Multilevel governance and Coproduction in urban Flood-risk management - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 118

related actors/agencies: urban planning (strategic, land-use and development
planning); water resources management (flood-risk and storm-water
management, sewerage, water supply); and disaster-risk management (Rauken
et al. 2014; Roberts and O'Donoghue 2013; Bicknell et al. 2010).
The chapter contributes new insight into the relationship between multilevel
adaptation governance, coproduction and resilience - a subject that to limited
degree has been dealt with in research on climate-change adaptation in Africa
(see Carmin et al. 2012; Cartwright et al. 2012; Ziervogel and Parnell 2012) or
elsewhere (Bulkeley 2013; Bicknell et al. 2010).
Adaptation and climate-risk management are important at all levels of
government and governance and across sectors (Betsill and Bulkeley 2007).
Moreover, since the impacts of climate change will have local variations, and
adaptive capacity will vary across socio-political and institutional settings, a
significant share of flood-risk management needs to take place at local levels
- the municipal and community levels. This is in line with observations by
Elinor Ostrom (among others) that key management decisions in resource
management should be made as close as possible to the scene of events and the
actors involved (Ostrom 2005).
In the case of Dar es Salaam, we find that the city and sub-city levels are
severely constrained in capacity for self-governance and provisioning by
multilevel governance. The municipality lacks appropriate mandate and support
from the central state to build own capacity for adaptation and coordination
of local actors, such as pursuing transitional adaptation to meet future climate
extremes (or transformative actions). The institutional barriers facing city
municipality and sub-city level actors in responding to climate change are
deep-seated and exacerbated by constraints in available finances, resources
and technologies at all levels. This stands in contradiction to the 'place-bound'
character of both adaptation and flood-risk management: high capacity is
required at the local level to ensure fast and adequate response to an emergency
situation or an extreme climate event (Bicknell et al. 2010; Douglas et al. 2010).
These findings are supported by other studies from urban Africa, reflecting
general problems of poverty, financial constraints and institutional deficiency
(Roberts and O'Donoghue 2013; UNISDR 2012; Ziervogel and Parnell 2012;
Vedeld et al. 2012; Booth 2011).
The problems of integrating climate-change adaptation into urban
governance are not unique to Africa. Such challenges are also observed in
countries with higher adaptive capacity and resilience, as in Scandinavia and
elsewhere in Europe (Hanssen et al. 2013; Bulkeley 2010). Moreover, there are
several African cities - Durban and Cape Town for example - where important
actions towards adaptation have been taken in planning and sector work, even
in the absence of firm national policy directions and central support (Roberts
and O'Donoghue 2013; Ziervogel and Parnell 2012). Such action is typically
explained as response to the experiences of specific hazards and risks like
floods, often combined with the efforts of individual champions who have been