DPU at the 2018 Adaptation Futures Conference, Cape Town, South Africa

The DPU’s Emmanuel Osuteye participated in the 5^th International Climate Change Adaptation conference (“Adaptation Futures”) from the 18^th to 21^st of June 2018 in Cape Town South Africa.

He presented a paper co-written with Adriana Allen in a special session on “Leveraging science to enhance citizen leadership in urban adaptation and risk management”. The case studies in this enquiry were drawn from the ESRC/DFID funded Urban ARK Project focussing on cities and urban centres across East and West Africa, including Karonga, Malawi and Freetown, Sierra Leone where the DPU team led by Cassidy Johnson have been working.

The special session opened a roundtable discussion to focus critically on the deployment of participatory methods and coproduced approaches to stakeholder engagement in adaptation research and NGO activity, such as the ‘ReMapRisk” methodology and tool which has been developed by the DPU’s Adriana Allen, Rita Lambert and Emmanuel Osuteye as part of the Urban ARK project and applied in Malawi and Sierra Leone, with the support of in-country researchers in the consortium.

The presentations were followed by a lively discussion catalysed by statements from academics and a range of practitioners, including community actors and representatives from the Federations of the Urban Poor in Tanzania and Kenya, who brought their own experiences to the discussion. 

The conference also featured a public exhibition which lasted the entire week, and the Urban ARK project had a dedicated research booth where publications, research posters, audio-visual material and other outputs were showcased to the hundreds of participants in attendance. Emmanuel Osuteye joined other Urban ARK researchers from Kings College London, IIED and the University of Cape Town who were on hand to field questions and engage with the participants.