Urban green spaces in a post-apartheid city : challenges and opportunities for nature-based solutions
Abstract
Cities in sub-Saharan countries are simultaneously facing climate change, rapid urbanisation, and social inequalities. Nature-based Solutions harness nature’s benefits to address these environmental, social, and economic challenges. In this study, we investigate how taking into account temporal dynamics and multiple values of nature helps to implement better Nature-based Solutions. Through satellite images and interviews with practitioners and residents, we look at how green spaces and dry riverbeds are distributed, managed, and perceived in the capital city of Namibia, south-western Africa. We find that apartheid spatial segregation legacies persist through the unequal distribution of urban green spaces, and that, although their current management limits their capacity to deliver benefits, riverbeds have the potential to support sustainable development and climate change adaptation.
Citation
Giombini , V & Thorn , J 2022 , Urban green spaces in a post-apartheid city : challenges and opportunities for nature-based solutions . in D Ieva Misiune & L E V Depellegrin (eds) , Human-nature interactions : Exploring nature’s values across landscapes . Springer , Cham , pp. 207-219 . https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-01980-7_17
Publication
Human-nature interactions
Type
Book item
Rights
Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Open Access. This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
Description
The authors thank Climate Research 4 Development fellowship (CR4D-19-21) for funding the Urban Ecolution project – implemented by the African Academy of Sciences in partnership with the UK’s Department for International Development, Weather and Climate Information Services for Africa programme and the African Climate Policy Centre of the United Economic Commission for Africa. This study has also been funded in part by the African Women in Climate Change Science Fellowship supported by the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences Next Einstein Forum and the International Development Research Centre of Canada Aid, the UK’s Research and Innovation’s Global Challenges Research Fund under the Development Corridors Partnership project (ES/P011500/1).Collections
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