Latest Past Events

BROWNBAG SEMINAR: How Cities Respond to Climate Change: Ambition and Reality of European and African Cities

Studio 5 Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, Cape Town

Join ACC and ACDI for a lunchtime brownbag seminar by Diana Reckien, Associate Professor, University of Twente, Netherlands entitled How Cities Respond to Climate Change: Ambition and Reality of European and African Cities. WHERE: Studio 5, Level 5, Environmental & Geographical Sciences Building (EGS) UCT Upper Campus, Rondebosch WHEN: 12.30 – 1.30pm, Monday 28 January 2019 Diana Reckien will present some of her latest research on local climate planning in European cities, that builds on a network of 30 collaborators across the EU-28. Building up a database of the climate change response of 885 cities in the EU-28 (representative of the urban profile in their country), Diana and colleagues were able to yield insights into which cities in Europe prepare climate (adaptation or mitigation) plans and what these plans entail. This provides information about, e.g., the mitigation targets/ambitions and whether these would be sufficient to reach 1.5/2C, prominent mitigation and adaptation sectors, and modes of implementation (mainstreaming or not). Diana will then move to some of her work in African cities, presenting recent research on mainstreaming in Kigali City (Rwanda) and on environmental urban migration in northern Kenya. She will close with ideas and plans for future research, e.g. potentially open up topics for collaboration, such as perception based climate change impact analyses in African cities using FCM, cascading impacts, socially sensible adaptation options, and/or the effectiveness of adaptation plans. BIOGRAPHY Diana Reckien is Associate Professor "Climate Change and Urban Inequality" at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. She specializes at the interface of climate change and urban research, with the aim to contribute to justice efforts. One of her current research question is how climate change mitigation and adaptation policies affect and interact with social vulnerability, equity and justice, and how to set up adaptation and mitigation policies in order to avoid respective negative side-effects. Other research interests include method development for impact and adaptation assessments, and modelling approaches, social vulnerability, and climate change migration. She mainly investigates urban areas in Europe, Asia (mainly India), and Africa. To do so, she employs large comparative studies using social science methods, such as questionnaires, case study analyses and multi-variate statistics, as well as Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM). Diana is Coordinating Lead Author for “Chapter 17: Decision-making options for managing risk” of the Working Group II Contribution to the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. She led parts of the Second Assessment Report for Climate Change in Cities (ARC3.2; Eds: Rosenzweig, Solecki et al.; Cambridge University Press) - those that relate to equity and environmental justice. She serves on the Editorial Board of “Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews”(IF 8.050). Her publication record comprises roughly 70 publications, including 25 peer-reviewed journal papers, a number of book chapters, and two special issues.

Cities and Climate Change Seminar 4

Studio 3 Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town

Working at the interface of climate science, urban policy and practice: developing ideas of distillation and receptivity WHEN: 12 June 2018 TIME: 3:00 to 4:30 WHERE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town The last seminar in the 4 part series on cities and climate change will focus on how the worlds of climate science and urban policy making and implementation are being brought closer together in ways that might support more evidence-based decision making on urban matters that are climate sensitive. Drawing primarily on the efforts of, and experiences from, the Future Resilience of African Cities and Lands (FRACTAL) project, the speakers will present ideas and practices of distilling relevant, actionable climate information and fostering greater receptivity to engaging, co-producing and acting on climate information. Central to this is the creation of city learning labs as a space for bringing together a diversity of people and knowledge to generate new thinking and possibly nudge processes of decision making in new directions. Experiences of designing and implementing such labs in Maputo, Lusaka and Windhoek will be discussed in relation to emerging concepts of distillation and receptivity. The seminar will provide an opportunity to share insights about working at science-policy-practice interfaces between those working in the climate space and those working in other urban science-policy domains, like health, water management, housing and biodiversity. CHAIR: Prof Sue Parnell SPEAKERS: Dr Chris Jack, Principal Scientific Officer, Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG), and ACDI Senior Fellow Dr Di Scott, African Centre for Cities Dr Izidine Pinto, Climate System Analysis Group

Cities and Climate Change: Seminar 3

Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town

Nate Millington will present a talk entitled Making sense of our water crisis: what can we learn from São Paulo? as part of our on-going series on Cities and Climate Change on 28 May 2018, at 15:00 to 16:30 in Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT. Both Cape Town and São Paulo have recently been marked by drought-induced water crises, as pre-existing infrastructures were forced to confront changing climates, continued growth, and infrastructural breakdown. These dynamics coexist in intimate ways with long histories of auto-construction, heterogeneous infrastructural development, and uneven water security. While water insecurity has long marked cities in the global south, multi-year droughts have resulted in water crises in southern cities with previously robust water management systems. Experiences of citywide scarcity in these two cities point to the increasing regularity and visibility of persistent water crisis at the global level, which is drawing new actors into new coalitions and reconfiguring existing governance patterns. The intensity of the droughts that affected São Paulo in 2013-2015 and Cape Town in 2015-17 are undoubtedly outliers, but when situated in multi-year frameworks the trends seem to suggest that water patterns in both cities are shifting in line with expanded water use and increased urbanization. This has implications not just for São Paulo and Cape Town, but also for southern cities where water insecurity is more chronic. In this seminar, we think comparatively about São Paulo’s experience of crisis and its implication both for Cape Town as well for cities more generally. We ask how São Paulo’s experience with scarcity helps us to think through and make sense of Cape Town’s ongoing crisis. At the same time, we are interested in thinking comparatively about the differences in how the two cities responded. Ultimately, our intention is to think both globally and locally: to put two these two cities in conversation while being clear that global climate change is a planetary phenomenon.   Speaker: Nate Millington Discussant: Anna Taylor Chair: Gina Ziervogel   WHEN: 28 May 2018 TIME: 15:00 to 16:30 VENUE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, Cape Town