Listen, Learn & Leap

Overview

Cities in East Africa are increasingly affected by climate change, and it is often people living in low-income and informal settlements who feel these impacts the most. Social norms and power relations that leave women and girls responsible for water collection, cooking, cleaning and other care work, which restrict their mobility outside the home, render them especially vulnerable to climate-related risks.

Nature-based solutions (NbS) have the potential to support climate adaptation and mitigate environmental hazards. However, there is a lack of evidence and understanding of NbS in urban informal settlements and community voices, especially those of women and young people, are often missing from institutional approaches.

Our collaborative project aims to fill existing knowledge gaps by exploring the socio-political factors that support the uptake, sustainability and institutionalisation of NbS to advance climate resilience in urban informal settlements in riparian and coastal areas of Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. 

We seek to understand the ways in which diverse groups of people living in urban watersheds are working with or using nature to build local resilience and to uncover the barriers and opportunities for scaling up equitable community-driven NbS in East African cities.  

Project aims

Our intentions to ‘LISTEN, LEARN and LEAP’ are reflected in our name and research approach. We engage with different stakeholders including women and girls, young people, civil society and local government, and LISTEN to their experiences of, and involvement in, nature-based initiatives in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. We apply this knowledge and LEARN by doing, working with young people living in the watershed to co-produce NbS, developing methodologies and actionable knowledge about the environmental, socio-cultural, financial and institutional considerations that drive or derail equitable and sustainable NbS in urban settings.  

By facilitating cross-sectoral dialogue and knowledge exchange with diverse stakeholders throughout this process, LEAP is about identifying common goals and mechanisms for institutionalising and scaling-up community-driven NbS initiatives.

The project runs until 2027 and is funded by UK Research Innovation (UKRI) and led by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).

Listen, Learn and Leap is an transdisciplinary project with co-production at its core. The image below showcases some of our team members with keywords representing our different areas of expertise.

Team

The team includes:  Dr Jordana Ramalho, (Project Lead) and Dr Pascale Hofmann, (Co-Investigator) from the Development Planning Unit; Professor Priti Parikh  and Dr Margarita Garfias Royo (Co-Investigators) from the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, working in close collaboration with Ardhi University and the Centre for Community Initiatives in Tanzania, Kounkuey Design Initiative (KDI) Kenya and ICLEI Africa (Local Governments for Sustainability). 

Read more about the team on our website. 

Outputs

Research is underway in Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam. More information will be shared in the coming months. You can also follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram for regular updates on our activities.