"The Urban Futures project" Toward health equity, inclusive governance, and climate adaptation in African informal settlements

We will work with informal settlements residents in Sub-Saharan African cities to understand the lived realities of climate change and co-produce contextually appropriate adaptation strategies. Typically, informal settlement residents are excluded from formal planning processes. Historic marginalization and structural inequalities mean that these residents are disproportionately exposed to cascading climate hazards that compound their socio-economic vulnerability.

Even within informal settlements, some are more vulnerable or excluded than others, such as women and girls, people living with disabilities, and other minorities. Our participatory, inclusive, interdisciplinary and trans-sectoral research focuses on risks to: human health (R1), living standards (R2), and critical physical infrastructure, networks, and services (R3), and it will necessarily involve other complex, intersecting risks to water and food security.

Identifying these interactions is vital for developing effective adaptations and to avoid further harm from urban policy which overlooks informality and may exacerbate injustices including distributive (the distribution of adaptation's risks and benefits); procedural (inclusion-exclusion in decision-making); and recognitional (recognizing lived experiences and local knowledge).

Our multi-national, cross-disciplinary and multi-sectoral team will explore the cascading, multi-dimensional risks in urban informal settlements in three sub-Saharan African cities that experience differing climate-relates risks (Freetown, Kampala, and Bulawayo).