UKRI GCRF Water and Fire

The Future Water research institute has  been awarded a UKRI GCRF collaborative, interdisciplinary project titled 'Water and Fire: Enhancing Capacity and Reducing Risk through 15 'Best Bets' for Transformative Adaptation with Vulnerable Residents on the Cape Flats'. The project aims to work with local knowledge to better understand community and individual responses to climate-change induced crises in the Cape Flats area of South Africa.

Water and Fire is building a partnership between residents of the Cape Flats area of South Africa, the Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation and academic researchers from a range of backgrounds at the University of Stirling, University of Cape Town and University of the Western Cape in an effort to mobilise existing local knowledges and practices, and hence co-produce new approaches to disaster management in the face of protracted environmental crisis.

The research aims to directly address the disaster risk challenges of 3 environmental hazards of water and fire in marginalised SA communities by testing new methods of complementary democratic and creative engagement to advocate community-driven solutions and resilience actions to reduce disasters, thereby closing knowledge gaps.