Pathways to water resilient South African cities

12 Jun 2019
12 Jun 2019

Cape Town has been used as a case study for the potential for harvesting stormwater using existing, well-established flood attenuation infrastructure, adapted with nature-based solutions (including green infrastructure / Water Sensitive Design (WSD) options). In Johannesburg, other opportunities for integrating a suite of nature-based solutions that are starting to emerge as a consequence of policy such as the Stormwater Design Manual will be examined. The project will provide important knowledge for a possible future study on upscaling WSD to other cities in South Africa. The PaWS project has just completed. PaWS2 - phase 2 has begun. Some PaWS project outputs are highlighted below, but for a more comprehensive list click here.

The overall objective is to identify opportunities for, and generate knowledge on, the physical and institutional integration of decentralised nature-based solutions into the urban water cycle to support and accelerate a transition towards water resilience in South African cities. The experimental has addressed in two inter-related work package (WP) streams: WP1 on physical experimentation with and evaluation of WSD options at different urban scales; and WP2 on exploring governance processes for enabling the emergent transitions.

Project Related Outputs

* A presentation on progress on the PaWS project was delivered by Kirsty Carden at the Water Institute of South Africa (WISA2020) conference held in December 2020

*Mapping Urban Water Management Governance Processes - WISA abstract

*Understanding components of an enabling governance environment for Water Sensitive Design - IWA abstract

*A presentation at the Network for Early career researchers in Sustainability Transitions (NEST) Conference in April 2021

*A number of workshops with local residents on topics ranging from sandbag construction, local plant biodiversity (at Edith Stephens Nature Reserve) and planned mural making activities (click here for more information or visit our engagement page for updates).