Emerging practices of community adaptation within innovative water and climate change policies in Durban, South Africa

This chapter focuses on the relations between the local state and its citizens in Durban, South Africa in the arena of water and climate governance. Three vignettes that reflect the relationships between the abstract spaces of the state and the everyday lived worlds of ordinary people are presented in the chapter. The first vignette showed how knowledge and discourses from international networks, research within Durban and social engagement at the local scale led to the formation of a multi-stakeholder platform representing actors from different levels of government. The second vignette revealed how abstract policy and practices developed in government spaces are reworked through the everyday practices of ordinary people who adapt technical interventions to meet their needs. The third vignette highlights how broadening of ecosystem-based adaptation (EBA) to community ecosystem-based adaptation (CEBA) offers the potential to engage with citizens.