When record-breaking rains swept through the coastal city of Durban in South Africa in April 2022, the resulting floods destroyed roads, bridges and homes. Durban’s low-lying, poor neighbourhoods were hardest hit, with residents losing their homes and their lives.

The scene would have felt familiar to residents of many other of Africa’s fast-growing cities. Some, including Lagos, Cairo, Cape Town and Durban, have already faced the need to adapt to a changing climate and its intensifying hazards such as floods, droughts or intense heat.

Cities need new ways to adapt to climate change. The current system of social, economic and political structures that cities are based on is built on a market-led capitalist model and globalisation. This model has caused cities to grow in ways that make economically and socially disadvantaged and underserved people more vulnerable to climate hazards.

For instance, many poor residents can only afford to build flimsy homes or live in flood-prone areas near rivers. When climate change brings bigger floods, it’s those neighbourhoods that get hit hardest.

The usual response of most city administrations is to make relatively small changes, like strengthening flood barriers or improving drainage. These aim to reduce climate risks while keeping the underlying social, economic and political system in place. This approach is called incremental adaptation.

But the effects of climate disasters show this approach isn’t working. The solution is transformative adaptation. This is about pushing for bold, wide-ranging changes that tackle the root causes of vulnerability and build a society that’s more equitable, just, sustainable, and inclusive for everyone.

How to do this in practice is still being explored.

Together with our co-authors, Rudo Mamombe and Patrick Martell, we research climate risks and adaptation planning in cities.

We set out to understand how Durban, South Africa and Harare, Zimbabwe – cities that face many spatial and economic inequalities – could achieve transformative adaptation in practice.

The research homed in on local water-related climate risks: erratic rainfall, floods and droughts.

We formed learning labs – groups where we could discuss complex issues with local municipalities, non-governmental organisations, civil society organisations and research organisations. Here, we distilled six principles for transformative adaptation. We then tested those principles against five real-world, water-related projects.

The six principles offer a practical guide for city managers, community organisers and donors to pursue the kind of climate adaptation that advances social, economic, and political justice.

Six ingredients for deeper change

These are the six principles we identified:

1. Fundamental changes in thinking and doing, which must be sustainable: radical changes to the existing norms, values and ways of doing things.
2. Inclusivity: multiple and diverse groups who are all given real influence over the decisions to be made and carried out.
3. Challenges to power imbalances: social justice results from disrupting existing power structures.
4. Demonstrability: tangible, visible benefits.
5. Responsiveness and flexibility: the agility to respond and change as local priorities, conditions and lessons emerge.
6. Holistic, complex systems thinking: recognising that many of the forces driving global change, climate risk, and vulnerability are connected. These links cross sectors, places, timeframes and levels of decision-making.

Where we tested these principles

Durban’s Sihlanzimvelo Stream Cleaning Programme, run by the municipality, employs co-operatives of local residents to clear invasive plants and rubbish from almost 300km of streams.

This results in fewer drain blockages, less flooding, safer public spaces and local jobs. These are all benefits that people (including funders) can literally see. This fulfils the demonstrability principle of transformative adaptation. However, our research found that decision-making power was still largely in the lands of municipal officials. So the project didn’t fulfil the principle of challenging power imbalances.

The Harare Wetlands Advocacy Project, a project of the Harare Wetlands Trust, raises awareness of the value of the wetlands to encourage residents to act as wetland stewards, and trains residents in how to hold government accountable. It has also supported litigation by communities.

By encouraging community and residents’ stewardship of the wetlands, this project fulfils the principles of including more people in matters that affect them. It also challenges power imbalances. Still, measuring ecological gains – such as greater water quantity or quality – is taking time, making quick wins harder to show.

Three smaller Durban initiatives – the Palmiet Catchment Rehabilitation Project, Aller River Pilot Project and Wise Wayz Water Care – bring together different interested and affected people, organisations, and local communities to restore river health.

All three projects have highly inclusive processes and create space for learning and innovation, but agreeing on shared objectives and producing early results is slower and more difficult. These projects have found that it is vital to be flexible. They change their activities as new partners, knowledge and funding come in.

Our research found that visible improvements, such as a cleaner stream, and income opportunities, can help bring finance to a project and change people’s ways of thinking and doing. This can pave the way for deeper shifts in governance.

We also found that truly including more people in finding solutions works well, as it challenges power imbalances, leads to more holistic, systems thinking, and can result in fundamental (and sustainable) changes in thinking and doing. However, inclusivity requires time and care. Negotiating solutions takes longer, and sometimes project funders expect more speed.

Our research found that learning-by-doing beats perfectionism. Transformative projects are experiments that require venturing into unknown territory. Everyone involved has to acknowledge that they are taking part in an experiment which might not succeed. Reflection sessions where projects can adjust course and capture lessons for the next phase are crucial.

Why this matters beyond Durban and Harare

Southern African cities face huge problems from rapid urbanisation, colonial-era spatial inequalities, worsening climate hazards and the current economic models.

Incremental climate adaptation that takes small, narrow steps will not keep up with the need to adapt profoundly. The six principles we identified can help.

However, meeting every principle at once is unlikely. Starting small and thinking big is more achievable. Transformative adaptation therefore needs a journey of strategic steps that start small and then build on each other and grow over time – becoming broader in reach and bolder in ambition. These steps should redistribute power, rethink development priorities and restore ecosystems.

The challenge for city authorities and funders is to back such experiments, learn from them and then scale what works, so that African cities are better prepared for future shocks.

Expert Insights provided by Lorena Pasquini, Alice McClure, Anna Taylor, Chipo Plaxedes Mubaya, and Lulu van Rooyen (nee Pretorius). This article was originally posted on theconversation.com and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here.