Public trust and adaptive capacity across socioeconomic groups confronting water insecurity in Cape Town, South Africa

Keywords: water governance, adaptation, socio-hydrology, urban resilience
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Public trust is considered essential for effective collective adaptation to climatic stress. In urban systems, city managers and agencies typically have the mandate to buffer residents’ livelihoods and property from climate shocks, thus providing hazard-specific adaptive capacity. They are also tasked with providing secure conditions for residents’ to invest in their own social wellbeing -- their generic adaptive capacities -- through reliable provision of critical public services. Together, these responsibilities and actions generate conditions of public trust. Nevertheless, in cities characterized by significant social inequity, uneven distribution of services can contribute to contrasting levels of public trust across differently served populations, reinforcing differential trajectories of individual and collective, generic and specific adaptive capacity. We explore the relationship between trust, adaptive capacity and equity in the context of water services in Cape Town, South Africa. We draw from focus groups, interviews and a survey of residents in both privileged and under-serviced areas of the city to illustrate the nature of water stress (chronic vs acute), service histories, participation in governance and political attitudes about public sector representatives influences public trust and concurrent private and public investments in adaptive capacities. Our analysis suggests that trust (or distrust) associated with expectations of entitlements from the public sector plays an important role in mobilizing individual investment in hazard-specific capacities, but also results in inequitable adaptation burdens that further differentiates populations’ adaptive trajectories while altering, and potentially eroding, public trust over the longer term.