Co-creating Solutions for Climate Resilience
Our focus is on co-creating impactful, durable solutions with scientists, societal decision-makers, and communities that promote resilient cities in the face of ever-increasing climate change.
Why it matters?
Climate change stands as the most significant long-term threat to humanity, with Africa being the most vulnerable continent. This crisis poses severe risks to local communities, livelihoods, and environments.
Addressing climate change effectively and sustainably demands a deep understanding of its physical changes, impacts, vulnerabilities, and adaptation and risk management strategies within the context of each city. Developing a mutual understanding of these local contexts is crucial. This requires a transdisciplinary collaboration among scientists, governance bodies, policymakers, and other vital stakeholders. By combining our efforts and integrating practical solutions into policy and decision-making frameworks, we aim to build a collective understanding that informs proactive actions and mitigates uncertainty.
Our Approach
By bringing together diverse perspectives and expertise, we focus on identifying the unique challenges faced by individual cities, exploring solutions and co-creating tools, for rapid and effective adaptation to climate changes across various timescales.
Our initiative is rooted in 3 core objectives:
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Understanding the Unique Challenges: Recognizing the specific climate adaptation challenges within each local city context, ensuring solutions are relevant and impactful.
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Empowering Informed Decisions: Providing cities with the necessary scientific evidence and insights to make informed climate adaptation decisions.
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Building Strong Communities: Facilitating seamless collaboration between stakeholders and researchers, simplifying the process of adopting recommended measures for resilience.
Our Partners
Our partners, spanning three of South Africa's largest metropolitan areas—Johannesburg, eThekwini, and Cape Town—ensure our research and initiatives benefit from broad geographical representation and achieve a wider impact.
We collaborate with leading academic institutions to harness a wealth of knowledge and expertise to address climate change challenges::
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City of Johannesburg: Partnering with the University of Witwatersrand's Global Change Institute.
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eThekwini: Collaborations include the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the KZN University of Technology Centre for The Urban Future.
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City of Cape Town: Working alongside the University of Cape Town's Climate System Analysis Group, University of Stellenbosch's Centre for Renewable and Sustainable Energy Studies (CRSES), the University of Western Cape, and the University of Limpopo.
These partnerships reflect our commitment to strengthening city-led solutions for climate resilience.
Get in Touch
We aim to co-create impactful, durable solutions by creating a shared understanding between scientists, societal decision-makers and boundary organizations that promote resilient cities to promote climate adaptation.