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Toward Citizen-Led Planning for Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Ghana: Hints from Japanese ‘Machizukuri’ Activities

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The Geography of Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Africa

Abstract

This chapter draws lessons from Japanese machizukuri activities, which represent one of the most dynamic opportunities for participatory climate change adaptation in Africa. This chapter adopts a literature-based exploratory and dialectical approach to examine community’s role in climate change adaptation. It highlights the challenges and recent consensus on citizens’ role in climate change adaptation. Within this context, the chapter discusses Japanese machizukuri activities as providing ‘the how’ of promoting and strengthening community participation in climate change adaptation in urban Ghana. Findings indicate an existing potential for participatory planning in climate change adaptation in urban Ghana. However, to confront climate change impacts, there is the need for greater collaborative planning through networking, exploiting social capital, and integrating intangible sociocultural factors into urban climate adaptation planning.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    At the time of writing, there were 254 District Assemblies (DA) in Ghana including metropolitan assemblies (6), municipal assemblies (88) and District Assemblies (160). The term District Assemblies is used generically, and is either Metropolitan (big towns and cities with population of over 250,000), municipal (small to medium-size towns with population over 95,000) and District (small towns and villages with population over 75,000).

  2. 2.

    Within this, urban, area and zonal councils are formed for settlements with populations above 15,000, 5000–15,000 and 3000 respectively. Unit committees are formed for populations of 500–1000 and 1500 in rural and urban areas respectively.

  3. 3.

    Based on the concept on open social network by Rydin and Holman (2004). Kusakabe (2013) has ingeniously discussed its usefulness in understanding the networking element of machizukuri activities. See Kusakabe (2013) for an extensive discussion on this.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

    Seth Asare Okyere & Michihiro Kita

  2. University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, USA

    Stephen Kofi Diko

  3. School of Engineering and Built Environment, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, NSW, Australia

    Matthew Abunyewah

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  1. Seth Asare Okyere
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  2. Stephen Kofi Diko
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  4. Michihiro Kita
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Planning, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana

    Patrick Brandful Cobbinah

  2. Institute for Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, Albury, NSW, Australia

    Patrick Brandful Cobbinah

  3. Research Institute of Environmental Law, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

    Michael Addaney

Abbreviations

IPCC

Inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change

UNFCC

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

NPO

Non Profit Organisation

DAD

District Assembly

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Okyere, S.A., Diko, S.K., Abunyewah, M., Kita, M. (2019). Toward Citizen-Led Planning for Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Ghana: Hints from Japanese ‘Machizukuri’ Activities. In: Cobbinah, P.B., Addaney, M. (eds) The Geography of Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04873-0_14

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