Revista de Geografía y Desastres Naturales
Acceso abierto

abstracto

The Imperatives in Mainstreaming Climate Change Mitigation, Adaptation and Transformation in Urban Management Practices: African Perspectives

Maurice Onyango Oyugi*

While urbanization provides significant development opportunities intertwined with challenges, a notable challenge portended by urbanization is global warming and climate change, leading to increased occurrences of drought oscillating with flood, heat waves, increased pest invasions, disease incidences and food insecurity. In the global south, this is likely to lead to population displacement with the hosts being urban centres already experiencing plethora of infrastructure inadequacies. Experience from the global south corroborate that mitigation, adaptation and transformation of climate change is a challenge at the urban level due to socioeconomic conditions accentuated by insufficient regional and national assistance to urban authorities. This paper therefore annunciates the African urban climate change mitigation, adaptation and transformation scenarios and further discuss the challenges the nations and cities in the global south face in mainstreaming climate change in the national urbanization agenda. To anchor the profound arguments, concise review of literature and policy documents on climate change as informed by the urban management practices in the global south is undertaken. Finally, the paper reflects on observations regarding the challenges posed by the mitigation strategies and propose way forward on mainstreaming climate change in the urban sustainability agenda.