Urban planning experts call for climate change mitigation measures in city masterplan

Due to the heavy downpour recently, the torrential rains across the country have continued to destroy property and cause loss of lives as well. Experts in urban planning say that people that plan for the city should stop relying on ancient techniques of planning but rather they should consider the constant changes in climate as well as the increase in population.

People that stay at the slopes of the various hills around Kigali where the rainwater collects from are always worried every time the skies turn grey because heavy rains and strong winds wreck havoc and they put everything they were doing on hold to try and shield themselves from the flowing rainwater.

As the days pass by with the heavy rains, this running rainwater keeps increasing as it comes with lots of pressure that destroys people’s properties.

Abidan Habamenshi; "Because of the drainage canal that comes from Nyamirambo, the water collects here and ends up taking our property. The other day it rained here in the market and it took the pile of clothes and other goods people were selling. This drainage canal needs to be widened,"

Erneste Gakindi said; "There is a very big fuel tank they were using up there, the rainwater carried it away as well. There is also a cow that drowned in this water. This drainage canal needs to be expanded,"

Some people that stay around the hills and various parts of the city say that there are ways they can harvest this rainwater

Deo Karasira; "Here, we try and find ways of collecting this water such as digging holes where water that comes off the roofs can be collected but not everyone does that,"

Valerie Mukakarisa added; "Here we are no longer afraid of the rainwater because there is a way the drainage system has helped us, but we also have tunnels where we store the water,"

Experts in the city and urban planning, however, think otherwise and say there are other ways in which this challenge can be completely resolved.

Eng. Joseph Rwigamba; "This is a great challenge, the problem though is that we are still operating on very old plans. The people that build the city never thought that at some point, it would rain this much, even these drainage canals that were built, most of them are now blocked and small. That is why you find the water filling the roads because the ones that built the roads didn’t think about building enough drainage canals. They also didn’t consider where water from people’s homes would be collected from, because the methods used by the citizens are not sufficient on their own. This should be looked into really quickly,"

Flash floods are a big challenge and authorities say there are some measures that were put in place to combat it but also other plans are underway to further solve this issue.

Janvier Muhire said; "The current law stipulates that everyone should be able to harvest their water using water tanks. But there are times when the water is a lot, and that is why plans are in motion to build a water treatment plant where this water will be recycled and reused in the dry season,"

However, the timeframe for which this water plant will be completed is not known for sure. As the population of Kigali continues to grow, Muhire Janvier, the director of housing regulations and standards, says there should be strict measures about the building standards to protect the lives of the citizens. That is why the city started evacuating people in high-risk zones with over six thousand people already evacuated.

Cover photo by The New Times.