TURNING FLOOD RISK INTO ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY IN DAR ES SALAAM, TANZANIA The World Bank’s City Resilience Program (CRP), in partnership with the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), has supported Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in understanding and tackling its resilience Photo credit: Unsplash. challenges, helping unlock the city’s full economic potential. After a decade of strong economic growth, Tanzania officially The Msimbazi Opportunity Plan, a comprehensive blueprint for achieved lower-middle income status in 2019. Against this transforming the Basin into a beacon of urban resilience. backdrop, however, the country and its economic hub Dar es Building on this work, delegates from Dar es Salaam attended Salaam continue to face growing threats from disasters and the 2018 Resilience Planning Workshop hosted by the World climate change. Bank’s City Resilience Program (CRP), in partnership with the Up to 80 percent of Dar es Salaam’s residents live in Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR). unplanned, informal settlements, including in the city’s This edition of the workshop brought together representatives Lower Msimbazi Basin area, which has 27 percent of the city’s from 15 cities in Sub-Saharan Africa. Cities were provided population. Prone to severe flooding, this low-lying area sees with support for their capital investment planning process and far too many lives lost, homes destroyed, and livelihoods access to a platform for knowledge sharing and learning on upended on an annual basis. The rainfall of April and May urban planning, resilience, project development, and private 2018 alone is estimated to have caused upwards of USD $100 capital mobilization. million in economic damage to Dar es Salaam as a whole – As part of the Workshop, the CRP employed its City Scan approximately 2 percent of the city’s GDP. With such extreme tool, which uses climate, disaster, and economic data to help weather events expected to increase in frequency and intensity cities visualize the natural and built environment and identify in the future, building resilience and mitigating disaster and the resilience challenges they face. The City Scan for Dar es climate risks are critical. Salaam, for example, enabled a clearer understanding of a In response, more than 200 people from 59 institutions and wider set of the Msimbazi Basin’s climate risks and the city’s communities came together over 30 participatory design spatially distributed accessibility to jobs, while underscoring sessions, supported by the World Bank, to chart a resilient the urgency for risk mitigation actions. Complementing path forward for this area of Dar es Salaam. The result was the City Scan, CRP developed an analysis of infrastructure RESULTS IN RESILIENCE SERIES Aerial view of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Photo credit: Moiz Husein. disruption to understand the role of urban flooding on unlock up to USD $900 million of real estate investments infrastructure and its effects on the economy. The analysis including USD $200 million of new revenue to the city through revealed that floods disproportionately affect areas with high the use of land and development rights.1 employment densities and that firms in flood zones experience CRP’s analysis included an overview of local real estate more disruptions to their business. Further, it showed that market conditions, a survey of national and local regulations the impacts of flooding spread along infrastructure networks pertaining to land development and construction, and to originally unaffected areas. The Workshop also helped a financial assessment of how market-driven real estate participants identify opportunities to mobilize private capital investments can contribute to flood risk mitigation and in support of the urban transformations identified in The affordable housing delivery, among other key objectives of the Msimbazi Opportunity Plan. public sector in Tanzania. Following on from the Resilience Planning Workshop, the CRP Like in Dar es Salaam, both the CRP’s planning and financial supported an analysis of the real estate development potential tools are available to help cities across the world understand of a pilot 57-hectare land portfolio in the Lower Msimbazi and mitigate the adverse impacts of disasters and climate Basin. The premise of this analysis was that the flood change, enabling them to save lives, reduce losses, and unlock protective measures included in The Msimbazi Opportunity Plan economic and social potential. The Program catalyzes a shift would stabilize land and unlock new real estate investment toward long-term, multi-disciplinary packages of technical opportunities in the Msimbazi Basin. Indeed, the analysis and financial services, building a pipeline for viable projects at showed that the proposed flood protection measures could the city level that build resilience. This assessment is based on an illustrative multi-phased development program called for in the Msimbazi Opportunity Plan that includes a versatile 1 mix of residential and commercial uses to be delivered on the stabilized 57 hectares over the course of 20 years. This program entails construction of up to 5,900 new housing units, including 1,200 affordable units, and 100,000 m² of auxiliary commercial space and supplemental infrastructure in the Lower Msimbazi Basin. RESULTS IN RESILIENCE SERIES