Flooding in Cape Town's informal settlements

South African Geographical Journal

ISSN: 0373-6245 (Print) 2151-2418 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rsag20

Flooding in Cape Town's informal settlements: barriers to collaborative urban risk governance Gina Ziervogel, Joy Waddell, Warren Smit & Anna Taylor To cite this article: Gina Ziervogel, Joy Waddell, Warren Smit & Anna Taylor (2016) Flooding in Cape Town's informal settlements: barriers to collaborative urban risk governance, South African Geographical Journal, 98:1, 1-20, DOI: 10.1080/03736245.2014.924867 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03736245.2014.924867

Published online: 17 Jun 2014.

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Date: 23 May 2016, At: 00:36

South African Geographical Journal, 2016 Vol. 98, No. 1, 1–20, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03736245.2014.924867

Flooding in Cape Town’s informal settlements: barriers to collaborative urban risk governance Gina Ziervogela1, Joy Waddella2, Warren Smitb* and Anna Taylorb,c3

Downloaded by [University of Cape Town Libraries] at 00:36 23 May 2016

a

Environmental and Geographical Science, University of Cape Town, Environmental & Geographical Science Building, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa; bAfrican Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town, Environmental & Geographical Science Building, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa; cStockholm Environment Institute, 9 Grove Street, Oxford OX27JT, UK When managing urban flood risk, traditional flood risk management which prioritizes infrastructural and technical solutions is important but is not sufficient to reduce the risk to acceptable levels, particularly in informal settlements. Understanding how flood risk is governed needs to complement flood risk interventions in order to be able to move towards a more collaborative response to managing flood risk. Drawing on the case of Cape Town, South Africa, where annual flood events impact on many informal settlements, we identify barriers to collaborative governance that could be addressed to help to build a more holistic flood management approach that proactively reduces flood risk. Our focus is on local government as a key arena of flood risk management. Using a nodal governance framework, we assess the mentalities, technologies, resources and institutional structures of four different local government departments in the City of Cape Town and the extent to which they collaborate on flood risk management. Four key constraints to collaborative urban flood risk management are identified: the domination of a technocratic approach, lack of particular capacities, the challenge of how to share risk, and political contestation and short-termism. Unpacking the nature of nodal governance is a key step in identifying possibilities for collaboration and thus strengthening processes of urban flood management. This is particularly important for urban environmental risk management in the global South, which needs to engage with a development agenda that includes the politics of informality and the complexities of social, as well as environmental, change. Keywords: Cape Town; governance; local government; environmental change; adaptation

1.

Introduction

The steady growth of urban settlements alongside rapidly changing environmental and social conditions has resulted in increased complexity of urban environmental risks such as flooding. In cities of the global South, where high levels of informality exist, accompanied by high exposure to, and low capacity for reducing risk (Faling, 2012; Pelling, 2003, Pelling & Wisner, 2009), these high levels of complexity require new ways of thinking about how to manage these risks (Walker et al., 2010). The case of Cape Town is no exception – flooding is a recurrent problem in numerous informal settlements in the city. This is partly a result of biophysical conditions (i.e. intense winter rainfall, soil type and high ground water levels) and partly a function of settlement patterns (i.e. informal occupation of marginal land and the construction of ‘temporary’ structures). But it is also a function of ineffective interventions to address these realities.

*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected] q 2014 Society of South African Geographers


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Environmental governance and adaptive management theory suggest that one response to these complex problems is a shift away from centralized, hierarchical approaches to more holistic, decentralized, collaborative approaches to managing environmental risk (Burris, Kempa, & Shearing, 2008; Holley, Gunningham, & Shearing, 2011). It is generally recognized that flood risk management, as with all forms of disaster risk management, requires the collaboration of a wide range of organizations, including local government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society (van Niekerk, 2006). Pursuing collaboration enables the perspectives and needs of a wide range of residents and other actors to be considered (Ansell & Gash, 2007). This is particularly important in cities with high levels of inequality and informality, where the realities of informality need to be understood from multiple perspectives, with input from multiple disciplines and sectors, in order to comprehensively address the factors increasing the vulnerability of people living in informal settlements. Yet, in practice, these collaborative governance approaches are challenging to design, implement and maintain, because they involve decentralized decision-making that incorporates input from multiple stakeholders (both within and outside government) working together in mutually beneficial ways to shape the flow of events (Djalante, 2012; Holley, Gunningham, & Shearing, 2011). In this paper, we demonstrate that one of the reasons that efforts to reduce flood risks and impacts are ineffective in Cape Town is a lack of collaboration between the numerous stakeholders that affect or are affected by flooding. For example, residents of flood-prone areas, those tasked with installing drainage channels and those managing the provision of emergency shelter for those displaced by floods do not collaborate. This has led us to pose the research question: why is collaboration around managing floods risk in Cape Town currently so limited and difficult to achieve? In this paper, we use a nodal governance framework to begin developing an answer to this question. Local government consists of different departments, which are viewed as nodes in this paper, as the sites where decisionmaking and action occurs (Shearing & Wood, 2003). These nodes have different ways of thinking about flooding. Ultimately, one needs to understand the whole network of nodes whose actions have a bearing on flooding in Cape Town, but as a start we focus on characterising four nodes within the City of Cape Town (CCT) administration, to see what this characterization reveals about their capacity to collaborate with each other, and with other nodes external to the City administration. Although flood response among residents and between residents, local leaders and government has been researched in our research project, this paper focuses specifically on nodes within local government. The rationale for starting with four governance nodes internal to the city administration is that while local government has a clear mandate for disaster risk reduction and flood management, as stipulated in South Africa’s Disaster Management Act (2002), there are numerous departments within the city administration that have part of the responsibility and resources for fulfilling this mandate. It is therefore useful to examine them as separate nodes that require coordination and collaboration among themselves, as well as with a multitude of other nodes external to the city administration. The focus on local government is important, as before including actors from outside the CCT, we need to first understand collaboration between different government departments. In the following sections, we first examine approaches to flood risk management and governance as presented in the literature. We draw on a nodal governance framework to analyse four CCT departments [Development Services, Disaster Risk Management Centre (DRMC), Informal Settlements Management (ISM), and Roads and Stormwater (RSW)] in terms of their involvement in flood risk management. The nodal governance framework


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provides the themes for identifying the different mentalities of the four CCT departments, the resources and technologies they draw on, and the institutional frameworks guiding how they manage flood risk in Cape Town’s informal settlements. Interviews were carried out with the officials from these four CCT departments, and workshops were held with these departments and the Flood and Storms Task Team, which coordinates their activities on flood management for all of Cape Town. The data from these interviews and workshop proceedings, analysed through a nodal governance lens, help to also identify constraints or barriers to collaboration, both within government and with external actors. Addressing these barriers is an essential step in working towards building a flood risk management approach that engages with the complexity of the problem and recognizes the diversity of actors, their unique characteristics and their goals. 2. Shifting focus from flood risk to the actors involved in managing and responding to flood risk Flood risk management as understood in this paper is the ‘combination of all activities that aim at maintaining and improving the ability of a region to cope with [floods]’ (de Bruijin, Green, Johnson, & Mcfadden, 2007). These activities can include both ‘hard’ structural solutions (such as traditional stormwater engineering and newer approaches such as ‘sustainable urban drainage systems’) and ‘softer’ non-structural solutions such as education programmes and changing land use planning to reduce flood risk. Current flood risk management approaches emerged from the flood hazard policy domain in response to a need for managing flood risk as opposed to managing physical flood impacts through technocratic measures (de Bruijin et al., 2007; Schanze, 2006). Flood risk management takes a systems perspective that recognizes that the system is dynamic and complex and requires an understanding of the catchment as a whole, the physical and socio-economic characteristics of the area, and a specific definition of flood risk based on probabilities and impacts (de Bruijin et al., 2007). Flood risk management approaches have traditionally been driven by professionals who possessed the engineering-driven technical know-how for reducing the risk of impacts on ecosystems, infrastructure and residents of a given area (Mercer, Kelman, Lloyd, & Suchet-Pearson, 2008; Plate, 2002; Yodmani, 2001). In line with a shift in disaster risk management as a whole, there has been a shift in the literature and policy documentation towards an emphasis on complementary non-structural, people-centred solutions to support engineered technology in order to more holistically reduce risk (Kelman, 2007; United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction [UNISDR], 2009; Weichselgartner & Obersteiner, 2002). The practice, however, has generally lagged behind (Harries & Penning-Rowsell, 2011). For example, a study by Botha and van Niekerk (2013) of high-risk communities across South Africa shows that residents felt ‘that the government follows a top-down process with local government officials telling community members what to do, but not asking community members what they think should be done’ (Botha & van Niekerk, 2013, p. 4) and ‘that there does not seem to be any form of cooperation between the government departments with regard to disaster prevention’ (Botha & van Niekerk, 2013, p. 7). Similarly, Taing, Armitage, and Spiegel (2011) and Bakker, Kooy, Shofiani, and Martjin (2008) highlight from their research in Cape Town and Jakarta, respectively, how engineered solutions implemented in an informal settlement context often fail because technical solutions are implemented without input from local communities and without adequate supporting education activities to complement the technical solutions. These examples illustrate how insufficient attention


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has been paid to the institutional and governance context in which these measures are implemented, which significantly limits the effectiveness of many measures. Although this paper does not focus explicitly on the engagement between municipal officials and local communities, it recognizes the importance of bringing these different actors together in decision-making platforms and how a lack of this in the current Cape Town context is one of the challenges to effective collaborative governance of urban risk. Fatti and Patel (2013) show in their research how municipal officials and residents have different perceptions of flood risk, and this often shapes the responses they prioritize. The Isandla Institute’s (2011) research highlights the challenges in implementation and planning, caused by polarized priorities and contestation in South Africa with regard to service delivery, unemployment, inequality, informality and poverty. This is seen as a result of not only the contentious nature of these issues, but also the current, often divided and fractured politics at all levels, as well as the inherent differences in interests and priorities within government structures and local communities (Isandla Institute, 2011). By shifting focus from the activities and interventions of flood risk management to the governance of flood risk, this paper highlights the actions of the actors involved in flood risk reduction decisions, questioning whose actions have a bearing on flood-related outcomes, and how. Governance thinking has been largely absent from flood risk management, but collaborative governance is particularly important when pursuing nonstructural measures for managing urban environmental risk because of the need to include a range of stakeholders that can account for the complexity of the social, economic, environmental and political realities (van Asselt & Renn, 2011). It has been widely recognized that over the past few decades, there has been a shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’, linked to the ‘hollowing out’ of the state associated with neoliberalization (Rhodes, 1997; Stoker, 1998). Although ‘government’ is characterized by hierarchies and clear separations between state and society (Kjaer, 2009), ‘governance’ at the local level is seen as being characterized by a blurring of public-private boundaries, the rise of networks and an increased role for actors other than the local government in the attainment of public goals (Pierre, 2005). Governance theorists argue that local government needs to actively include citizens and their local knowledge in the development of public policies to solve urban problems (Lowndes & Sullivan, 2004; Stoker, 2004). Global Network of Civil Society Organizations for Disaster Reduction (GNDR)’s (2011) global research project, Views from the Frontline, highlights the need for strong governance structures, at both the local and national level, which are accountable, responsive and inclusive. Recognising that disasters cannot be addressed in silos, effective local governance is seen when local government tries to link different line ministries and sectors, working together with civil society, the private sector and at-risk communities (GNDR, 2011). This is essentially the notion of ‘collaborative governance’, which involves a range of different actors (both within and outside government, bringing different types of knowledge and expertise) working together to shape the flow of events. Collaborative governance can take a number of forms. One form is about collaborative decision-making and bringing ‘multiple stakeholders together in common forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-orientated decision-making’ (Ansell & Gash, 2007, p. 543). These forums for engagement between different actors can take various forms. A useful distinction is the difference between ‘invited’ and ‘invented’ spaces of participation (Miraftab, 2004). Invited spaces of participation are the participation forums established by, or legitimized by, government bodies, whereas the invented spaces of participation are the ones created by grassroots organizations to challenge government bodies. Another form of collaborative governance is the design and implementation of



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specific programmes and projects. Through collaborative design and implementation, new hybrid models can be developed to bridge competing knowledges and rationalities (Harrison, 2006). Mediating organizations, such as universities and NGOs, often play an important role in actively catalysing exchanges of knowledge between diverse nodes (Perry & May, 2010). Through bringing together different types of knowledge to develop a more holistic understanding of issues among a range of nodes, a platform for developing innovative collaborative interventions can be created (Huxham, 2000). There has been criticism of the efficacy of collaborative governance. For example, it has been argued that collaborative governance networks may fail to create consensus due to the underlying tensions and opposing interests inherent in market economies (Davies, 2005). Stoker (2004) suggests that while collaborative governance networks are able to solve conflicts about the distribution of resources, they are not able to resolve deeper ideological conflicts. This is particularly the case in South Africa, where the rationalities of, for example, municipal officials and community members, are often located at opposite ends of the continuum with little or no common ground (Watson, 2003). Case studies of engagement between the local state and citizens in Cape Town also suggest that these processes can result in relationships of patronage and the ‘demobilization’ of civil society (Staniland, 2008). Nonetheless, despite these difficulties, engagement with other stakeholders on meeting social needs is an essential part of local democracy (Ballard, 2008). In this paper, we are specifically interested in nodes, which consist of groups of actors, impacted by and responding to flooding. Theoretically, nodes are conceived of as sites where knowledge, capacity and resources are mobilized to manage the course of events (Johnston & Shearing, 2003; Shearing & Wood, 2003). There are four essential characteristics of nodes identified by Johnston and Shearing (2003): mentalities, technologies, resources and institutional structures. Mentality refers to a way of thinking about the matters that the node governs, such as the dominant form of thinking around what a flood is and how best that node can govern flood risk. Technologies are the sets of methods and tools used to exert influence over a particular course of events that pertain to flood management, such as policy, technology or assessments. Resources, which include social, human and financial capital, enable the operation of the node and exert influence over a particular course of events. Lastly, institutional structure describes the relationships which enable the directed mobilization of resources, mentalities and technologies over time. 3.

Flood risk management in Cape Town

The combination of annual winter storms and heavy rains, the steep mountainous slopes generating lots of runoff, long coastlines and the large expanses of low-lying land (the Cape Flats) means that much of Cape Town is at risk of flooding. However, in the parts of the city where land use is regulated, building codes are enforced and levels of public services are high, flooding rarely occurs, because, for the most part, buildings are strategically positioned and weather-resistant, and there are well-designed stormwater and drainage networks, which are well maintained. However, in Cape Town’s under-serviced informal areas, where housing density is high, marginal land is occupied, buildings generally are low quality and limited public services are provided, localized flooding is a widespread and regular occurrence. Flooding in informal settlements in Cape Town is currently inevitable, as the majority of these settlements are located on low-lying, sandy and waterlogged land, which is prone to rising flooding during the wet winter months (Bouchard, Goncalo, Susienka, & Wilson, 2007; Ziervogel & Smit, 2009).


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The CCT’s DRMC is mandated with mitigating disaster risk and responding to disasters, including flooding, across Cape Town, as stipulated in the National Disaster Management Act of 2002 (Pharoah, 2006; South Africa, 2002). This Act provides the framework for the DRMC to coordinate actions, prevent and reduce disaster risk and ensure effective response and recovery during and after disaster events (Pharoah, 2006; South Africa, 2002). In 2008, the Development Services department, within the Human Settlements Directorate of the CCT, was mandated to provide a formalized structure for various line departments to work together to integrate preparedness and response activities, with the objective of reducing or mitigating the risk that winter storms and flooding pose to residents. This resulted in the formation of the Flood and Storms Task Team (referred to as the ‘Task Team’ throughout this paper). Although initiated by Development Services, the management of the Task Team was taken over by the DRMC. Through their annual Winter Preparedness Strategy, the Task Team identify high-priority informal settlements at risk of flooding during the winter months, develop disaster risk reduction strategies for these high-priority areas and provide contingency plans for potential flooding across Cape Town’s settlements (Pharoah, 2006; Ziervogel & Smit, 2009). The RSW department and ISM department play a central role on this Task Team as a result of their in-depth, specialized knowledge of engineered solutions to reduce flooding (i.e. stormwater drainage systems), the functioning of informal settlements and localized flood risk, respectively. Despite South Africa’s progressive environmental and disaster management legislation, current disaster risk management practices on the ground are often reactive, with a focus on narrow technical solutions and the provision of disaster relief (Holloway, 2003; International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies [IFRC], 2012). Although there are attempts to shift to a more proactive risk reduction approach, such efforts by the CCT have not always been effective. Arguments for why the latter is the case centre on issues of institutional mandates and arrangements, governance, informality, rapid unplanned urbanization, marginalization of people-at-risk and inadequate service provision (Bouchard et al., 2007; Holloway, 2003; Ziervogel & Smit, 2009). Holloway (2003) and Pharoah (2006) attribute some of the failures in implementation and mainstreaming of disaster risk reduction objectives into development activities to many actors still seeing disaster risk management as a field belonging exclusively to disaster management and emergency response professionals, rather than taking a more integrated perspective on the sources and drivers of risk and how these can be reduced as part of ongoing development initiatives. In the rest of this section, we focus on local government as a key site of flood management, characterising four governance nodes within the CCT municipal administration, in order to understand the different roles they play in flood risk management, the qualities they bring to bear on doing so and the extent to which they collaborate around and contest different approaches and outcomes internally within the CCT administration and externally with nodes situated outside the CCT administration. More details on the four nodes are provided in Table 1. The collection of data for identifying and characterising the nodes began with eight semi-structured in-depth interviews undertaken with CCT officials during 2010. These initial interviews were followed up in 2011 and 2012 with a further nine semi-structured in-depth interviews. Within different CCT departments, the people most involved in flooding issues, who were often the same people who represent their department on the Task Team, were interviewed. The interviews focused on two main areas: the current response to and challenges with flood risk, and the identification of an ideal response to


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Table 1. Selected CCT departments involved in managing flood risk. Department

Core responsibility

Types of responses

Plan for and respond to any disaster by identifying and assessing the hazards, mitigating against these hazards, reducing risk and managing the consequences of a disaster event (i.e. response, relief and rehabilitation). Their role includes the RSW Transport, Roads and Proactively designing, maintenance and Stormwater implementing and unblocking of stormwater maintaining constructed infrastructure, as well as systems to address ensuring adequate responses the drainage needs of to minor and major flood Cape Town (in formal incidents. and informal areas) Development Services Development Human Settlements Coordinate with other provide support to the Services departments to ensure Task Team with respect to the effective delivery reporting and assessing of services in and the current state of services around Cape Town’s and infrastructure in informal settlements informal settlements. ISM Human Settlements Managing informal Assess and coordinate settlements infrastructure upgrading including providing construction materials and relocation. Annual risk assessments of informal settlements. DRMC


Directorate Safety and Security

Managing disaster risk in all communities of Cape Town

flood risk management in informal settlements and its associated challenges. After using content analysis to identify key issues from the interviews, regular engagement with the Task Team during 2011 and 2012 helped gain further understanding of the characteristics of the nodes. Engagement included presenting preliminary results to the Task Team as well as further interviews and an in-depth workshop in 2011 that explored key issues through a governance lens. At the workshop, participants completed a number of activities within their departmental groupings to explore each department’s perceptions and understanding of what causes flood risk in informal settlements, the challenges of managing floods in informal settlements and of engaging with other departments and external actors, and what is needed to overcome these challenges. There was good representation at the workshop, with 22 participants from eight CCT departments and one provincial DRMC representative. The results of all the interviews, interaction and workshops are not presented individually but rather the nodal governance lens that framed the analysis is used to explore the four nodal characteristics below. 3.1 Mentalities: different understandings of problems Fatti and Patel (2013) illustrate, through their research on urban governance and flood management in South Africa, how influential risk perceptions are in terms of how local


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government and residents manage flood risk. This study builds on those insights, highlighting how the four nodes examined in this study have differing mentalities, shaped by the very sector-specific and often disciplinary-based understanding of what the risk is, what the solutions are and who has the mandate and tools to implement those solutions. DRMC staff largely view the city in terms of hazards and risks posed to residents, infrastructures, service delivery and events, either by natural phenomena (e.g. heavy rainfall, strong winds) or human activities (e.g. oil spills, traffic accidents). DRMC staff see themselves as having a coordination mandate in terms of planning for and responding to disaster situations, facilitating other departments to fulfil their mandate as effectively as possible in order to reduce disaster risks and deal with impacts. With their disaster risk reduction lens on the flooding issue, DRMC staff identify the source of the problem as simultaneously one of people living in unsuitable locations and of excessive rainfall and high water levels. DRMC staff, engaging directly with communities through their education and awareness campaigns, recognize the central role that the public play, arguing that ‘disaster management is everybody’s business’. RSW see their role as addressing flood risk across greater Cape Town, and not focusing narrowly on flooding in specific ‘high-risk’ informal settlements determined by DRMC’s annual disaster risk assessment. RSW view their mandate as protecting people beyond a certain severity of storm event and for anything smaller than that it is ‘generally accepted’ by RSW that communities should manage flood impacts themselves. RSW recognize the need for engaging with communities, but see the CCT engineers as having the technical know-how and expertise, and therefore as playing the central role in implementing engineered flooding solutions. They grapple with the practicalities of how they might get residents to share risk and how they should convey information about risk sharing to external nodes that are perceived to lack the technical know-how and have a limited understanding of risk as it is defined in technical terms. Many of the officials in this department are responsible for designing and implementing drainage infrastructure and have an engineering background that underpins their mentality. Despite their familiarity with the hard solutions, they have only recently begun to recognize the need for soft responses, such as education campaigns, to support hard solutions implemented across Cape Town’s informal settlements. Development Services are involved in coordinating the delivery of services in informal settlements, and are therefore concerned with the impact that flooding has on the effective delivery and maintenance of these services. Service delivery itself is a cross-sectoral issue, requiring the coordination of multiple nodes within the CCT administration and externally with other nodes. This recognition of Development Service’s established networks between multiple CCT nodes, resulted in the CCT mandating this department initially to establish a cross-departmental Task Team as a forum for bringing various CCT nodes together to better manage flood risk. ISM sees flooding of informal settlements in Cape Town as mainly a problem of people being in the wrong place rather than as a problem of excess water; this is because the flooding problems they have to deal with are generally caused by people occupying low-lying, poorly drained areas that are not (in their present state) suitable for residential use. The way they understand the flooding issue and the solutions they seek are shaped by their daily interactions on the ground, often from the perspective of residents in informal settlements. ISM supports the partnership of CCT nodes with external nodes (e.g. communities), through the implementation of social and institutional solutions such as relocation, in situ upgrading, and education.



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3.2 Flood risk management technologies of the nodes Each of the nodes uses a specific set of methods for exerting influence over the course of events (flood risk reduction in this case). The technologies used are a reflection of the departmental mentalities and also show how these nodes often act in silos, despite their reliance, at times, on similar technologies. At the simplest level, one can also characterize the technologies along the continuum from engineered structural measures to more people-centred non-structural measures, as seen in Figure 1. RSW and ISM provide, for example, technical engineered services (i.e. drainage and housing), while, in practice, DRMC and Development Services are more involved in working with people at the settlement level, for example, on education and awareness raising. This is also in line with what the different nodes see as the root of the problem: ‘water in the wrong place’ (a physical hazard) needs a hard, technical solution, while ‘people in the wrong place’ (a socio-political issue) needs a softer, often non-technical, solution. There are a variety of technologies used by the different departments to exert influence, as seen in Table 2. One group of technologies relied on by all of the nodes is policy and legislation, variously developed and adopted by local, provincial and national government. DRMC staff, for example, are guided by and draw their mandate from the Disaster Management Act 57 of 2002, and the South African Disaster Management Framework of 2005. This national act and framework guide the identification of priority actions for ensuring the protection of people and communities from hazards and risks, and highlight the need for DRMC staff to coordinate the management of, and response to, disaster events, and ensure the reduction of risk. RSW’s strategies for dealing with flood risks, on the other hand, are informed by the local Stormwater Management Strategy and its four priority policies: proactive development, stormwater system management, disaster management and education. The Stormwater Management Strategy differs from DRMC’s mandate in that it emphasizes a technical focus on improving infrastructure related to stormwater management and diverting excess water from at-risk areas, and is specific to Cape Town.

Figure 1. Alignment of technical responses to flood risk in terms of structural and non-structural measures. Note: RSW, Roads and Stormwater; IS, Informal Settlements; DS, Development Services; DRMC, Disaster Risk Management Centre.

10 Table 2. Town.

G. Ziervogel et al. Summary of key technologies used by the four selected nodes to reduce flood risk in Cape

DRMC


Risk assessments DRM plans Coordinating the Flood and Storms Task Team Relief during event Industrial theatre Early warning systems

RSW

Development Services

ISM

Stormwater Management Strategy Construction of drainage systems, retention ponds Management and upgrading of systems (constructed and natural rivers) Education programmes

Risk assessments Monitoring and evaluation Setting up the Task Team Reporting

Emergency Housing Policy Flood kits Sand protocol

In addition to legislation and policies, the nodes also employ other strategies to shape particular events. DRMC staff use risk assessments, disaster risk management plans and awareness programmes as their technologies for influencing how flooding and other risks are addressed. In 2010, a Comprehensive Disaster Risk Assessment was completed for Cape Town, identifying around 70 hazards to assign relative priorities for planning, preparation and response actions, as well as assessing at the ward level the perceptions of various risks as held by residents, local businesses and organizations. This assessment has informed the development of a suite of disaster risk management plans specific to each cluster or category of hazards, covering both preparedness and response activities to be undertaken by various directorates and departments across Cape Town. One of these plans deals specifically with flooding and storms hazards. Cape Town’s Municipal Disaster Risk Management Plan (DRMC, 2011) is linked to the 5-year Integrated Development Plan (IDP) that sets out the CCT’s priorities to guide budget allocations and operations. When it comes to responding specifically to a disaster situation, DRMC coordinates with relevant nodes within the CCT (i.e. other departments), as well as external nodes (i.e. residents, businesses and NGOs), to respond to and reduce the resulting impacts. RSW, in accordance with their Stormwater Management Strategy, as well as the HighLevel Master Plan for Bulk Infrastructure (still under development), provide the engineering know-how for constructing drainage systems and ensuring that blocked stormwater systems are cleared, maintained and upgraded, and that bulk infrastructure is able to protect people up to a certain severity of storm/flood event. Their assessment of current infrastructure and their knowledge on the issue is integrated into spatial development frameworks for the CCT, attempting to ensure that the CCT only allows development in areas that are low risk. RSW have an education programme that aims to help residents, particularly those living in informal settlements, understand how flood risk is managed at an institutional level and what role the CCT plays, versus the role communities are expected to play. RSW acknowledge that their department is more comfortable drawing on infrastructural technologies, but that they would like to address the non-structural issues more in their responses. ISM and Development Services are less involved in explicit flood risk reduction activities, although they do play a responsive role following a flood event. They draw on expertise within their department, as well as risk assessments, to identify priority at-risk areas and communities living in those areas. ISM is responsible for identifying alternative land for temporary relocation areas for displaced households following floods. They acknowledge that their technologies, although adequate for responding to short-term needs in the wake of a disaster event, are not sufficient for ensuring that flood risk is proactively


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reduced. Development Services supports ISM in ensuring the provision of basic services such as communal water standpipes and communal toilets. Development Services recognize their human capital is limited but that other nodes possess the knowledge and technologies needed to reduce flooding, so they need to bring their expertise into a ‘common space’ in order to help tackle the issue of flooding. 3.3 Resources drawn on to support the operations of nodes In order for each of the nodes to exert influence, there are specific resources that are drawn on in order to support the operation of the respective nodes. Resources include the physical, financial, social and human capital, which play a central role in ensuring that the nodes are able to shape events as defined by their mentalities and as supported by their technologies. DRMC is housed in a new purpose-designed building, including a control centre where monitoring is done, emergency calls are received, alerts are issued and the implementation of response measures coordinated. DRMC has a separate facility to use for training purposes, an important aspect to awareness raising, building preparedness and enabling coordination. A source of recognition and influence for DRMC staff, within the CCT and beyond, is their involvement in the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) campaign, Making Cities Resilient: My City is Getting Ready, focused on issues of local governance in addressing urban risks. Through DRMC’s efforts using the Local Government Self-Assessment Tool, Cape Town is the first city in South Africa to be granted ‘disaster resilient’ status through the campaign. One of the social capital deficits is that DRMC staff feel that they do not have the level of authority needed to make decisions that would help improve disaster coordination and response. The human capital they draw on builds on emergency management training and disaster risk thinking. RSW are considering strengthening their financial resources by introducing a stormwater tariff based on the amount of runoff from impervious areas that goes from the road into the stormwater system from a particular development or property. This would encourage existing development to take measures to stop water going into the system and would be a useful way to raise money to invest in infrastructure upgrades and maintenance. They see tariffs as hard to implement, but think that ideally there should be a combination of disincentivising methods, like tariffs, with laws regulating development in flood-prone areas. Although there are solutions to flooding problems on a technical level, RSW get frustrated because even if a technical solution is known, it cannot be implemented until there has been interaction between CCT and the affected community. This process, which involves consulting with and working with the affected community, can often take a long time, and they recognize that they have limited human capital to draw on in this regard. Their skills are primarily in the field of engineering. Development Services identified a lack of capacity as one of the reasons for failing to manage flood risk effectively. They highlighted the need for more professionals to provide solutions and know-how, and for some new approaches to be added to enhance the capacity and effectiveness of existing interventions. All the nodes recognized the need for improvement in the area of education and informing communities of how they could protect themselves. ISM identified the issues of funding, lack of suitable land and the need to improve nonstructural approaches to managing risk as key resource challenges. They draw on the National Emergency Housing Policy to access funding for temporary assistance to flooded households in the form of secure access to land and/or basic municipal services and/or shelter is provided to households. The policy recognizes that these households

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G. Ziervogel et al. have for reasons beyond their control, found themselves in an emergency housing situation where their existing shelter has been destroyed or damaged, their prevailing situation posed an immediate threat to their health, life and safety or where they have been evicted or faced imminent eviction (National Department of Housing, 2004, p. 4)

The Emergency Housing Programme was formulated at national level, but is administered, in the case of Cape Town, by the Western Cape Department of Human Settlements.


3.4

Navigating institutional structures to direct action over time

The discussion so far has reflected the mentalities shaping the four nodes’ understanding of the problem and the available solutions that draw on specific resources and technologies used to exert influence on shaping flood-related activities. It is important to recognize that all of these nodes are bounded by certain institutional structures that enable or curtail the directed mobilization of resources, mentalities and technologies over time. Both van Niekerk (2011) and the IFRC (2012) examine the current DRR legislative landscape in South Africa, arguing that despite South Africa’s very progressive disaster risk management legislation (compared to international standards), there is a mismatch between what is outlined in this DRR legislation and what takes place in practice – at national, provincial and municipal levels. One example of this, as highlighted by Van Niekerk (2011) and the IFRC (2012), and supported by our research at the municipal level in Cape Town, is that despite the Disaster Management Act’s emphasis on decentralising DRM activities across local, provincial and national government, and within government departments (South Africa, 2002), the DRMC is placed within the hierarchy of government as a line function, thereby limiting and constraining its capacity for implementing various legislation and having the authority to make certain higher level or cross-departmental decisions related to the day-to-day management of disaster risk. DRMC officials expressed their frustration of not having the capacity (legally and institutionally) to ensure that all departments and sectors within the CCT integrated DRR activities into their own plans and mandates. The Task Team was essentially created by the CCT as a formalized institutional structure which could pool the available resources, expertise and technologies of various nodes, which otherwise worked in silos. The Task Team is an institutionalized mechanism for bringing together representatives from multiple nodes that have a mandate affecting or affected by flooding (i.e. ISM, RSW, Development Services, City Health, Metropolitan police, Solid Waste Management, Traffic Services, Emergency Response Services and so on.), to meet regularly to discuss progress in implementing preparedness and response measures. On the one hand, representatives of the various nodes highlighted the benefits of this Task Team, which included better information-sharing, combined risk assessments which were more comprehensive as a result, and more accountability with regard to monitoring and reporting of issues and subsequent maintenance regimes. On the other hand, the official structure of the CCT and how the departments function in terms of finances and funding, mandates and legal processes, meant that the implementation of activities still required each node to function within their separate department, thus falling back on traditional silo-based mentalities. ISM is of the view that flood risk management is constrained because of overlapping yet disconnected activities of departments with the CCT and those in Provincial and National Government. This is not surprising, as a large number of state departments are involved in informal settlement interventions and relocations in Cape Town (including the CCT’s Development Services department, the Western Cape Department of Human



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Settlements and the National Housing Development Agency). Development Services, on the other hand, argued that although they help to identify the areas from within which people should be relocated, the final decision usually lies with other departments, such as New Housing and Spatial Planning. All of the representatives on the Task Team recognize that engagement with nodes outside of the CCT is critical to ensuring the success of their planned disaster risk reduction activities – whether engineered or non-structural in nature. RSW see that currently their department has limited engagement with the local residents, which limits risk sharing from their perspective. Both RSW and Development Services feel that although it is mainly the CCT’s engineers and officials’ responsibility to manage flood risk, they also want residents to take on the responsibility of managing some of this risk. There is often high levels of frustration from both the CCT and residents because the institutional structure for engaging with civil society is problematic (e.g. issues of corruption and nepotism were raised) and communication channels between the nodes are blocked or inadequate. Development Services, which feels that residents should not expect the CCT to do ‘everything’ for them, highlighted the need for strengthening non-structural measures, such as better incentives, and education and awareness campaigns, to support the activities already carried out by various nodes, and help encourage residents to actively play their part in helping the CCT reduce flood risk. DRMC staff also recognize a need for increasing engagement with and participation of local residents, businesses and organizations around assessing and managing flooding and other risks in their local areas, but they are struggling to find effective ways of doing this within their capacity constraints and in light of the contested nature of leadership and representation within many communities. One example of DRMC staff’s attempt to engage with communities is the performance theatre they have used as a way to raise awareness, especially among school children. However, they struggle to involve community groups in the detailed planning and implementation of interventions, which often leads to examples of informal settlement committees forcing the performance theatre to leave their neighbourhoods during performances planned by DRMC, without prior permission from these committees. This is another example of where formalized communication channels and monitoring of CCT department activities – seen as institutional structures – are needed to strengthen the capacity of the Task Team to better carry out activities and reduce flood risk. 4.

Constraints to collaborative urban flood risk management

Having investigated each of the four nodes according to their mentalities, technologies, resources and institutional structures, we now turn our attention to how the CCT departments see the constraints to collaborating with each other and with nodes external to the city administration. We suggest that addressing these constraints systemically could support a more integrated approach to tackling flooding and flood risk. 4.1

Domination of technocratic approaches

Although the nodes represented on the Task Team recognize the need for an increasingly integrated approach to managing flood risk that engages with communities living in high flood risk areas, as discussed in the previous section, the implementation of flooding solutions in the Cape Town context remains technocratic and hierarchical. This can be partly attributed to the dominant mentalities within departments and partly to the institutional structure.


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In terms of mentalities, RSW and Development Services reflect engineering backgrounds prioritising output-based, solution-driven thinking. Although RSW representatives felt that existing technical measures to reduce risk are working, they could see that new approaches are needed to enhance the capacity and effectiveness of the existing interventions and that these new approaches require a move away from only technical skills to more process-based skills as well. This is also reflected in the Task Team’s end-of-year report, which is very outputs-based and quantitatively measures the number of interventions implemented by key CCT departments without reflecting on the successes and failures of the interventions and process. Although the Task Team provides a forum for the nodes to meet, the various departments are dominated by their mandates in the CCT, so the nodes tend to work independently. This lack of collaboration is a result of bureaucratic structures, unintegrated funding mechanisms and department-specific performance management systems. Internally, this creates a barrier between departmental nodes in terms of collaborating on similar projects and implementing cross-departmental interventions. RSW, for example, are responsible for ensuring stormwater drainage systems are maintained, but any solid waste that might block a system is the mandate of the department responsible for removing solid waste. DRMC staff’s mandate and bureaucratic structures support their coordination of responses in the event of flooding and engagement with affected communities, but implementation of a particular technical response falls outside of this mandate. Although the Task Team is nominally intended to provide a platform for different voices, including ward councillors, this does not happen in practice. Within the nodes, there are different degrees of engagement with ward councillors, residents and NGOs although there is little systematic and sustained attention given to how to engage external actors more broadly as part of the governance of flood risk. To overcome these barriers to collaboration both internal to the CCT municipal administration and externally, mechanisms are needed to encourage and fund support activities across departments. One such mechanism is the Treasury’s new flexible grant system, which can provide support for inter-departmental projects and therefore encourage internal collaboration. 4.2

Lack of capacity

Respondents from a number of CCT departments said that one of the major obstacles to collaborating with other departments and external nodes was a ‘lack of capacity’. Lack of capacity is a complex issue that embraces staff numbers, skills and institutional frameworks. One of the biggest capacity constraints was staff numbers. Many respondents felt that their departments were understaffed, and they, therefore, did not have the time to engage in collaboration (either internally or externally), as these processes could be timeconsuming, and they needed to focus on getting their ‘core work’ done – although often this is a false distinction as collaborative practices could potentially fulfil some of these core functions more effectively. In addition, many officials felt that they do not have the skills and training to undertake certain types of collaboration with external nodes, such as community participation, where interactions are often highly fractious and antagonistic. The CCTs legal and institutional frameworks, particularly their procurement processes (guided by Municipal Financial Management Act), can also be an obstacle to innovative forms of collaboration with external partners (de Visser, 2012). In effect, these frameworks prioritize tender processes as a way of identifying, and establishing



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relationships with, external partners (such as in the case of DRMC using NGOs to undertake disaster risk relief), which makes it hard to engage a diverse group representing different interests. Regarding internal collaboration specifically, the institutional structure of the CCT can be an obstacle. Although the IDP process is meant to co-ordinate the work of, and thus guide collaboration between, different departments, in practice the IDP process has had limited effect as the work of departments is still driven by factors such as flows of funding and the professional training of officials. There are a number of initiatives for the engagement of various departments around specific priority issues, such as the Task Team, but bodies such as these often meet infrequently, do not include the most senior officials and are only able to make suggestions; undertaking actions therefore still depends on getting higher approval and on implementation by departments. Some respondents also pointed out that the physical location of departments and sections may be a hindrance to collaboration. For example, the RSW field officers based in Khayelitsha are spatially very isolated from officials of other departments based elsewhere in Cape Town, like RSW colleagues in the central city and DRMC staff in Goodwood. 4.3

Challenges to sharing risk between departments and with residents

Part of the rationale for establishing the Task Team was a recognition that different CCT department needed to coordinate activities, which implicitly was a way to share the responsibility of managing flood risk internally between the different nodes. One of the barriers to internal collaboration around sharing risk is that each CCT node is still responsible for activities that fall under their mandate leading to many gaps and overlaps. There are limited incentives and support for undertaking a more holistic response across CCT nodes. The CCT departments generally also want to share flood risk with external nodes, such as residents (both at household and community level). This might include local actors taking responsibility for ensuring litter does not block drains or ensuring that people do not settle on flood plains. The rationale for sharing risk with residents, particularly from RSW, is that they can only protect residents up to a certain level of flood risk, and beyond that residents need to assume some responsibility. However, according to CCT officials, the public discourse is that flooding is the municipality’s problem to manage and residents expect the municipality to manage all of the risk – a similar perception found in research by Tas¸, Tas¸, Durak, and Atanur (2013), in their research on flood vulnerability in an informal settlement in Turkey. In response to this, one of the four foci of the Storm Water Management Strategy is on education, with a focus on communicating to communities how flood risk is managed at an institutional level, what role the CCT will play and what role they expect communities to play. Despite the education work, RSW recognize that better mechanisms for consulting civil society are needed as currently the CCT, and in particular RSW, are working in isolation, which has contributed to poor community relations which limits risk sharing from their perspective. 4.4

Political contestation and short-termism

There is general agreement among CCT departments on what the long-term solutions to reducing flood risk in informal settlements are. The ideal solutions are seen as the upgrading of informal settlements on land that is suited to development subject to government owning or purchasing the land (in many cases, with relocation of residents to


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reduce densities), combined with the relocation of residents currently living on land that is unsuitable to development (e.g. in flood plains, wetlands or in detention ponds) and ensuring that resettlement does not occur on unsuitable land. In both cases, residents would get access to secure tenure, basic infrastructure (water, sanitation, stormwater drainage, etc.), and, ultimately (probably through incremental processes) better dwellings that provide more adequate protection from wet conditions. This would greatly reduce the risk of flooding in Cape Town. In order to do this, however, large amounts of land and development finance are required, and these are the subject of much political contestation. All pieces of vacant land in Cape Town are subject to competing land use claims; use of vacant land for low-income housing is often particularly objected to by neighbouring landusers. The allocation of housing subsidies is also subject to high levels of political contestation, with tensions, for example, between informal settlement residents and backyard dwellers. The high levels of political contestation around land and development finance have obstructed attempts to develop and implement long-term strategies to upgrade Cape Town’s informal settlements (Graham, 2006). In the absence of coherent long-term strategies, there have been a number of short-term interventions driven by shortterm political objectives, with frequent changes in approach and direction (Smit, 2004). The lack of a long-term integrated strategy for upgrading Cape Town’s informal settlements has been an immense obstacle to collaboration between departments regarding reducing risk of flooding, as there has been no overarching framework to guide intersectoral collaboration and no coordinated strategy for acquiring the necessary land and pooling together the necessary development finance from various sources. In the absence of a coordinated intersectoral strategy, individual departments have felt powerless to address the large and complex problem of flooding in informal settlements, and have fallen back on short-term single-sector interventions which, in their relative isolation (with the exception of initiatives such as the Task Team), do not significantly impact on the problem as whole. The lack of a coordinated strategy has also been an obstacle to collaboration between CCT departments and external nodes, as long-term collaboration has not been possible in a context of frequent shifts in policies and approach. For example, some private developers that were initially involved in the provision of low-income housing, and who may potentially have had a role to play in the upgrading of informal settlements, are no longer involved in the provision of low-income housing as a result of continued uncertainty over long-term government plans, resulting in them being able to undertake long-term planning regarding their involvement. 5.

Conclusion: reflection on implications for governing urban risk

Our study suggests that nodal governance can provide a useful framework for understanding the barriers to effective flood risk management in Cape Town. Although having a good understanding of the biophysical and socio-economic factors that impact on flood risk is essential, the nodal governance framework can help analyse the nature of, and interaction between, nodes that play a key role in managing flood risk, and can therefore help identify opportunities for reducing or better responding to flood risk. Our case study of Cape Town shows how much nodes (in this case, CCT departments) can differ in their mentalities and technologies, and how this can be a challenge to collaboration when pursuing a more integrated approach to flood risk management. It is clear that within the CCT, a number of different nodes are critical to managing flood risk. The engagement between nodes has benefited from the establishment of the Task Team, which brings key CCT departments together. Although interaction between



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departments in the Task Team can be seen as a type of collaboration, and thus is a very positive development, it is relatively superficial in the sense that it is not a decisionmaking body, and all their suggestions still need to be approved and implemented by the individual departments (and this does not always happen). In addition, although nominally there could be engagement in the Task Team from other parts of government, such as Ward Councillors, currently they do not participate. The CCT nodes do, to some extent, interact with external actors, but there is no coherent approach to this external engagement. There are both invited spaces of participation (such as the Task Team, which has occasionally included representatives from nodes outside the CCT) and invented spaces of participation (such as ad hoc engagements initiated by specific informal settlement communities with specific CCT departments), but these spaces for participation are few and far between. It is encouraging to see that officials from across the CCT departments recognize the value that collaboration with residents and NGOs would bring. However, there are constraints to enacting this, in terms of the domination of top-down technocratic approaches to flood risk management, lack of (human, financial and legal) capacity of CCT departments to meaningfully engage with external nodes, challenges relating to the sharing of risk, and high levels of political contestation that encourage a focus on the short-term. Our study of Cape Town suggests that collaborative flood governance that includes key CCT nodes and key external nodes (such as civil society organizations in flood-prone areas) is essential for addressing flood risk in a proactive and holistic way. Collaborative governance requires bridging the competing mentalities and technologies of different nodes and developing new hybrid technologies (or adopting existing technologies) that better suit a diversity of mentalities. To work towards collaborative flood risk management, it is essential that all key nodes recognize that they need to work together in a collaborative way to better manage flood risk, and seek to enter into dialogue with other nodes (through a variety of invited and invented spaces for dialogue) so as to gain a better understanding of the mentalities and technologies of other nodes. The role of mediating organizations will be crucial in helping bringing nodes together. In conclusion, we argue that although flood risk management as a concept foregrounds activities and interventions that are critical to tackling questions of what to do to address floods, flood risk governance shifts the focus to the actors involved, their intentions, and how they shape events, questioning whose actions have a bearing on flood-related outcomes. This inclusion of the notion of governance in flood risk management can result in a more holistic understanding of the causes, impacts and possible responses to flooding, which can build a platform for developing collaborative activities that will help reduce flood risk in a proactive and holistic way.

Acknowledgements We would like to thank Professor Clifford Shearing for his guidance on this project, all the people who contributed to the project and the reviewers for their valuable comments.

Funding This paper is based on research carried out in the Flooding in Cape Town under Climate Risk (FliCCR) project, funded by the International Development Research Centre and the United Kingdom Department for International Development as part of the Climate Change Adaptation in Africa programme. The FliCCR project is located in the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town and forms part of the Mistra Urban Futures programme on urban change.

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Notes 1. Email: [email protected] 2. Email: [email protected] 3. Email: [email protected]


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