the severe flooding of poor urban communities in Africa are relatively simple. Many people understand what needs to be done. Communities can do much for themselves. However, the tasks are best tackled through partnerships with national and international support.

All parties concerned need to collaborate in:

• Making sure the growing human challenge of urban flooding is addressed in all national and international development policies, planning and actions by governments, UN systems, IFIs and NGOs.
• Investing in proper and safe infrastructure, such as drainage, as locally appropriate.
• Ensuring that poor people participate in all decision-making processes equally with experts in flood reduction policies.
• Taking all possible measures to ensure that poor people’s rights to adequate and disaster-safe housing are realised and their tenure is secured.
• Making sure that critical services such as health, water and sanitation are disaster prepared, which means they are able to provide adequate services during floods.
• Implementing the Hyogo Framework of Action, agreed at the World Conference on DisasterReduction in 2005, at all levels of urban planning and service delivery.