City to city learning and knowledge exchange for climate resilience in southern Africa

Municipal Climate Change Committee, and administratively by the Disaster Management Advisory Forum’s Municipal Adaptation Planning Technical Task Team [77]. Secondly, the Durban Adaptation Charter (DAC) is an international agreement that com- mits local governments to local climate action in their jurisdiction. The DAC was launched at COP17 hosted in Durban in December 2011. In Durban, the DAC is implemented through the maintenance and advancing of the Central KwaZulu-Natal Climate Change Compact [77], which is a partnership between Durban and its surrounding local and district municipalities to collaboratively address climate change at a regional scale in an integrated fashion [77]. The DAC has coined this method as the Hub and Compact approach. The climate adaptation work of eThekwini Municipality is coordinated under the Municipal Climate Protection Pro- gramme, by the Climate Protection Branch of the Environmental Planning and Climate Pro- tection Department. Discussion Key issues in the urban ecosystems Water and energy vulnerability and risk are significant issues for the cities except for Durban. For instance, the city of Harare particularly is dependent on a polluted source of water (Lake Chivero) and the Kariba Dam along the Zambezi River for its electricity. In addition, the city has limited capacity to deal with increased wastewater as the infrastructure has not been ade- quately expanded to accommodate the population expansion [66]; [78]; [79]. This resonates with the fact that, water stress is likely to adversely impact public health, water availability,

energy, forestry and biodiversity, rangelands, human settlements and tourism [62]; [3]; [70]. Recently (2019), long power cuts, especially in Lusaka and Harare, have been the order of the day with those who can afford to turning to alternative sources such as liquid gas, generators and solar power while the poor use cheaper sources of energy such as wood and kerosene [66]; [67]. Energy issues conversely affect potable water supply as water treatment processes and the pumping supply systems are reliant on electricity. Although the quantity and quality of water supply are central to water security [62]; [63]; [69], water governance has a central role in the issue of water security. While urban agriculture supplements the city’s food demand, it has implications on water demand given that agricul- ture production and horticulture draws significant amounts of water for irrigation [63]; [62]. Increased populations have found homes in informal settlements, which tend to have poor quality infrastructure and amenities such as roads, electricity, water, sanitation and good trans- port [63]. For all the cities, there is tacit recognition that complexity of issues threatening water secu- rity in the region cannot be addressed by any one actor or one sector alone and therefore, col- lective leadership is required. An innovative, multi-stakeholder approach to collaboration at all levels, now enshrined in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 17, is emerging whereby partners increased their understanding of water risks, raise awareness of these risks and advo-

cate for change, and harmonize resources and capacities to engage in effective, on-the-ground projects. For the city of Lusaka, the water security initiative is a case in point and in Windhoek the efficacious water reclamation systems that are governed by a PPP resonate the importance of collaboration. City learning points Water and waste issues. The lessons and best practices of water conservation from the CoW are relevant to other FRACTAL cities such as Cape Town, Harare, Johannesburg and Lusaka, which are in the arid belt of the region and therefore susceptible to drought episodes City learning in southern Africa PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227915 January 24, 2020 17 / 25