• Energy Research

The degradation of rivers in urban landscapes is alarming and impaired their ecological functions and the services they provide to society. In African cities, urban rivers are among the most degraded ecosystems, yet ecologically sustainable utilisation of river resources can contribute to and support sustainable urban development. In this paper, we identify and analyse key governance and institutional drivers of ecological change in urban river systems in the Swartkops catchment in South Africa and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) in Nigeria. Our results indicate that poor ecological conditions of rivers in the two urban landscapes can be attributed to: (1) a lack of system view of the water value chain and associated infrastructure, (2) ambiguity in roles, responsibilities, and poor accountability, (3) prioritizing short-term social–economic–political agenda over long-term environmental sustainability goals, (4) institutional silos and failure of cooperative governance, and (5) over-centralised, top-down, state-centric governance processes. Strengthening the interactions between actors in the science, policy and practice domains, mainstreaming planning with rivers in integrated urban development plans, and strengthening cooperative and polycentric governance across administrative scales are key governance and institutional processes needed to address the trajectory of urban ecological degradation. Our paper sheds light on the fundamental role of strengthening governance and institutional processes for steering urban rivers toward sustainable paths for city resilience.

AbstractIt is almost 6 years since the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted, and countries have less than 10 years to achieve the set targets. Unlike most of the world, sub-Saharan African countries have reported only minimal progress, one that the COVID-19 pandemic has unfortunately disrupted. Transdisciplinary research (TDR) has been conceptualized as important for achieving sustainability goals such as the SDGs. In this paper we (i) analyze the contributions of the five TDR projects toward the achievements of the SDGs at the city level in Africa, and (ii) explore the interactions between the assessed SDGs across the five projects. The projects’ contributions towards the achievements of the SDGs were examined in three thematic areas: (i) contexts, (ii) processes and (iii) products. The five projects were funded under the Leading Integrated Research for Agenda 2030 in Africa (LIRA) programme. The projects were being implemented in nine cities across five African countries Accra (Ghana), Kumasi (Ghana), Korhogo (Ivory Coast), Abuja Metro (Nigeria), Mbour (Senegal), Cape Town (South Africa), Nelson Mandela Bay Metro (South Africa), Grahamstown (South Africa) and Kampala (Uganda) and data were collected on each of the five projects in these cities. The contextual contributions include co-analysis and reflection on policy and institutional silos and social innovations amenable to contextual complexity. A shift in how actors perceived and conceptualized sustainability challenges and the role of the projects as transformative social agents constituted the two main process contributions. Tool development, virtual models and maps, and handbook are the product contributions by the projects. Our analysis of the SDG interactions indicated the need for cross-sectoral collaborations to ensures resource use efficiency, knowledge and experience sharing, and seamless flow of information and data to accelerate the SDG implementation.