Dr Zarina Patel

Designation: Senior Lecturer: Department of Environmental & Geographical Science and African Centre for Cities. Director: Cape Town division of Mistra Urban Futures (MUF) Programme.
Expertise: Urban sustainability, governance, political geographies of environmental governance

Biography:

Zarina Patel’s research is concerned with the multiple dimensions of the meaning and practice of sustainable development at the city scale. This agenda is driven by evidence that suggests that in spite of supportive policy frameworks promoting sustainability in South Africa (and elsewhere in both the North and South), the poor and the natural environment continue to be marginalized in decision making. South African cities and their respective policy processes have been the geographical focus of her work, as well as the theoretical application that pivots around three interrelated areas which contribute to international debates, including: (a) urban knowledge (rhetoric), (b) urban governance (who/practice/implementation) and (c) tools for decision making (how). In all three themes, environmental justice is a common organizing principle used to understand how processes of inequality are perpetuated as a means of identifying more viable pathways.

Link to the ACDI:

Zarina’s research and teaching that is of relevance to ACDI includes a focus on the geopolitics of climate governance and climate justice. Questions regarding the interrelationships between sustainable development, environmental justice and climate change as policy objectives at the local level are explored. In addition, her research focuses on questions of scale and the relationship between global imperatives and local capacities. Zarian has supervised projects on the governance dimensions of flooding, using  transdisciplinary approaches and, most recently, an ACDI masters dissertation focusing on energy transitions and adaptive governance in low income housing developments.

Contact: zarina.patel@uct.ac.za

Zarina's full bio can be viewed here