In tackling the impacts of climate change, a coherent integration of climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) into a combined approach is essential.^1–9 CCA refers to the development of strategies that enable the anticipation of climate change effects, the implementation of practices that prevent damage from such effects, and adjustments in ways of life to deal with or take advantage of the effects of climate change.^3,10 DRR and disaster management form two related, but distinct, components that contribute to better preparation for disasters.^1,3 Disaster management refers to the processes established to design, implement and evaluate various strategies, policies and measures that will serve as tools for promoting practices that focus on disaster preparedness, response and recovery at different levels.^10,11 It is centred on the phase when the disaster threat becomes evident.¹ In contrast, DRR focuses on the development of policies, strategies and practices that aim to anticipate and minimise disaster risks, and reduce existing exposure and vulnerability, while improving resilience to prevent and adapt to the impacts of extreme events within a sustainable development context.^10,11

Both CCA and DRR share similar goals oriented towards reducing exposure and underlying vulnerability to climate-related risks, as well as increasing the resilience of assets and affected people, although often treated separately in practice and policy.^{1–4,7,12,13} Resilience focuses on the ability of a group or community to withstand and recover from external shocks and stressors, from the impacts of climate change, as well as from economic, social, and political neglect and upheaval.^11,14 In the context of DRR and CCA, the enhancement of resilience should be based on the reduction of exposure and vulnerability and on building adaptive capacity.^3,12 Examples include effective communication between government and the public, increased community cohesion, and better understanding of disaster risks.^3,12 In contrast, a system or person is deemed vulnerable when there is a propensity to be affected.^10,11 Vulnerability is defined as the characteristics that influence the capacity of people to prepare for, cope with, resist, and recover from the impact of extreme climate events and other impacts.^11,15 It is strongly influenced by underlying structural issues such as poverty and inequality, lack of access to insurance, marginalisation and poor housing quality (termed social vulnerability).^10,13

In recognition of the commonalities between CCA and DRR, there is a growing advocacy for the need to integrate these two measures in policy and practice.^3,16–19 This integration can result in practical benefits such as optimising resource use, knowledge sharing, and increased access to a broader range of expertise in efforts to reduce vulnerability and build resilience.²⁰ Moreover, because climate-related risks are complex and intractable, cutting across boundaries of separate departments, agencies, authorities and jurisdictions^16,17, integrating CCA and DRR requires establishing institutional linkages, thereby providing avenues to converge policies, planning, and programmes²¹.

In South Africa, evidence for climate extreme events is well documented.^22–26 Vulnerability and exposure to these events is underpinned by different socio-economic contexts created through apartheid policies, which residentially segregated people based on race.²⁷ In provinces such as the Eastern Cape, these policies created less-serviced and systematically neglected homelands to which black South Africans were forcefully moved, and whites-only towns and private farmlands, which were well serviced.^28,29 Despite the formal end of the apartheid government, the present-day landscape of South Africa is still largely shaped by the consequences of apartheid policies.^27,30,31

As a signatory to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), South Africa has made efforts to develop and implement, as well as update policies, measures and programmes to address climate change and extreme events.³² Municipalities – which are entities that deal with the planning and implementation of, in the context of this study, CCA, DRR and mitigation strategies and actions suitable for a given geographical and social context^22,33,34 – are under a legal mandate to develop Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) and make updated versions of these documents available in public platforms for viewing³⁵. The IDPs are planning tools developed to identify and address development issues, and are reviewed every 5 years.³⁶ Moreover, municipalities are legally mandated to develop Disaster Management Plans (DMPs).^37,38 However, whether and how climate change responses have been included in the IDPs of rural municipalities in South Africa has been little explored. Similarly, limited work has been done on the extent and content of DMPs for such municipalities. This is also the case when it comes to the integration of CCA and DRR, particularly in terms of reducing social vulnerability and building resilience.

We assessed the engagement of 20 South African local municipalities with CCA and DRR across two different socio-economic contexts. We explored how municipalities in the former ‘white’ parts of the Eastern Cape Province and those in the former ‘homelands’ engaged with CCA and DRR, and integration thereof, and where they placed emphasis in terms of reducing social vulnerability and building resilience to climate change. We undertook a thematic analysis of publicly available IDPs (from municipal websites) to answer the following broad questions: (1) Do municipalities have DMPs or CCA strategies, and if so, what actions are mentioned in these? (2) Do municipal IDPs contain sections on CCA and DRR? (3) What types of CCA and DRR actions are mentioned in each of the relevant sections in the IDPs, and how do these relate to social vulnerability reduction and resilience building? And lastly, (4) is there any reference to the linkages between CCA and DRR in the documents?

For DRR, South Africa has a legal mandate for the management of disasters as outlined in the South African constitution.³⁹ Specifically, the constitution legally mandates South African municipalities to develop and implement DMPs.³⁹ Other instruments include the Disaster Management Act No. 57 of 2002³⁸, the Disaster Management Amendment Act No. 16 of 2015 (DMAA)³⁷ and, at the local level, the Municipal Systems Act No. 32 of 2000³⁵ (Supplementary figure 1A).

The country presently has no legal mandate for local governments to have separate CCA strategies or plans. However, the Climate Change Bill⁴⁰, the National Climate Change Response White Paper (NCCRWP)³² and the National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy (NCCAS)⁴¹ encourage the inclusion of CCA in IDPs (Supplementary figure 1B). While many better resourced city and district municipalities have developed separate CCA strategies or plans, little attention has been given to this amongst local municipalities.²³ Using the NCCAS, the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) states that a unified CCA strategy will encourage the synergising of CCA efforts at all government levels (national, provincial, and local), while presenting an opportunity for collaboration between different sectors.⁴²

The study was conducted in 2017 in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa (Figure 1) – the fourth most highly populated province in the country with approximately 7 230 204 people according to the latest census of 2022.⁴³ The Province is characterised by high vulnerability to climate change and disasters due to high poverty and unemployment rates. For example, only 62.5% of the population between the ages of 15 and 64 is economically active.⁴³ There is a major dependence on agriculture and natural resources for livelihoods and economic activity.^28,44

The Province is expected to experience high temperature increases in the northwestern part and lower increases along the coastal areas.⁴⁶ These increases in temperatures will result in higher evaporation rates which will increase the frequency and intensity of droughts.^46–48 In the eastern parts, precipitation levels are expected to be higher, resulting in increased frequency and intensity of floods and storms.⁴⁷ Overall, the Province faces major threats in existing commercial and subsistence farming areas, social services and food security.⁴⁶

The Province has 39 municipalities (2 metropolitan, 6 district and 31 local municipalities).⁴⁹ The metropolitan municipalities are self-standing and operate under exclusive authority as they are usually more equipped with resources to perform their duties.³⁶ Conversely, district and local municipalities share power and functions, and hence, operate on a broad scale.³⁶ Importantly, local municipalities are meant to be in direct communication with local communities^22,33,34 and, therefore, need to address the issues of vulnerability and resilience directly.

For this study, to understand if climate response actions reflected the socio-economic context of the different municipalities, we divided the Province into two main parts.²⁹ The first, eastern, part consists primarily of the former homelands to which black South Africans were forcefully moved during apartheid.²⁸ These areas, characterised by communal tenure systems, were systematically neglected and underdeveloped with respect to housing, electricity, sanitation, social services (such as education and health), recreational spaces and economic opportunities.⁵⁰ While the homelands were re-incorporated into South Africa in 1994, the legacies of past neglect are still visible in the Eastern Cape today.^27,30,31 The second, western, part of the Province falls within the former white areas and consists mainly of well-serviced towns and private farmland.²⁹ Given these disparities, municipalities in the former homelands are battling to deliver services and development, which increases the vulnerability of residents to climate extreme events compared to those in former white South African towns.²⁹

Our method followed a four-step procedure outlined in Figure 2. First, we randomly selected 20 out of the 31 local municipalities: 10 in the previous homelands and 10 in the former white part of the Province. Second, we visited each municipality’s website and downloaded their most recent documents, particularly IDPs and any other plans relating to disasters and CCA. The number of municipalities that had either one, both or neither of the two document types was recorded. Third, the documents were read page by page for information relating to CCA, DRR, social vulnerability reduction and resilience building. Finally, a thematic analysis of the actions in municipal documents was carried out based on prior developed themes from the literature (Supplementary table 1).

In the face of climate change and resulting extreme events, there is a recognition of the importance of integrating CCA and DRR in government planning to address social vulnerability and build resilience to climate risks.^3,6,7 We sought to explore whether and how this integration is mainstreamed in local municipal plans in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Overall, our findings indicate that, regardless of the different socio-economic contexts, little has been done to integrate CCA and DRR in local government planning in the province, particularly in addressing social vulnerability and building resilience.

We found that only 2 of the 20 local municipalities included in this study had developed and published their DMPs. This is despite the fact that municipalities servicing former white South Africa areas may be better capacitated with resources to develop and implement DMPs, while those from the previously disadvantaged homeland areas are still catching up in terms of resources and capacity. Nevertheless, the lack of DMPs in both socio-economic contexts is a cause for concern, particularly because the DMAA³⁷ legally binds South African municipalities to develop and coordinate DMPs while implementing the disaster management function. Therefore, these results suggest a broad lack of compliance with the legal mandate for addressing climate-induced extreme events and reducing disaster risk in South Africa. The fact that the Disaster Management Act was amended only in 2015 to include local municipal DMPs could arguably explain the cause for non-compliance with this legal mandate.

Regardless of the different socio-economic contexts, our results show that no municipality has developed and published their own CCA strategy or plan. This was not unexpected because South Africa has no legal requirement for these to be developed at the local municipal level. However, it does suggest that, regardless of the absence of a legal mandate, rural local municipalities may not have the motivation, resources and/or capacity to develop specific CCA strategies or plans, unlike at the metropolitan level.²³ Moreover, South Africa does not have a national audit to check and monitor CCA strategies. A study conducted in Zambia attributed the lack of CCA strategies at the local level to the lack of a clear CCA mandate.¹ Therefore, considering their results and the findings of the current study, it could be argued that the absence of a clear legal mandate for local governments to develop CCA strategies may, to a certain extent, be the reason for the lack of such strategies at the local municipal level. The South African government regards climate change as one of the principal threats to sustainable development and recognises that, if unmitigated, it could potentially delay the country’s achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.^32,40 However, the national government does not finance the development of local-level CCA strategies.³³ These strategies, therefore, are a luxury for municipalities that can afford to develop and implement them, sometimes with external development aid, which is usually the case for metropolitan municipalities.²³

Despite the lack of CCA strategies and DMPs, most municipalities made an effort to include CCA- and DRR-related actions in their IDPs. Specifically, all but seven municipalities mentioned actions related to either both CCA and DRR, CCA only or DRR only in their IDPs. The most mentioned actions were those related to DRR and were about increasing the resilience of infrastructure. However, it is concerning that more than a third of the municipalities did not have any plans or actions to address climate change, especially considering the increasing frequency of extreme events in South Africa. The lack of proactive DRR actions in some IDPs may be attributed to the recent shift away from disaster risk management towards DRR when dealing with disasters.^55,56 The poor engagement with climate risks is reflected in a similar study in the Limpopo Province of South Africa, which also found limited discussion of adaptation mechanisms in local municipal IDPs.²² Overall, considering our results and those from the study in the Limpopo Province, it is evident that more work is needed at the local municipal level to mainstream CCA and DRR in the IDPs.

In terms of the types of actions for CCA and DRR, most municipalities prioritised securing infrastructural facilities and buildings while paying little attention to addressing underlying social vulnerability. However, there are some municipalities that have highlighted that they are making efforts to include capacity building, economic development, insurance, and financial incentives for farmers in the areas they serve – actions which help to address social vulnerability. These actions are essential because the repercussions of the apartheid government left former homelands under-capacitated, including smallholder farmers. Furthermore, we found more CCA actions addressing social vulnerability in the former homeland areas of the Province, while in former white South Africa, these were mainly linked to DRR actions, reflecting the context somewhat. For example, economic development, capacity building, collaboration and participation, and awareness raising campaigns were only mentioned by municipalities in former homelands in relation to CCA. On the other hand, municipalities from the former white South Africa areas mentioned capacity building, collaboration and participation, and community engagement only in relation to DRR. Overall, most of the CCA- and DRR-related actions found in the IDPs and DMPs have been found in other studies. In Zambia, it was found that capacity building and awareness raising in communities were mentioned as important actions for engaging with CCA.¹

Finally, we found no evidence of CCA and DRR integration in the reviewed IDPs. This suggests that the necessity for linking these two approaches may not have been fully realised by various municipal departments. Consequently, these approaches are still treated separately by local municipalities, despite the call for integration due to their synergies in terms of addressing social vulnerability and building resilience to climate risk. Moreover, the DRR function may be split between, or planned and implemented by, different departments working separately within a municipality. These findings reflect those found in Nicaraguan policies and regulations where the integration of CCA and DRR was almost non-existent due to the lack of official instruments and policy.² Overall, it is clear that South Africa needs to promulgate legal instruments and policies to capacitate local municipalities in mainstreaming and integrating CCA and DRR in order to reduce social vulnerability and build resilience in the face of climate change and resulting extreme events.

While this study provides novel insights into the ways in which local rural municipalities in two different socio-economic contexts in the Eastern Cape Province deal with CCA and DRR, it is not without limitations. First, not all local municipalities from the Eastern Cape Province were included in the study due to a lack of relevant documents on their websites. Second, some of the municipal websites were outdated, which limited the information we could access. Third, because municipalities are legally mandated to review and update their IDPs every 5 years, there were some variations in the years of the IDPs available. Finally, we acknowledge that, in analysing documents obtained from municipal websites, such documents may not provide a complete reflection of municipal actions on the ground in terms of CCA and DRR, particularly when the documents are only reviewed and updated every 5 years.

Using a social vulnerability reduction and resilience building lens, this study has provided an analysis of how 20 local municipalities from two contrasting socio-economic contexts in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa engage with CCA and DRR in their plans and strategies. Our results demonstrate that, regardless of the differences in socio-economic contexts, the mainstreaming of CCA and DRR integration in Eastern Cape local municipalities leaves a lot of space for improvement. Specifically, there is a need for the South African government to support and motivate local municipalities to develop their CCA strategies and DMPs, and improve the integration of CCA and DRR in their IDPs. An important focus of such plans and strategies should be actions that address the underlying developmental and structural causes of social vulnerability, especially in the former homelands, and how resilience could be enhanced in the face of climate risk. Importantly, the effective CCA and DRR integration requires an integrated and collaborative effort between all stakeholders, and government levels, and their agencies.⁵ As such, for local municipal plans and strategies to be effective in integrating CCA and DRR, support in terms of resources and guidelines from the higher tiers of government and relevant stakeholders will be paramount.