ONE UN - From Grey to Blue-Green, Water Responsive Urbanism and Sponge Cities for African Resilient Cities (WUF13)

Hello, everyone.
Thank you for coming to this session from gray to blue green, water responsive urbanism and sponge cities for African resilient cities.
My name is Dean Sharp, and I've been working with the Akin partnership on this initiative around water responsive urbanism, which is what we're going to showcase in today's session.
We're structured into three parts.
The first is some high level remarks with presenters who are introduced sequentially in a moment.
And then we are going to have a presentation by myself on water responsive urbanism, followed by a discussion with one of the cases that we're looking at in Gorisa town in Kenya, with the county secretary from Gorisa.
And then we're going to have a final part, which is a panel discussion.
Sorry, a set of panel presentations and discussions around this question of nature based solutions and urban water management with examples both from Africa and also internationally, thinking about how international examples can also be showcases for better urban water management in African urban contexts.
But firstly, I'd like to pass to the resident coordinator, Nelson Mapre who has over 20 years of experience in international affairs.
He was appointed in December 2025 as the resident coordinator and was previously the chief of staff and principal strategic advisor to the Deputy Secretary-General.
Miss Nelson.
Okay.
Well, thank you so much for that kind introduction and also for inviting me to be able to give some opening reflections at the start of what I hope promises to be a very fruitful exchange of views.
This is probably my fourth of Fat event here at the World Oban Forum, but I think it is always good to end and it's my last one as well.
It's always good to end with focusing on the continent and this unique partnership that I think the UN and other continental bodies are trying to push forward.
I speak not only as the resident coordinator from South Africa, but also channel the perspectives of my fellow resident coordinators from across the continent because not all of them happen to be here, but rest assured, we're working very closely with the rest of the UN family, with governments and communities at the front line of climate change and urban transformation.
For me, though, I always like to structure my reflections around a key question.
For me, in preparing these remarks, I was thinking about the fact that it is important to reflect on how a city manages water is often the clearest indicator of how well it serves its people.
And across the African continent, this is a pertinent question because water is no longer a distant environmental issue.
It is a daily reality that shapes livelihoods, dignity, and opportunity.
And in the South African context itself, we've seen this quite clearly.
Recently during what is referred to as the day zero drought in Cape Town, where households queued for water and economic activity slowed.
Also recently in the floods across Quasun Natal province where vulnerable communities lost homes, incomes, lives, and the tourism ecosystem was impacted because the beaches got polluted as well.
So, across the African continent, this is something that the country analysis that UN country teams are doing are clearly picking up, and one pattern is clear that those who are most affected unsurprisingly are the poorest, these are those in informal settlements, those on the urban margins, those who do not benefit from resilience.
So this is evident from the Makuco communities in Lagos, for example, which is water scarce, also not water scarce, but actually informal settlement underwater that needs to be sorted out to the water scarce urban centers and systems of Capo verde as well.
We clearly see how water is shaping daily life, livelihoods, and survival, often in ways that formal planning has yet to formally recognize or address.
So like I said, these shocks are not just about the environment, they're clearly also now about development and development setbacks that deepen inequality and erode resilience further.
So Our forward looking work as the UN resident coordinators, working with UN country teams across the continent is clearly about looking at how we collaboratively work with governments and partners to better understand and respond to climate risks, spatial inequalities, informality, and where anticipatory risk informed approaches can help with urban planning where it is needed most.
This points to a broader reality, which is the fact that our cities are increasingly facing little water, too much water, or water at the wrong time.
And it's a shift then we must think about and embrace because for too long, we've tried to control rather than work with water.
We've tried to contain rather than leverage what it presents the opportunities.
And that means we need to move from fighting water to working with water, and water responsive urbanism represents that shift.
It's about integrating nature into infrastructure.
It's about designing cities that absorb, store, and adapt.
And it's also about protecting people.
And for me, this is important livelihoods.
So this is not just about a technical adjustment, collaboration, or partnership.
It is a choice that we need to make a developmental choice, a socioeconomic transformation choice, a choice about addressing resilience and inequalities, and it's also about understanding risks better and the opportunities that need to be expanded.
And in the South African context, there's a lot of work that has been done on human settlements and coastal resilience.
And this has been supported by the United Nations, and this is something we hope to scale up.
Because it's also about advancing more integrated approaches that connect land, water, and where people live.
And there's some interesting frameworks and projects that we're currently exploring with UN Habitat, UNDP, UNEP, of course, and others in the UN system.
So the opportunity I've currently been talking about that we need to expand is the fact that we hear that Africa is a rapidly urbanizing continent.
So the window to shape this urban is narrowing as well, and we need to seize that now and to leapfrog outdated models whilst not losing our cultural heritage and anchoring that on lessons from the past.
And so how we build cities that are safe, resilient and sustainable is at the heart of not only Agenda 2063, but of course, also the 2030 agenda.
And what we're seeing and see is that what responsive approaches can help us reduce disaster risks that push families further into poverty.
It can help support local economies, it can improve health and living conditions, and it can help unlock and actually must help unlock climate and development finance.
So we need to shift from ideas to thinking about investment pipelines.
And that's why the specific example in the program focusing on Garsa in Kenya hopefully shows that solutions can be practical and bankable.
Capable of attracting partnerships and finance and that we can scale this across the continent because we really need to embrace this shift.
Recently at an asset owners convening we had in South Africa, one of the participants talked about the importance of making development investable.
And not trying to make investments social.
So that I think is the approach we need to think about as we go forward.
And the United Nations family certainly I think is waking up to that reality and pushing ahead not only across the African continent, but also globally, and our cooperation frameworks which we enter into with governments is really about delivering integrated solutions that are critical for climate, infrastructure, and livelihoods and also to ensure that water responsive urbanism fits squarely within this approach.
And we hope to be able to to demonstrate integrated, coherent action and scalable action as well.
As we look forward, and this is my closing really, for me, the final question is about how we will approach designing our cities of today and the future.
Are we going to do that in ways that protect the most vulnerable, but also create urban approaches and spaces that make cities and municipalities more livable, safe, and enjoyable for all.
Because we have an opportunity to embrace and a narrowing window, as I indicated.
So urgency is key.
Collaboration and partnerships is something I must underline, and we must be ambitious about this.
We are in a city, Baku that has been ambitious about its transformation and how it's leveraging resilience and also sustainability into its thinking and approach.
So we have an opportunity to be able to do that, and I have no doubt that this partnership is going to help us achieve that.
So thank you again, Dean, for the work that we're doing alongside with African Union and others on this partnership.
So thank you again.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
I just want to underline that key question that you set out there because I think it articulates much of the work that we're trying to do here in terms of how a city manages water, denotes how well a country serves its people.
I think that there are very clear challenges across the continent to meet that challenge.
I see also a lot of will to do it and the desire for new ideas.
New investment opportunities, new partnerships.
I really hope that Agnie, which is a partnership led by the African Union with UNDP, UNEP, UN Habitat, and UNDR to try and focus the UN, the one UN approach for this immense challenge of urban water management in Africa that is all too often a life or death situation that is confronted by many urban communities and causes far too much devastation rather than being utilized as the asset and opportunity and fundamental to urban life that water is.
On that note, passing to one of the partners, doctor Francine Pickup, from the United Nations Development Program, who's the Deputy Director for the Bureau for Policy and Program Support and who was previously the resident representative in Serbia.
I'll pass to you.
Thank you.
Very much.
Hello everyone.
It's really good to be here with you all today to discuss these water management issues in African cities.
African cities really are living the reality of climate change.
In Nairobi, we've seen Nairobi struggling with months of flooding and then in Somali cities, we see prolonged drought.
All of this is happening alongside rapid urbanization, informality, and real pressure on infrastructure systems.
So the question is not for more infrastructure, but really how to build better infrastructure.
And for many years, we've really relied predominantly on gray infrastructure, but that's not enough.
And so Now we're really asking, I think, an important question about how do we work with nature better, not against nature? That's why this session today is so important.
I want to make four points about this and the first point is the point that my two colleagues have already made very clearly, a city that manages its water well, water is a very good indicator of how well the city is managing.
At the same point, water resilience is urban resilience, um, and water related hydro risks are not isolated risks.
That really reflects, I think the key point that's been made across this conference that we've really got to look at the systemic issues in a much more systemic way.
So again, flooding, drought, drainage failures, water scarcity.
These issues shape how people live, how they work, how they move, and how they access services.
And these risks, these water related risks become even bigger disrupters when it comes to informal settlements and a flood, a flood is not only a flood, it's a loss of a home.
It's a loss of a business, missing school, health risks, displacement, and more inequality.
It's precisely this kind of interconnected challenge that this partnership, Aquaneli that we're talking about today, was created to address.
We, as you mentioned, came together with African Union, UNEP, and habitat to really try and connect climate adaptation with disaster risk reduction, urban planning, and local development for this shared resilience agenda.
That was my first point.
My second point is that we need context specific solutions for African cities.
And we see a lot of innovation and knowledge coming out of African cities to respond to the specific constraints that they've experienced.
Grisa as you said, is a very good example of this principle at work, where we're really looking at presenting a water responsive investment case that connects localized knowledge on disaster risk reduction with inclusive planning and local development.
My third point is that we need to look at nature based solutions at the core of infrastructure and not as an add on.
So too often what we see is actually that green and blue infrastructure is treated as an afterthought as a nice to have add on.
But when it comes to wetlands or greening or retrofitted rivers or retention areas or watershed protection, these are and should be treated as essential infrastructure.
They reduce flood risk, they help recharge groundwater, and they improve heat management.
They protect ecosystems, and they make life better for urban residents.
Um, so through Aquina, we've had the opportunity to help move cities through this agenda and really look at what this means for planning and designing infrastructure pipelines.
My last point is that, and this is my point across this conference as well, that scaling depends on governance and financing.
The challenge is not only in identifying good solutions, it's about creating the systems that allow these solutions to be implemented.
Cities need stronger links between national policy and local delivery and they need financing tools that can combine public finance with development finance, climate finance, and private investment.
And that finance only flows where there is a clear enabling environment and that's why the governance is important.
Good planning, credible data, strong institutions, community ownership, and risk informed investment design.
Those governance issues are critical.
That's the first point.
Then the second related point is no single institution, sounds a bit cliche, but it's very true.
No single institution can address these challenges alone.
Aquin gives us a way to move together, inviting global commitments to African led city level implementation.
It brings together that political leadership that we need with that technical expertise for tangible delivery.
So to close, I want to invite us all to rethink how cities grow, how they manage risk, and how they invest in communities that are too often left exposed.
We're very committed as UNDP, to this agenda.
We already invest heavily in climate adaptation and urban nature based solutions and are committed to this partnership.
Thank you so much, Lindsey.
Thank you.
I think all those points, I hope are also going to be articulated in this presentation later today that we really are making many of these principles that were just outlined in terms of context specific solutions.
As I note, the fact that the counter secretary from Gorisa is here, that we aren't just taking international examples from China and planking them in urban Africa, that we are doing the work of translation in partnership making sure that whatever comes to the context is done in partnership with the communities, the municipalities, and also the private sector.
We are also trying to convene and make sure that where there are opportunities for private sector investment that they are done in a way that is realistic, practical, and is attentive to community needs and opportunities that are and perhaps present but not otherwise being taken up, which I think is a really crucial role of organizations such as ourselves to take up and bring to the forefront.
On that note of partnership and collaboration, I want to pass now to Valerie Yang, who's the Urban resilience coordinator of the African Union Commission.
Thank you, Valerie.
Thank you very much, Jane.
I'm here to represent the African Union Commission, especially Director Asad yam, with the Director of sustainable Environment and Blue Economy.
And in that regard, the statement is on his behalf.
Africa stands at a defining crossroads.
The continent remains the fastest urbanizing continent in the world.
Wildest transformation presents opportunities for economic growth and innovation.
It also increases exposure to climate risks and disasters.
Floods, droughts, and environmental degradation are placing growing pressure on urban systems, particularly in critical sectors such as water with direct consequences.
Direct consequences.
Yeah, direct consequences for livelihood and economic stability.
We should be mindful that the way we manage our water resources today will determine not only the resilience of our cities, but also the future of our continent.
As we advance the African Union's 2036 teams, assuring sustainable water availability and safe sanitation systems to achieve the goals of Agenda 2063 and specific goals of targets of SDGs, it is clear that water is no longer a sectoral issue.
Water has become a strategic pillar for resilience, development, and prosperity.
It is therefore my great pleasure on behalf of the African Union Commission to welcome you to this important dialogue on water responsive urbanism conveyed under the Akinle partnership at the 13 World Urban Forum.
I would also like to extend my sincere appreciation to our partners, UN Habitat, UNDP, UNEP, for the continued collaboration in advancing urban resilience across our continent.
Perhaps some of the people gathered here do not know what Akinle is and what stands for.
Akinle I think the Zulu words, which means together, we are stronger.
And that's the relationship that was a partnership that was built and has been evolving at the initial stage, it was the African Union Commission, UNDP, UN Habitat, but it will be extended to and now to you and Dra.
And we are very proud of that relationship because we have done a lot with this partnership as an implementation mechanism of the Africa Urban Resilience Program.
And because we appreciate the role they have been playing So in shifting from framework to action, the AUC and its partners, which I've listed a few seconds earlier, have produced a seminar report which we call Urban resilience in Africa, a Continental Review.
The report was launched by His Excellency President Ruto in Kenya at AUF two.
And today, we have also made a presentation on the IC findings of the report at the lab.
So the session comes at a critical time especially when our cities are increasingly exposed to climate risk from floods to droughts, to water scarcity and environmental degradation, a combination of increasing soil salinity, land subsidence, n cost of erosion, biodiversity loss, and sea level rise is creating an urgent need for sustainable solution and practices.
Yet investment in urban climate adaptation, especially ecosystem restoration protection, particularly water related ecosystems to reduce the disaster risk and impacts of climate change continues to rely heavily on grants which are insufficient to meet the scale of the challenge.
Water lies at the heart of this challenge.
It cuts across urban resilience from protecting homes and infrastructure against flooding to ensure reliable access to safer water, supporting livelihoods and preserving ecosystems.
This is why the A Kinley Partnership has embraced water responsive urbanism as an approach that encourages cities to work with water rather than against this through nature based solutions and smarter infrastructure.
At AUF two, the African Union Commission recognized that governments and development partners alone cannot deliver the level of investment required.
Unlocking the full potential of urban resilience will depend on our ability to engage the private sector and philanthropic actors and other actors and to create investment ready projects that are scalable, bankable, and impactful.
Given the importance according to the sector of Water, the African Union Commission has been developing guidelines on water, which is going to be completed shortly, hopefully in July and that will be disseminated to member states across the continent.
This is precisely the ambition of today's dialogue.
Moving beyond traditional discussions, this session is designed to connect real city needs with real investment opportunities.
Through concrete examples such as Gris best practice, we aim to demonstrate how water responsive urban solutions can transition from pilots.
To large scale transformative investments.
Today's session is not only dialogue, it's about co creation.
It is about understanding what is needed to unlock investment, identifying barriers, and building the partnership required to scale solution.
Most importantly, it is about ensuring that African cities are equipped to turn climate related risks into opportunities for sustainable and inclusive growth fully aligned with our continental ambition under Agenda 2063.
Three things are important here.
One, context matters.
The issue of water is a global concern, but Africa has its own unique context which need to be taken into account when addressing the issues of Africa.
Secondly, water needs to be brought at the center of socioeconomic development.
And I think there's a consensus around this concern which is already confirmed at AUF two now in various sessions organized during this forum.
In finally, partnership.
We need partnership.
The little we have been able to do at the African Union Commission is just because we have got the rights partners, UNDP, UN Habitat, UNEP, and GI is important to be named here because they are the one who funded the Urban Resiliency Report, which was all launched.
So we are grateful to all our partners for their support, and we continue to value their contribution to our work.
Finally, I therefore encourage all participants, particularly our private sector, and foundation partners, to engage openly, share insights, and explore concrete pathways for collaboration.
With these remarks, on behalf of the African Union Commission, I wish you a productive and productive session.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much and thank you to our panelists and on that note, I will transition to the second part where I'm going to briefly explain what water responsive urbanism is.
I'd also call Mr.
Hassam from the Cossa County to come up and we'll have a conversation and then move to the third part after that.
Thank you.
Thanks so much.
Thanks.
Great.
Thank you very much.
Time is running short, so I'm going to do an abbreviated version of this presentation, but I hope you get the core message around what water responsive urbanism is, that it is a African centered contribution, that it entails practical intervention.
It brings cutting edge theory and science into practical experience and grounded policy.
And I think everyone will be familiar with the fact that Africa, along with the world and we experienced it here on Sunday, is very much facing a new water reality.
This is an extreme drought that we've seen in Southern Africa, absolutely unprecedented in human history.
The East Africa where Nairobi, where I'm from, has had extensive flooding that has resulted in the deaths of tens of people.
These are no longer exceptional events, these are a new baseline and climate is only half the equation.
There's also a crisis shaped by how Africa is urbanizing.
In the opening remarks, we've heard many of these issues.
They entail governance, political economy, but also the broader ecological and morphological issues and concerns.
This is around the rapid urban growth of urban informality and large scale displacement that often is pushing vulnerable communities into flood prone areas.
Informality is no doubt a major and central concern, but it's also important to say it's not just informality.
Also formal developments are straining and pressurizing urban Africa's water.
I In all cases, informal or formal, the response has always been to fight water, often with gray infrastructure.
This is the logic that we want to change through utilizing the techniques that I'm going to outline today.
Concrete barriers to defend against water, concrete drains to expel water is what we're trying to end.
The principles of water responsive urbanism are in three.
The first is to slow, spread, and store water.
This is treating water as a resource, not a hazard.
Secondly, this isn't about Forgetting concrete and the gray infrastructure, there are times when you do need to utilize concrete.
It's incredible human invention and technology that we've built a lot of expertise around.
We are not saying that you can't use it, but what we are saying is that we need to think about when it's appropriate, when is it cost effective, and when is it ecologically suitable.
This is nature based solutions complementing engineered systems.
Thirdly, we are building from the ground up.
There is no one more important than the communities these infrastructures serve.
This is people first, not infrastructure first.
This is communities first, not business first, but we are looking for opportunities with private sector to invest when it works with communities that these infrastructures are intended to serve.
This is learning from international practice, not replicating.
We are taking from many of the techniques of China's sponge cities, of Netherlands room for the River, but we are doing it in a way that is absolutely engaged with local context, and that is why today I'm so pleased that we have Mr.
Hassan from Gorisa County, while we have KDI and their examples from working with communities in Kenya around MBS and infrastructure.
But alongside examples from the World Bank that we'll talk about how Baku has been addressing some of these issues.
Of course, water utilities that are also represented today because they are obviously critical in this water responsive urbanism picture.
Co design is also not just about participation, it is also a maintenance model.
So water responsive urbanism as it stands as part of the Anila partnership is currently focused around five case studies.
In the West of Africa, we have Abidjan and Tema.
There is Khartoum, Gorisa town, and Zanzibar.
Unfortunately, as I said, this is a hybrid version of the presentation.
So if you would like to get a sense of why these different hydrological, social and economic and political contexts have been chosen, please do grab me after and I'll explain in further detail.
As has been said today, we are really focusing on the case study of Gorisa town, which is in the Northeast Kenya.
It is a arid dry land context, and we're working with the University of Nottingham and Ningbo to do these hydrological models and also think through some of the uh different water responsive urbanism contexts, tools that are available.
Thinking about, for instance, retention basins, bioswales, subsurface storage, and what they address in relation to rainwater versus river flooding and looking at their indicative costs, and then starting a dialogue with communities, Carissa County, and other partners and NGOs working in Grissa to see what is most suitable and the idea is to make an investable bankable project to ensure that Grissa Town becomes one of the key case studies and examples for water responsive urbanism.
Just to conclude before talking with Mr.
Hassan from the county government, why Grissa town is such a crucial case study, it fills many of the key principles and frameworks that Anile agreed upon in the partnership framework in terms of it is one of the most rapidly growing urban areas in East Africa.
It has a large refugee camp 100 kilometers away in the form of Dadab, so vulnerable populations in the region and Gursa town often gets neglected in relation to the attention that's obviously placed in Dadab.
As the Dabab gets more integrated into the area, it's obviously going to be a area in which is going to receive a lot of very vulnerable communities.
Here is a context where if you get the intervention right, then the payoff can really help some of the most vulnerable communities on the continent.
Gorisa also has a drought flood paradox where there is large and intense rainfall and indeed with Mr.
Hasson now, we'll be talking about the current situation in Gorisa that is actually currently facing flooding issue.
So just to say that this is a live issue in its fullest meaning, And finally, just so you know, for those that are unfamiliar with the location of Grisatown, it's also along a critical infrastructure corridor of the lab set.
That cuts across to Lamu and Gorissa Town is a critical urban node within this infrastructural corridor.
I hope that gives you a clear overview of what water responsive is, what is the work that we're doing and what we are working to achieve.
And on that note, I will now just pass with Mr.
Hassan and we'll have a conversation around the current situation in Gorissa town and how we can work to create a water responsive urbanism context.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So just to jump straight into the current situation in Kriisa in relation to water.
Thank you, Dean.
Good evening or afternoon to everybody.
Thanks for having me in this panel.
For those of you who don't know about Karissa County, Nick, Dean has introduced briefly, but we are a county government.
As you know, Kenya is now running on devolved governance.
So we're one of the first seven counties in Kenya, and we are based in the northeastern part of Kenya bordering Somalia.
And we host the largest refugee population in the world.
Dad, of course, ref refugee complex, as I say, it's not one camp, it's about four camps, is hosted within the county government.
And Griawn or Grisa municipality is the biggest municipality, and that is the gateway to Northern Kenya.
Um, there's a river called River Tana, which runs from Mount Kenya all the way to tomba to the coast of the Indian Ocean.
That's our main source of water for Grisa town.
Of course, um, I saw the theme talked about green blue, but the water in Garza is not blue, it's brown because all the silt and all the mud it carries from upstream, And as we're talking now, this flooding in Garstown because normally we are downstream and upstream in the mountains, there's dams called Seven Fox dams.
And when those dams are full, of course, Kenya uses a lot of green energy and use hydroelectric power.
And those are the dams that the government of the Kenyan uses for generation of electricity.
So when they are full to capacity, they're normally open to release the flooding into the river.
And we are downstream, so we bear all the brunt.
And as we are talking now, we have over 24,000 households and over 150,000 people affected by the flooding.
Of course, the energy department or the ministry gives further warnings, but it's only about three to four days.
And A Dean, you should know that one of our MPs has now taken the national government to the courts for this early warning system, which is too late, comes three to four days.
There's not enough time for people to take away anything from the farms.
It affects not only the farmers, because it's affected about 7,000 acres of farmland flooded now and a submerged in water.
Considering that we are in a semi arid and arid area, that is a lot of livelihood because the farm produces that come from Grisa also supply the refugee comes and all across to the southern part of Somalia.
So that's a lot and the issue of also the water company, it's because we rely on the river water.
When the flooding happens, of course, our production goes down because ability goes very high and there's a lot of waste or a lot of silt in the water, and that reduces the production by 50%.
So we resort to now rationing of the water.
So a great population of the Garsa town on rationing and they are lacking water.
We try to alleviate as a local government the issue of the silt and the production reduction during the flooding season by drilling boreholes, shallow wells along the river.
But unfortunately, when flooding happens, they also affect it.
And when there's drought, they are affected because when there's drought, the yield from the bottles go down.
They become very, very low, the yield is reduces, and production also goes down.
When it floods, the pumps and everything are submerged.
The water company is forced every time to pull out their pumps from the river because otherwise, they're disept by the flooding.
So it's a challenge we are facing as a government or as a water company in Garisa that affects also the sewage problem of floods because of the rainy season.
Because we have in Garza toown we have two challenges.
One is the rains and the flooding from the dams being released downstream.
When it rains, it floods all our sewer systems because as you know, Grissa is urbanizing, very fast.
The urban growth, population growth is very high, and the infrastructure is unable to cope with that.
Couple that with the flooding and the rain season, it's really harsh and we're really struggling as a city or as an urban area.
And it was estimated by WFP that the last flooding, the last linear rains in 2024 costed damage worth of $250,000 to the farmers, the farming community alone.
And you can't recover from that within two years or a year before again, flooding starts over the next season.
So his current situation is dire in Grissa.
But as a local government, we are trying.
I was trying to learn from what happened in 2024.
But nevertheless, is is beyond our control to stop the dams being released by the national government.
As what I said, one of our local MPs to take the government to court and to give us better warning, early warnings to the farmers.
And because if you're given 72 hours of warning, it's not enough time to take all your harvest, which we've been preparing for the last one year.
So that's the challenge, yeah, that's the current situation.
Great.
Thank you, miss Hanson.
Just moving on then or shifting gears from the challenge to the opportunity.
Can a water responsive approach to urban planning help in what you're seeing in Carissa and what do you see as the real opportunities? Of course, the water we can see it as a strategic resource instead of a risk.
At the moment is more of a risk to us, but it's a big resource we have.
Because if you go to other municipalities in Carissa, like for example, the Dab rely mainly on underground water.
They don't rely on river, they have because as you say, water is three components.
It's a source, the production and distribution.
In Grissa town, the source is there, the permanent source, albeit flooding on stability too high, but the source is permanently there.
You have a permanent source of water.
How do you use that as an opportunity now to help the urban residents of Grissa? One is construction of river storage or reservoirs, which we don't have.
We rely on just the intake from the river, which is treated distributed.
That's just life water that's running every day.
But we don't have an off river storage reservoirs which we need to invest to make the Carissa urban area less water responsive and resilient to the flooding system.
Also, another issue is the river bank erosion.
We're facing a lot because of the flooding.
Whenever it floods, always the river expands and takes off land that could be used for farming.
So if we can work on protection or construction of the environment along the river bank by building cabons, embankments, or levees and all that, then that is an opportunity for us to be water responsive.
Instead of seeing water as a risk, we can really use it as a strategic resource.
Thank you so much.
I think that is the perfect note to close on and to move to the final part of the panel, if I can pull up.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Good afternoon.
My name is Sabrina Ola.
I work for a nonprofit organization called Concrete Design Initiative in Nairubi, Kenya.
I'm going to present our experience in working on nature based solutions over the last couple of years.
No, I'm.
Sorry.
Yeah.
We have been working on nature based solutions in the context of informality, which I will be sharing the case about.
Before I go into the details of our experience, I just wanted to also give the context which many of you have already done.
But yeah, I want to look at the cities in Kenya and in Sub Sahara Africa cities as engines of change and innovation because often we hear lots of negative stories and challenges and we have that focus when we speak about cities and climate change.
But really, if we think about Nairoubi secondary cities, which we have been focusing on with this project I'm talking about, Those are places with incredible creativity, adaptation, entrepreneurship, and experimentation.
Those are places where new approaches to urban living, infrastructure, and resilience, as well as ecological restoration are emerging.
As said previously, Sub Sahara Africa is facing unprecedented urban growth and the population is expected to triple in the coming decade.
This puts immense pressure on the ecosystem, water systems, land, and infrastructure, but also creates a unique opportunity to rethink how we develop cities and how they will grow.
From here, I'd like to move to Kenya.
Where we are based and most of our work is taking place.
When we look to Nairobi, we see that urban expansion increasingly intersects with ecological sensitive landscapes.
In this picture which you're seeing here, you see the railway line which cuts through the national park and has become a symbol of the tension between rapid urban development and environmental conservation.
In addition, as you know, in Nairubi like in many other sub Saharan African cities, the majority of the population lives in unplanned informal settlements, and this is due to the history of the place and what is accessible to the majority of the people.
And I said as well before, no different from Gosa, the weather has changed, the climate has changed.
People are experiencing increasingly severe and unpredictable seasons, rainy seasons, but also dry seasons.
The infrastructure is not built for this changing environment, as you can see in this picture, which has been impacting people's health, their livelihoods, the ecosystems, their mobility, and the urban economy at large.
So against this context, we started in 2019, a program called Realizing Urban nature based solutions, and it's a project which started to explore whether nature based solutions in informal urban contexts can be used to address some of these challenges and has several different components.
So, um, it's an action research project, we believe that there needs to be evidence from the ground to go and make the case for nature based solutions in this context.
We started with co designing and building nature based solutions in informal settlements, but at the same time, consistently, um, evaluating them against a set of indicators.
It also has a particular lens on gender, and we are applying the human rights based approach in this program.
And we developed a planning approach which we call Rivers and people where we look at green infrastructure or nature based solutions at scale.
And lastly, and I think this is very important, especially in this context as well of this conference, we have been establishing a regional community of practice on urban nature nature based solutions.
I will just give a few insights into the project.
We developed 66 indicators which we are looking at when we are developing these nature based solutions, and those range from governance aspects, water quality, and the social impact of those nature based solutions.
We use a demand driven approach when we approach communities we want to work with, whereas we ask them to identify their challenges and if they want to partner with us.
When they do that, we select those communities which have water challenges that might be possible to be tackled with nature based solutions because sometimes the scale of a challenge might not be possible to be addressed with a nature based solution or there's not enough space within the informal settlement.
And once we have selected, then we go into a very lengthy co design process.
So we don't impose a solution, but we develop the solution together.
We have several sessions with residents together where we even introduce the topic.
Nature based solutions is not something straightforward, it's a foreign concept.
Um, and the language used is not necessarily accessible for everyone.
Through the process of co designing, we break it down, make relation to what makes sense to residents of informal settlements in the Kenyan context.
We refer a lot to their rural homes because there are strong links to the r for the urban population in the Kenyan context.
Once the designs are completed, people have agreed on the solutions they want to see, we do co construction process.
Co construction is very important in this case, and we try to encourage women to also take part in the construction process.
What does this mean? The people who are attending the workshops are the ones who are also constructing.
This is a maintenance measure as well and an ownership measure.
Once you know what goes into the ground, you know how to repair it and you know how to maintain it over time.
That's why the wider community is taking part in the construction process.
So leading to the maintenance, we also think about the design carefully and the materials used.
So whatever we are putting into the ground needs to be locally available and easy to repair.
So we are not bringing in materials, which are expensive and from outside the settlements, but we try to use materials people already use for construction.
And of course, not everything looks green here, but as shared earlier, we are trying with these nature based solutions to retain water, So store water, and in this picture you can see a retention tank which was built with pipes, so that water is held and flood risk is reduced in the wider settlement.
You also see rain gardens, et cetera.
This is a school where we worked in Kibera.
Those are some examples.
This is how the school looked before the intervention.
They were having issues of contaminated water entering the compound, flooding, and so on, which disrupted the school operation during the rainy season.
And through the co design process, we implemented several different nature based solutions in this space.
But overall, the idea was to slow down water, store water, and yeah, through this project, the children are able to attend more days within, the classrooms and can return faster.
Of course, we are not completely solving the issue, but the water is removed faster.
This is similar to another school in Maku, another informal settlement in Aubi.
This is before, and this is after.
This is another example, just to give you an idea.
Then lastly, I want to say that as we are speaking about scalability, We have moved this approach to a secondary town in the Mount Kenya region called Ambu and there we developed with the county government together and the residents a green infrastructure plan.
This was quite novel to the Kenyan context because this plan has been adopted and is considered the first green infrastructure plan which has been adopted by a county government.
So we are quite happy about that, that this ownership by the county government has been there.
This is what What I would like to emphasize is that working with secondary towns has a lot of potential.
They are growing and the county governments are often more receptive to trying new approaches or easier to reach.
Yeah.
These are just some examples.
We also did a demonstration side to spark motivation within the county government to continue this implementation.
And maybe one last thing is that we always try to combine the water management infrastructure which is put into place with other facilities the communities need so that there's more motivation to maintain those spaces over time.
Thank you very much.
Okay.
Okay.
So thank you very much, my sister, for this great, great, great achievement you have done in Sosa Africa, especially in Kenya.
I think the examples we have seen there are clear demonstration that nature based solutions are not something that we can reach in documents in books and so on, but it's something that's achievable.
And thank you very much for that.
May we move to the second speaker.
That's the representative of the World Bank this year before.
Thank you very much.
My name is on De La Slimea.
I work amongst others in Baku.
Perhaps just to introduce a little bit an operation that we're working on with the government of Azerbijan called Livable Baku, and that's working to rehabilitate and improve the quality of urban spaces in the city.
Those of you who were here on Sunday experienced what a flash flood can look like in a semi arid area such as Baku.
So this is an operation that we started preparing, I think, about a year ago.
Um, an important part of the preparation was to embed nature based solutions early on.
So long before we started talking about investments and so on, we started with a knowledge activity.
So one of the activities that we did was to undertake a nature based opportunity scan looking at the entire city.
And this looked at areas that have opportunity to expand NBS or protect existing NBS.
And this dialogue with government counterparts from the different levels of government, different ministries was actually very, very interesting.
Out of that, they expressed a request to deepen their understanding of the application of NBS, as I said, one in a semi arid area.
Secondly, a place that's very, very windy.
I don't know if you drive around Park who have a look at the trees, they're all leaning because the city is very, very windy.
Thirdly, this is an area that is rich with oil, but that has also resulted in quite a bit of contamination.
Thinking about if you're talking about gleaning, what kind of plants do you plant? Perhaps fruit bearing trees may not be the most ideal because if the contamination has not been removed, it potentially can impact the fruits that the trees bear.
So a first pillar in the engagement was deepening understanding of counterparts on NBS, but I think for us as well on the context and therefore what solutions are possible in Azerbijan.
Under the livable Baku project, we have two main components that I'll talk about.
One is solid waste management.
The second one that I'd like to focus on a little bit is remediation of oil polluted lakes and let me say polluted natural lakes and oil polluted sites.
If you've had a chance to look just beyond the stadium where we are, there's a very big lake, Berkshire Lake, that's about 16 square kilometers in size.
It's the second biggest lake in the country.
The government had cleaned one part of the lake before the stadium was built, and they're now looking at cleaning the other two elements of the lake.
There's another lake on the way to the airport called Zk Lake, that's also really, really beautiful real estate, but also contaminated.
The lake was previously used as oil storage in Soviet era times.
You can imagine the level of oil contamination in the sediment, but also the water.
The project that we're working on jointly is cleaning the lakes as well as the oil contaminated sites, as I mentioned.
I thinking about how to use nature based solution, part of what we did was one to deepen the understanding on the nature and profile of pollutants so that we can assess which nature based solutions are applicable because I think somebody made the point earlier on that it's not nature based solution instead of engineered solutions and that there's complementarity.
The second issue was, as I said, in embedding nature based solution, even in preparing the terms of reference for feasibility studies to remediate the lakes and the oil contaminated sites to make it a prerequisite to consider the use of nature based solutions.
We're now at a point where we are looking at different technical solutions.
Co creating those solutions with students.
We had a student competition that was launched here at the World event or at least the winners were announced here at the World event forum, co creating some of the solutions with citizens and embedding those in the technical solutions that are being explored and that are lined up to be financed under the project that we spoke about.
And so as we move to implementation, which we hope to start in the next calendar year, there are a few realizations that I think that are coming to the fore, four that PEPs like to conclude with.
One is that local context matters, and I think again, to restate a point that was made earlier, that the choice of nature based solutions really do depend on context.
An arid area will require different solutions to one that is water rich.
Windy and oil contaminated areas.
Part of what we're looking at, for instance, here, in cleaning the soil is not just the dig and dump, the conventional approach where you dig and go and dump the contaminated sediment elsewhere, but really exploring the opportunities that bioremediation offer to clean contaminated soil.
It may take longer, but what we're seeing in early feasibility studies is that perhaps the timing isn't actually all that long.
Secondly, that pet to, it may actually be also financially more viable.
The second realization that's coming through is that there's a much wider remit of nature based solutions that are available.
I talked specifically about bioremediation because of the challenges that we have in this area with contaminated soil.
It's thinking about cleaning the soil, cleaning the sediment, and then ultimately the water and the solutions that you choose for all of that.
Um, the third one is that the lakes that we are looking at play multiple roles.
They're particularly important in reducing urban heat, which is actually a bigger issue in Baku, much more than the flooding that we've seen, but also complementing engineered infrastructure in terms of stormwater management.
In some of the lakes they sit such that you can channel stormwater to the lake and how they're designed and the potential polishing nature of nature based solutions reduces the extent of engineered solutions that are deployed and uses nature to complement those services.
The fourth I said four, but maybe five, the fourth realization is the importance of involving stakeholders.
And what we're finding is there's so much energy, enthusiasm in particular in young people and students, and that it also just helps to future proof the use of the spaces by getting a much brighter a broader range of stakeholders involved as early on in the design as possible.
And then finally, to think about operations and management.
I think this is the point that you made So making sure that the institution that's responsible for operating for looking after the space is part of the design, that the choice of materials considers the financial implications on the solutions that are chosen ultimately.
For livable Baku, our next steps, as I said, we're busy preparing feasibility studies, and we're going to be stress testing the extent to which those feasibility studies incorporate nature based solution.
And then finally to implement the most feasible alternatives that come from that.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Madam, because I think we need to thank our brother Dean in the selection of the panelists.
First of all, it was our friend from Garusa.
Then we have a panel, I think that is more than 60% made of women year.
I think that is very good.
It's rare to see this kind of panel.
Not only they dominate the panel here, but they also dominate the discussion and I think I'm very happy with what they are saying.
It's another example of how nature based solutions are implemented in some key cities and Here it is Wal Nairobi.
That side we are talking about Bakw when you talk Baku, we know exactly where we are currently and if you are here, it rained, there was flooding, but the flooding ceased at some point in time, we need to be happy the World Bank has been doing significantly in the city and thank you very much, Madam for this presentation.
We hope the way forward is going to be carried out so that we see more impact in the city of Baku.
Thank you very much.
Now the discussion goes to, if I'm not mistaken, I'm in West Africa now, and I should be able to hear something from Ghana or from where? From the utility point of view, yes.
Okay.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Yes.
So I am Fusina Bach.
I work with the Gana Water Company Limited.
I lead the low income customer support department.
It is a real honor to be here and a bigger honor to be sitting amongst sisters to talk about nature based solutions and resilience.
So I am also a member of the Global Water Operators Partnership Alliance, DUO, and that means that I am not here as a designer of blue green infrastructure.
I am not here as a financier, but I am here as the operator who has to keep services running daily in the communities that we are talking about, the low income urban communities or the neighborhoods.
I have a question and some few reflections to share here.
And the question that I want to put to the table within these few minutes is a simple one.
What does water responsive urbanism when we're talking of sponge cities, nature based solutions, blue green infrastructure, what does this need to look like if a utility like Ghana Water, for example, is going to be able to deliver and sustain services at scale? Let me set a quick scene because the operational reality really matters for what comes next from me.
So in low income urban communities, and this is true across many African cities, the utility is working against a set of compounding constraints at the same time.
Network coverage is uneven, last mile connections are often informal, sometimes even contested, non revenue water is high, affordability is real.
Households often pay more per liter through informer vendors than wealthier ones do through networked services and the assets we operate are under stress, aging in some places, missing in others, and increasingly hit by climate shocks, floods that damage infrastructure, droughts that constrain raw water, settlements that are growing faster than our pipe networks.
So when we as a utility, are asked to integrate sponge city or nature based solutions approaches into this, we are not adding them into a stable, well funded system, but rather, we are adding them onto a system that is already running at the edge of its capacity.
That is the starting point I want this room to hold in mind.
What does blue green and nature based solutions need to look like to be sustainable in the low income urban service delivery context.
Bear in mind, I am coming to you on the basis of a water utility.
So I would want to offer three different conditions which are drawn from operational experience.
The first condition is that a blue green or NBS assets only survives if the utility can operate and maintain it within real budgets, real sales, and real operating or reporting lines.
Ahead of a biosell, a constructed wetland, a permeable surface, a retention pond.
These are not zero maintenance assets.
They need clearing, they need monitoring, vegetation management, as my sister talked about, sediments removal, periodic rehabilitation, and none of that is free, and none of these things are in our current operation and maintenance cost base unless it has been deliberately planned in.
So when a project is designed, we as the eventual operator, need to see from day one, the lifetime O&M costs, not just the capital costs, where that O&M cost will sit on our books and which tariff or subsidy is going to cover it.
We also need to know the skills profile required to maintain the assets and a credible plan to build those skills inside the utility, not outsource them unconditionally or indefinitely.
And then we will also need a handover protocol that says clearly when, how, and to whom the asset transfers.
You know, is the asset being transferred to the community? Is the asset being transferred to the local government or to the utility? It is important for us to know that clearly.
Without that, what we get is what I call offhan green infrastructure built with donor capital, celebrated at opening and quietly decaying within a few years because no one was set up to look after it.
The second condition, blue green and NVS approaches need to be integrated with the existing service delivery system, not built as a power track.
You know, my sister, Sabrina, I believe, is working.
I don't know if it is an NGO or you are working closely with the utilities in your service area.
But you see in low income urban areas, the utility is just one of several actors in the same space.
You have NGOs, community groups, donor funded pilots, local governments, sometimes private operators are also there.
When an NBS scheme is set up in parallel outside the utilities planning cycle, outside our assets register, outside our customer database, it tends to do two things.
One, it competes for the same scarce community time trust and goodwill.
Communities are asked to engage with multiple sometimes overlapping interventions, and this often leads to engagement, fatigue.
I work closely with communities, so I really understand what engagement fatigue means to community residents.
Also, it doesn't connect to the dearly relatives of the people that we are trying to save.
Water availability, water quality, affordability, drainage, during rains, et cetera.
People judge any new intervention against these realities.
If blue green infrastructure is not visibly improving the water service they receive, it is seen as something happening to the community, not with it.
So They are usually see something happening, but they don't see themselves as part of it because they are not benefiting.
It is not showing in the amount of water they receive daily or the quality of service they receive from the utility, for example.
So the practical implication is this, NBS in low income urban areas needs to be planned inside the utilities investment and operational planning, not alongside it.
The drainage, the water service, the sanitation, the green assets, name it all, they need to be one program from the community's point of view.
The third condition, blue green and NBS investment in low income urban areas live or die on community trusts, tenure and goodwill.
Design decisions that looks more on paper have very large social consequences on the ground.
Where does the wetland, for example, go? Whose land is it on? Who used that space before, for trading, for housing, for movement? What happens to those people during construction and after? Who is responsible if the new green space attracts crime or flats someone's home or is converted to some other uses? If these questions are not answered before the design is finalized, two things happen.
Either the product gets resisted, installs, or it gets built, and the asset is degraded, vandalized, or repurposed within a few years because no one in their community has a stake in protecting it.
What works from our experience in Ghana and from Gala Water working in low income urban areas is the opposite pattern, where the design process starts with tenor, livelihoods, and existing land use, and the green blue solution is shaped around it.
It takes a longer time, though, but it is also the difference between an asset that is owned and an asset that is offered.
The lesson I take from this and from the Discussions that I've had so far in this room is straightforward.
The design and finance choices made at the beginning of an investment determine almost everything about whether it is still functioning five years later or not.
So if I have to leave this panel with one practical contribution or recommendation, it will be this before any Bluegreen or NBS investments in the low income urban area is approved, four questions should have a clear answer.
First, who operates and maintains the assets and with what budgets for how long? Secondly, how does this asset integrate with the existing water service the community is receiving.
Thirdly, what are the tener livelihood and land use implications and how have they been addressed? Last but not the least, when something goes wrong, when something goes wrong, there's flooding, there's vandalism, the system fails.
Who is accountable and how? If these four questions have credible answers, water responsive urbanism is genuinely sustainable.
If they do not have credible answers, then we are building beautiful infrastructure that will not be there in the next ten years.
Thank you very much.
What a lesson have you heard this afternoon? Our sister is very strong in the statements she's making.
She has said many things that I'm not sure I'll be able to summarize here.
But I think she raised a few she started with a question, but for me, the question is some concerns she was raising.
And for in order to be able to to I mean, to to integrate both gray and blue infrastructure.
I think that's what that's what I heard from from my statements.
And in in more details, I think she was talking about the She asked the question, what is responsive needs are responsive needs to look like in a low income country? And the all discussions she had, I mean, I will assume is a kind of lecture.
She she was lecturing is about what are the necessary prerequisites to be able to integrate both of them.
I think that's how I can summarize what she was saying, but she's not against the fact that we should have national nature based solutions.
The opposite is true because that's what she was saying.
And then The last three things that I was able to capture is to address these issues, Garner has adopted a unique approach, and therefore, to be able to integrate both of the structure infrastructure, we need to answer some questions who operates and maintains the assets.
How does this asset integrate with the existing assets, and finally, when something goes wrong, who is the held accountable? I think this is the summary I got from my presentation.
On that note, I want to thank her.
I think we are left with 7 minutes to the closing of the session.
So dear participants, I would like to join me in thanking this female panel for the great job they have done this afternoon.
Thank you very much for your contribution, and that's much appreciated, and it should be held in the records of World E 13.
Thank you very much.
And on that note, allow me to call doctor Jean for the you are coming for the closing, but also Madam Grace Lala Lube I apologize.
I'm sorry for that.
You are standing here for her? That's yourself.
Apologies for that because thank you very much, the representative of UN Abitat for the closing.
This is on behalf of Mr.
Omar Cilla.
You may have the floor for the concluding remarks.
Thank you very much.
No apologies.
I'm used to representing myself.
Okay.
My task here is very simple and straightforward.
It's to read the closing statement on behalf of our director.
Who is in another session that is running concurrently and ending at the same time.
Excellencies, distinguished guests, panelists, colleagues, friends.
It's no longer afternoon.
Good evening.
Allow me on behalf of UN Habitat, to thank our co conveners, that is UNEP, UNDP, and the African Union for the partnership that has brought us here and the excellent speakers and moderators for a rich and grounded conversation.
I want to particularly acknowledge the county secretary, Mr.
Mohammed Hassan of Garisa, the KDI and the development finance institutions that are here with us this evening.
You have moved the conversation from theory to practice.
African cities are on the front line of the climate crisis and the front line of water insecurity.
Floods, displacement, drought, depletion of resources, and the cost of inaction is rising faster than our conventional response.
What this session has made clear is that gray infrastructure alone will not get us where we want to go.
The future of urban resilience in Africa, as the last panel has just fairly presented, is blue green, integrated and people centered.
Three convictions have emerged from our exchange today.
The first, water responsive urbanism is technically.
I'll take that again.
Water responsive urbanism is technically ready.
Grissa demonstrates that a county On the climate frontline can plan, design, and prepare investments around water, not around emergencies.
The second, sponge cities and nature based solutions are financially viable.
But I think the intervention from Ghana gives an important caveat on operations and maintenance.
They are not soft additions to hard infrastructure with the right structuring, but they are bankable.
Third, African cities are not waiting.
From Beira to Grissa, the Karch work in iba, to the municipal leadership across the continent, the solutions are indeed African red.
This is where the Aquile partnership matters.
Ale Aquile was built precisely for the challenge that we have a joint platform of UNEP, UNDP, UN Habitat, and the African Union combining ecosystems expertise, development capacity, urban knowledge, and continental convening power under one coalition.
Through Aquinale, the conversation we have had today can move forward along four pathways.
The first as the knowledge and evidence platform, secondly, as a convening space for financing, and third, as a delivery vehicle for cities, and finally, as a South South cooperation channel.
Based on the four pathways that I've just outlined, Aquinil gives us the architecture to take today's evidence and turn it into tomorrow's investments and policies.
To our financing partners, work with Aquel to design investments that match the risk blended finances.
First loss, capital, use of proceeds, bonds that recognize nature based solutions as infrastructure.
Um, in the absence of my director, I'll add that the last discussion actually contextualizes and provides the way forward in terms of risk proofing, our investments, especially when we look at O and M and community ownership.
To our cities and practitioners, use Aquinle as a platform to share what works.
I think that has come out quite clearly.
The fastest route to scale is city to city learning, and that is exactly what the partnership is built to enable.
Finally, the shift from the shift from gray to blue green And I'm remembering Grissa is saying to blue brown, but blue green is more than an engineering choice.
It is a vision of African cities that are inclusive nature positive, climate resilient, and prepared for the century ahead.
Exactly the cities envisioned in the new Urban agenda, Agenda 2063 and SDG 11.
And to the final part of the speech, we want to thank you very much for coming.
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Yuan Habitat, for this wonderful statement, concluding remark.
I think what is left is to call Okay.
Doctor Jean, for a reflection on all that has been said this evening.
Then you have the floor.
That's where my job ends.
Thank you very much.
Great.
Thank you so much.
I know we're out of time, so I will let everyone go, but I just wanted to thank all the panelists for their contribution and please get in touch if you're interested in this work and we hope to carry on and move it forward.
Thank you so much.
Could I ask the panelists that are here if we could have a picture together? That would be great.
Thank you.