In a move to foster urban resilience, the Mariental Municipality, in collaboration with United Nations Disaster Risk Reduction and the GIZ Resilience Initiative Africa, hosted a workshop to strengthen local capacity for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

The southern town was recently selected as one of the six Local Authorities in the SADC to implement the 'Making Cities Resilient 2030' initiative.

Attending the three-day capacity-building workshop are representatives from local authorities, government ministries, and agencies in both Hardap and regions.

The workshop seeks to improve political commitment and social demand for climate-resilient development, aligned with sustainable development goals, while promoting the importance of effective climate change and disaster risk reduction.

Mayor of Mariental Cherien Kock said, Mariental, like all other African cities and towns, is facing rapid urbanisation and increasing vulnerabilities threatening to undo development gains and increasing inequality that exposes its residents to disaster risk. Due to widespread lack of local capacity and financial means to manage this rapid urban growth, much of urban expansion is taking place in a complex and uncertain environment of disaster risk. Mariental town is prone to flooding and has experienced several floods. The last one being the devastating flood of 2006. The effects of floods of that food still linger on, and little was done to protect the town from future floods."

Over the past two decades, statistics show, disasters have affected 4.4 billion people, causing the death of 1.3 million, over 95 percent of whom were from developing countries.