'Urban agriculture: outsmarting climate change?' The occurence, perceptions and potential of climate-smart urban agriculture in the eThekwini Municipality, South Africa

Abstract

South Africa has stumbled upon a new obstacle before reaching the golden end of Nelson Mandela’s rainbow. On a global scale, climate change is hitting Africa the hardest, South Africa being no exception. With limited space, scarce supplies and poor infrastructure, livelihood development becomes a inventive challenge in the poor areas of eThekwini. Urban agriculture, seen in this research as ‘agricultural activity within the ‘intra-urban’ environment’, is a strategy deployed by the urban poor to combat these challenges. With the increasing impact of climate change on the municipality, urban agriculture as a pro-poor developmental tool is forced to overcome the effects of climate change to remain an effective developmental strategy for the many urbanites living in poverty. ‘Climate-smart agriculture’ serves as an umbrella term for this specific strategy, referring to the agricultural practices which help farmers adapt to or mitigate the effects of climate change, sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes. Although this concept is gaining popularity in rural areas all across the globe, its urban counterpart is severely underexposed in both policy and science, especially in Africa. Precisely climate-smart urban agriculture could prove to be an important tool for Durban’s municipality, its relevant stakeholders and its urban farmers to jointly engage in. So, is this joint framework actually visible in Durban?. Could it be an effective strategy for these urban farmers to climate-proof their activities. And if it has potential, how can it be promoted? This research centres around these questions, and looks for the answers by including all relevant climate-smart urban agriculture stakeholders, actors and practitioners into this debate. This is done by using questionnaires, a focus group and key-informant interviews. Also, several frameworks and approaches, such as the Sustainable Livelihoods approach, will be looked at and used in this research.