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

as well as other southern African cities in the same zone [62]. This is not to say that the other cities are not acting towards water conservation, but CoW provides an excellent example of a city that is managing water scarcity well [71]. In this case cities like Harare that have a perpet- ual water crisis could draw lessons from CoW given the significantly higher amount of rainfall that the former receives per annum. Considering that the region has since 1960 been experiencing a decrease in annual rainfall [80] the status quo should not be maintained, and Lusaka and other cities in the region can learn from CoW where water conservation and wastewater reclamation is being done. Green business opportunities at the community level can help create an enabling environ- ment for active participation in climate change mitigation and adaptation projects [81; 82]. A key learning point from the cities of Harare, Lusaka and Durban is the concept of including the community in the cleaning which contributes towards better solid waste management. This appears to be a feasible option for Lusaka, where many actions have already formally involved communities; as well as more recently in Harare (and across Zimbabwe), where com- munity cleaning efforts scheduled for the first Friday of every month (since November 2018) have begun to bear fruit. Informal settlements. The multi-faceted and interconnected nature of several issues that cross the ecological-socio-economic divide resonate with situations across most cities in south-

ern Africa. One lesson learnt through the exchange visits was how to address the challenge of informal settlements vis-à-vis building resilience in the cities as low-income households and informal households often located in unsuitable areas are most vulnerable to the compounding effects of both non-climatic and climate risks such as floods in Lusaka. The exchange visit brought out the advantages existing in CoW where temporary unplanned and illegal structures are constructed using corrugated iron sheets. These can easily be removed or moved for upgrading and planning given that most of these settlements are situated in unsuitable land. A lesson for other southern African and African cities on dealing with informal settlements that mushroom as a result of population expansion and urbanization and the subsequent fail- ure of service delivery can be drawn from Harare and Zimbabwe. Formalisation of informal settlements and building initiatives in Harare may provide lessons to other African cities that have problems with informal settlements and associated risks such as the famous Kibera in Nairobi, partially informal Khayelitsha township in Cape Town, and in Dar es Salaam that has an informal settlement areal coverage of 70% [83] comparable to Lusaka and to a lesser extent, Windhoek and Durban. Energy issues. The City of Windhoek provides an exceptional case as the function of energy provision is designated at city level, whereas in most African countries the energy pro- vider is often a public entity at national level. However, most southern African countries and

indeed cities, which are large consumers of energy, rely on hydropower energy except for South Africa, and Botswana which mostly rely on fossil fuels, and coal in particular [84]. There is controversy over the continued use of coal in the region (with 90% of South Africa’s energy source being coal-powered), given its contribution to CO2 and greenhouse gases and ulti- mately global warming. We found comparable efforts towards use of renewable energy sources for Harare and Windhoek with projects such as the Southern African Solar Training and Dem- onstration Initiative (SOLTRAIN) and the developments at the SADC Centre for Renewable Energy and Efficiency (SACREE) that both Namibia and Zimbabwe are party to. Water governance. Each city has taken up a water governance system which appears to be feasible and workable. There are several multiple roles of city authorities in governance which influence resilience. These include the role cities play as regulators, as taxation and licensing authorities; as strategic land-use planners and developers; consumers and providers of goods and services. This makes local authorities exceptionally well positioned to lead and City learning in southern Africa PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227915 January 24, 2020 18 / 25