Abstract
In the last five decades, many informal communities in Accra, Ghana have suffered from annual flood hazards. Residents of these communities appear to have successfully resisted evictions by city authorities; survived flood hazards and poor environmental health conditions. These flood affected households continue to survive with increasing housing and population densities in the face of these annual floods. Are they becoming resilient? Have residents built adaptive capacities through learning experiences from previous flood occurrences and evictions attempts? What has produced and continued to shape their responses to flooding? What can be learned from this supposed grassroots resilience to inform flood management in urban Africa? Using case studies of three informal communities of Glefe, Agbogbloshie and Old Fadama, this paper explores the gradual and evolving adaptive capacities and social resilience to flood hazards among poor urban dwellers. The paper reveals the depth of understanding and embodied nature of flood experiences among affected slum dwellers and how these are gradually being transformed into adaptive capacities and sha** their responses. In the absence of efficient state flood interventions, there are emerging and enduring flood responses and adaptation practices shaped by residents’ social networks, political alliances and sense of place. These responses translates into continuous re-structuring of housing units, construction of communal drains, creation of local evacuation teams and safe havens. Urban policy contributions that can be learned from these emerging grassroots capacities for flood vulnerability management have been proposed.
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Source: Adopted and modified from Djalante et al. (2011, p. 4)
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Source: Amoako and Inkoom (2017)
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Source: Photo by Author during fieldwork in Accra, Ghana, June–July, 2015
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Notes
Unit committee is a community based decentralised institution with elected members responsible for community development and linking residents to the local government administration.
Women in the Agbogbloshie markets are grouped by what they sell and these groups also appoint their leaders who regulate market prices and help their groups with other decision-making activities.
All the study communities have different ethnic groups from different parts of Ghana and these selected their leaders to represent them in local decision making processes.
This is the name of community leader who led the court action against forced eviction. He could not be identified and interviewed.
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Amoako, C. Emerging grassroots resilience and flood responses in informal settlements in Accra, Ghana. GeoJournal 83, 949–965 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-017-9807-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-017-9807-6