Promoting Green Urban Development in African Cities

The city of Kampala has undergone a
period of rapid urbanization that has contributed to the
degradation of the city’s natural environment. The urban
environmental profile for Kampala has been prepared as the
first component of the assignment promoting green urban
development in Africa: enhancing the relationship between
urbanization, environmental assets, and ecosystem services,
a project being conducted under the leadership of the World
Bank. An overall objective of this project is to link the
study of urban environmental issues with the advancement of
more sustainable urban growth. The profile summarizes the
existing quality of the wetlands and other aquatic and
terrestrial environmental assets, identifies the key drivers
that are the cause of their vulnerability, and describes the
key institutional challenges and constraining factors that
limit the city’s ability to address environmental management
challenges. Identification of the key environmental assets
and key drivers of environmental degradation within the city
required a more comprehensive review of reports on urban
planning and infrastructure services. The city has recently
made progress in the development of key infrastructure
systems such as solid waste management and sanitation. The
report is organized as follows: section one gives
introduction. Section two sets the background and context
for Kampala, providing an overview of the impacts of rapid
urbanization and climate change, drawing linkages to urban
environmental assets. Section three, quality of the
environmental assets of Kampala describes the state of the
key environmental assets, including the terrestrial assets,
aquatic assets, and air quality, and attempts to infer the
associated historic and current trends. Section four,
drivers of environmental vulnerability and degradation
describes the key issues that are driving degradation and
the impacts caused. Section five, institutional issues and
challenges describes the key factors that constrain
Kampala‘s ability to effectively address environmental
management challenges. Section six, provides a synthesis of
key findings.