Assessment of Community Perception, Policies and Land use factors in relation to Climate Change Processes in Nairobi city

Abstract

As result of compounding factors related to environmental, social, economic and political pressures, it is feared that the impacts of climate change and variability may overwhelm resilience of urban systems in developing countries if response strategies are not strengthened. Urban planning policies shape the future trends and concentration of population, socio-economic activities, and infrastructure in cities. City governments and their stakeholders are essential in designing and ensuring the delivery of cost-effective climate change and variability response strategies. Just like any other city, Nairobi City has been faced with many climate-related challenges due to population growth that has resulted to pressure on existing infrastructural facilities. In this study, the perception and mitigation preferences analysis for Nairobi residents was used to anticipate their action in response to climate change to formulate informed climate change response strategies. A cross-sectional survey design was adopted where 397 households were selected through random sampling from different administrative units in the city. The study found that majority of the respondents were only aware of climate change and variability issues directly linked with daily weather patterns compared to more complex and indirect environmental problems associated with climate change in cities. This also influenced the respondent’s choice of climate change and variability response strategies. Educational status of respondent’s significantly influenced their responses compared to other social demographic factors. This study also attempted to demonstrate the potential impact of urban planning and building design policies to improving the resilience of Nairobi city to climate change impacts. An extensive review of existing national policies related to urban planning, environmental and building designs as well as climate change was undertaken against a protocol of desirable best international practices on climate change management in cities. Various urban planning components were addressed by different policy documents reviewed. Although, the relative coverage rate was low for different policies most of them were well detailed by policy documents which had addressed them. Although the city continues to suffer from environmental quality, unregulated land use conversion; unapproved and poorly constructed buildings, the study found that the existing policies can potentially address these issues and as a result, improve Nairobi’s resilience to climate change impacts. Lastly, this study attempted to quantify the relationship between land use, agriculture, forestry and environmental protection policies on land use/cover processes in Nairobi city from 1976 to 2015 in an attempt to demonstrate the effectiveness of land use policy on management of land use/cover processes. The policy analysis was based on three analytical case studies that used integrated techniques of remote sensing, geographic information system, and field-based datasets to understand land-use/cover modification in Nairobi. The results of this study indicate that land policy change greatly influenced land use/cover changes. For instance, forests cover which had reduced by about 76% between 1976 and 2000 increased significantly from 63.63km2 in 2000 to 93.44km2 in 2015 as result of new forestry and environmental policies which were introduced to since 2000.