It is anticipated that more than a quarter of the world’s fastest growing cities are in Africa and that by 2050 its urban population will have tripled. African cities are engines of growth, but unplanned growth is also the primary driver of the loss of urban natural assets and ecosystems. Nature Based Solutions (NBS) have the potential to provide low input, low-cost solutions to some of the most urgent challenges posed by climate change, rapid urbanisation, and the loss of green space in sub- Saharan Africa’s expanding informal settlements. Creating the enabling conditions at the governance level to spur effective socio-ecological planning is a major challenge and, there are few existing examples of successful approaches, and very few that have been rigorously evaluated from social, ecological, and technical perspectives.
