Conference Agenda

Water and energy are vital resources for human well-being, poverty reduction and sustainable development. The demand for the provision of both water and energy is increasing rapidly, and the trend is likely to continue in the future worldwide. Managing water and energy resources as an interconnected system, and eliminating the traditional silo-based planning, improves sustainable development through research-based evidence. The basis of the WE nexus approach to resource management lies in identifying the vulnerabilities and justifying the interactions at the multiple interfaces of resource systems, while holistically assessing the impact of interventions from the institutional, environmental, financial, and socio-cultural perspectives. Understanding the vulnerabilities and interlinkages of these two critical resources at the local level is necessary to identify and implement mutually beneficial strategies for their management and use. An intensive research design has been chosen for the study since the researcher wants to get in-depth, detailed and comprehensive data analysis result to generation of information on household water-energy nexus vulnerabilities with the use of a mixed approach (qualitative and quantitative). A purposive sampling procedure was used to select participants that are more relevant and could provide rich information about the vulnerabilities in water and energy at the household level. The collected data was analysed using ATLAS.ti and Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS). Comparative analyses of qualitative data in relation to quantitative variables have been extended and refined to include a broader range of within-case and cross-case analyses. After that, data has been grouped into themes for a clear understanding and explanation of various themes from the field. Subsequently, the themes were linked to the objectives to fulfill the aim of the study. Some of the villages in Matatiele Local municipality are still lagging behind with municipality service delivery, and there is a lack of affordable clean energy sources for some households. Residents are resorting to wood, paraffin, gas and candles as energy sources for lighting, cooking, and heating, and traditional leaders are not involved in water and energy policy decision-making. There are water and energy nexus vulnerabilities due to water inequalities and injustices in the distribution of water and electricity, and injustices with regard to policy and decision-making processes.

Owing to the significance of grassroots education and mobilization towards sustainable water action and general SDG 6, innovative and hybridized approaches have become an inevitable necessity in reaching the local communities, and underserved demographics in Africa. There is a strong nexus between water and multiple developmental indexes (economic, health, trade, etc.), therefore, solutions should be modeled based on the peculiarities of each region. Africa has a huge history of traditional governance across all sectors, and this includes the water resource management system. Despite remarkable potency, the role of traditional institutions has significantly faded with the advent of democratic governance and the over-reliance on social-scientific and diplomatic approaches in addressing global problems. Before the introduction of modern water technologies, many African communities-built dams and water storage systems to meet their water needs. These successes were accomplished because the traditional institutions being very close to the people were able to adopt the appropriate mobilization strategies that turned into productivity. This confirms that the sustainability of local water response and intergenerational solutions to water provision can only be accomplished if local mobilization is prioritized, and the principal actors at this level are the traditional institutions. Democratic governance is not at war with the traditional system, and the evolution of democracy should not relegate the functions of the latter, but rather harness the potentials that it offers in achieving sustainability in water provision across African states. We have identified some of the important areas where traditional institutions could play significant roles in water resource management, and we have elaborated these under six major strategic value areas, backed with relevant conclusions and recommendations. The Recommendations from this study could bring a paradigm in African water management and governance, as well as stakeholders' strategy of engagement.

Our contribution through this study complements existing research findings on related topics and also opens the pathway for diverse explorations of the traditional institutions in solving local problems. For example, [citation removed to annonymize abstract] examined the extent to which traditional governance systems have been acknowledged and incorporated into new water management institutions and approaches in South Africa and concluded that failure to acknowledge and incorporate aspects of these traditional governance systems may undermine the ability of government to achieve the objectives of the National Water Act (NWA). We have consolidated this by also modelling a system that could address the Water toxicity-River-Worship cultural clash in Osun State, Nigeria.

Adaptation of urban areas to the impacts of climate change is becoming increasingly important, whereby also the growing need for innovative and fast approaches to effectively bridge the gap between practice and science becomes apparent­.

With regard to expected more frequent and more intense heavy rainfall events, flood analyses based on rainfall-runoff models are used more often in order to determine hot spots in urban areas. To perform these analyses, there exist various hydrological models using different methodological approaches and boundary conditions.

In order to support municipalities to adapt to urban floods caused by heavy rain events, case studies have been carried out in close exchange with stakeholders as part of a model comparison. For this, the use of two different hydrological models in two German cities has been evaluated and compared based on the same simulated event. The freely available model "River Analysis System" (HEC-RAS), was used to simulate the heavy rainfall runoff behavior in the city of Geesthacht. The software platform "Tygron Engine" by the TAUW GmbH was applied for central areas in the city of Rostock. In addition, a comparison of "HEC-RAS" with the "Tygron Engine" was made for the case study in Rostock.

The objectives of this simulation comparison analysis are, for example, the identification of possible alternatives to deal with a specific challenge in practice, to develop an evaluation basis regarding the quality of the model results, and the identification of barriers and limitations of different models. Based upon these findings, scientifically sound and practically appropriate advice for different city-specific use-cases will be provided.

Within the paper, the different approaches, the main results and lessons learned from these user-orientated, and transdisciplinary case studies will be presented. Furthermore, both the relevant legal framework conditions at the European and national level as well as further need for research will be discussed.

Overall, the experiences from the case studies show that also the use of simplified digital models of a city without the need for big-data and monitoring information can be good planning tools to assess plausible results regarding possible impacts of climate change on a small scale. Based on this, adaptation measures can be planned, justified, and implemented in the context of urban planning and development.

Cities face several water challenges which ask for more pro-active management approaches. One option that cities have is to start networking and build learning alliances with other cities. Forming meaningful alliances however asks for clear and easily accessible city-matching methodologies which are based on a standardised assessment approach and the presence of structured and large databases. The City Blueprint Approach is an example of such a methodology. Aim of this paper is to demonstrate the potential of this approach as a substantive methodology for enhancing learning on urban water management. This is done by illustrating the use of the approach in four cities, which were studied in the [citation removed to annonymize abstract] project and by comparing the results found with good practises present in the City Blueprint database. These good practises however cannot simply be copy-pasted from one city to another. We therefore outline in what way more in-depth city-to-city (C2C) learning results can be achieved and be tailored to best-fit particular urban areas. The paper concludes with some suggestions for enhancing the potential for C2C learning in urban water management networks.