Future Resilience for African CiTies And Lands (FRACTAL)

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FRACTAL aims to alter how African cities include climate change in development planning, in a context with no direct historical precedent. This is critical given that the interests of the majority urban population place an inviolable demand (with substantial regional dependencies) on water, energy and associated infrastructure. FRACTAL recognizes that supply-driven climate information (e.g. IPCC) is having limited impact in real world decision making, largely due to messages of limited relevance or robustness at the scales and for the contexts of decision making.

We directly address this inadequacy through increased understanding of regional climate information and informed by co-exploration with decision makers. FRACTAL seek s to bring fundamental changes in key decision pathways (around water, flooding and energy) to increase the resilience of city-regions. This will leave a legacy of new knowledge, capacity and learning exemplars in 5 city-regions from which Africa can build. FRACTAL will provide an essential counterpart and balance in a landscape where the majority of climate development actions have non-urban, sectoral or rural foci.

There are four groups of beneficiaries:
A). Policy and decision-makers in government, resource management and infrastructure from local officials (case-study cities) to national-scale line Ministries which oversee urban development and the planning of infrastructure and regional services, which benefit through: co-generation of information and policy guidelines; new frameworks for incorporating climate change information in the context of multiple stressors and competing agendas; deep co-learning benefits led by researchers embedded in city governments; peer-to-peer relationships that lead to learning opportunities amongst the city partners; written materials generated by the project.
B) International and regional development institutions. The project will present research findings to guide development organizations and funders who are important contributors to development and adaptation trajectories. This will be strengthened by leveraging existing networks, such as the consortium's IPCC/WCRP/SASSCAL/Future Earth presence.
C) Academic disciplines and research communities in Africa and internationally. A publication strategy will place papers in disciplinary journals and the work will be disseminated at major conferences. Academics from under-capacitated African universities will benefit through the production of research, teaching tools and supporting publications. New inter-institutional relationships will foster the establishment of critical research capacity within the region to initiate key research agendas. Collaboration with the international community provides much needed reverse flows of knowledge, giving African researchers valuable entry to participate in research governance on the international scale (e.g. WCRP, IPCC, etc.).
D) Society. While largely an indirect process, this grouping has potential to receive the largest impact and benefit. By operating in the placed-based context of the majority of the population, FRACTAL can help steer development to enhance the quality of life and human security of large sections of society, as well as protect the economic system through both enabling opportunities and managing the very high risk of maladaptation with its attendant costs, damages, and inefficiencies. Informed city governance can lead to greater awareness and understanding in the voting population which can introduce major shifts in how nations choose to respond to climate change. Likewise, by changing the policy environment new opportunities for economic engagement are created.

Lastly, a significant cross-cutting impact is the building of trust relationships, dialogue and learning between and within these communities, which fosters growth potential as adaptation increasingly adopts a policy-first approach (versus a science-scenario-first approach).