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Township spatial planning and climate change adaptation : a case of Mdantsane in Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality

Spatial planning plays a significant role in enhancing climate change adaptation especially within an urban area. The alignment of spatial planning with climate change adaptation opens an opportunity to improve resilience in areas of high vulnerability and manage the unavoidable. This mini-dissertation examines township spatial planning and climate change adaptation in identifying potentialities for an integrated approach. Therefore, Mdantsane case study as one of the largest townships in South Africa was explored as a unique landscape with reminiscent of apartheid to improve the people’s climate change adaptation under urban poverty, lack of basic facilities and other environmental challenges. In keeping with a case study design, mixed methods were adopted in data collection and analysis making use of GIS and remote sensing techniques alongside pretested open and close-ended questionnaires. The study reveals that townships are extremely susceptible to the impacts of climate change due to their built-up and natural environment set up as well as the existing interrelations. Based on this study major findings, Mdantsane built up cover in year 1996 was 269.496 km2 followed by vegetation area of about 142.272 km2; the area covered by water body was 31.554 km2 while other land surface features cover about 317.277 km2. It was revealed that there was a drastic change in vegetation cover between 1996 and 2016, where built up cover area increased to 375.552 km2 and vegetation cover is 119.277 km2 while water body and other land features cover was about 29.889 and 235.881 km2 respectively. Furthermore, 66 percent of the respondents agreed that agriculture is the predominant land use activity been carried out in the study area, respondents at 74.4 percent affirmed that solid waste and sanitation problems are environmental issues which can lead to climate change over time as a result of the burning of garbage. It is worthy to note that 70 percent of the entire respondents have not participated in any spatial planning process in the past. Thus, comprehensive integration of spatial planning is essential for townships proofing, health, wellbeing and resilience. To this end, the five P’s model (Policy, Public participation, Programme implementation, Political will and Programme monitoring) integration was proposed to seek strategic intervention in sustaining adaptation of local residents to climate change in the future with specific focus to reduce climate and environmental risks in Mdantsane Township.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ufh/vital:29470
Date January 2018
CreatorsBusayo, Emmanuel Tolulope
PublisherUniversity of Fort Hare, Faculty of Science and Agirculture
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, Masters, MPhil
Format84 leaves, pdf
RightsUniversity of Fort Hare

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