The CSIR has completed the first stage leading up to the development of guidelines on how municipalities can adapt human settlements to withstand the impact of climate change.

The development of the Green Book is a three-year project commissioned by the Canadian International Development Research Centre and requires the CSIR to give clear recommendations on adapting developing and developed urban areas in South Africa for projected climate change and its impacts, to benefit vulnerable communities.

The research aims to analyse downscaled climate change projections to determine regional and local patterns of climatic changes and in light of these projections, to identify and assess which existing adaptation strategies currently being used in South Africa, and elsewhere, are most valuable for building resilient settlements. The skills of spatial planners, geo-information specialists, climate change scientists, hydrologists, architects, environmentalists, engineers and economists are drawn on for this work.

Project leader, CSIR Senior Researcher, Willemien van Niekerk, says that as the world’s temperature increases, settlements need to be planned and designed differently and that municipalities will benefit from research that will show them how to protect communities, infrastructure and services from severe events such as flooding, drought, fires and heat waves.

A year into the project, climate researchers are now able to provide downscaled projections over settlements and their immediate surroundings. This helps to tailor the recommendations needed to build resilient settlements. The next stage will be to develop a typology of vulnerable settlements in South Africa and determine their risk profile. The last stage is to develop innovative options for planning and designing settlements in the various risk profiles, estimate costs of those solutions and put the guidelines together.

The CSIR is working with the National Disaster Management Centre, the African Institute for Inclusive Growth, universities, government departments and other peer groups to ensure that the book considers all factors and is implementable in settlements that have been identified as high risk.

Once complete, the Green Book will be made accessible as an electronic and hard copy guideline for all. Van Niekerk says that the book will take advantage of public awareness around climate change and that through training, end-users will understand the benefits of adapting settlements to future climatic changes.