N’Djamena Urban Resilience Project

active

The proposed project will be implemented over a six-year period and represents the WB’s first engagement in the urban development and resilience sector in Chad since 2015. Component 1 aims to strengthen the city’s physical resilience against pluvial and fluvial floods through sustainable and effective structural and non-structural investments in flood protection. Component 2 supports climate-resilient urban services and planning for improved flood resilience, including key urban planning studies and instruments, community-led interventions as well as disaster preparedness and response. Component 3 covers project management and monitoring. Component 4 is a contingent emergency response component (CERC) aimed at helping the government improve response times in the event of future crises. A new component 5 will be added to finance the works and technical studies for the rehabilitation and construction of crossing infrastructures to address the impact of floodings. The project will rely on an integrated approach to increase the city’s climate resilience capacity and strengthen selected urban services. It will invest in priority and medium- to long-term flood protection and drainage infrastructure including sustainable solutions for their operations and maintenance (Component 1) while strengthening flood-related urban services that are complementary to the infrastructure investments, including mainstreaming disaster and climate-related risk management considerations in urban planning instruments, community-led, small-scale interventions as well as disaster preparedness and response (Component 2). This integrated approach will incorporate a gender-sensitive design and an active engagement of communities across all activities to maximize project benefits for the city’s population. The project has a long-term vision of transforming N’Djamena towards a more resilient, green, and sustainable city that can adapt to urban growth, economic transitions and the impacts of climate variability and change. Nature-based solutions (NBS) and non-structural interventions to mitigate flood risks will feature as key project design element, as a way to complement traditional infrastructure investments, support both climate adaptation and mitigation, improve urban livability in the context of more frequent heat waves due to climate change, and contribute to long-term flood protection. The additional financing activities will support: (i) rehabilitation and construction of priority crossing structures to restore basic connectivity for populations in the most affected provinces; (ii) construction of new bridges to further increase access and resilience to floods for the populations of these provinces and unlock economic potential; (iii) flood risk reduction measures such as culverts and dikes in selected areas; (vi) rehabilitation of access roads as needed; (v) capacity building and technical assistance (including equipment) to the Ministry of Infrastructure, Territorial Access and Road Maintenance (Ministere des infrastructures, du desenclavement et de l’entretien routier) - MIDER to enhance its capacity to implement emergency bridges projects, including the establishment of a training programme; and (vi) capacity building and technical assistance (including equipment) to improve local and basin-wide early warning systems ensuring quicker and more systematic flood alerts while strengthening the national early warning system.The project also aims to establish a medium- to long-term programmatic platform on urban development between the GoC, the Municipality of N’Djamena, the WB as well as other development partners. Successfully addressing the city’s large-scale urban resilience challenges, which will be further exacerbated due to climate change impacts, will require a decade-long engagement and significant investments that go beyond the scope, volume and duration of the proposed project. In addition, even though not within the scope of this project, urban resilience also needs to be built outside of the city through improved water catchment management, which could reduce fluvial flooding downstream and support agriculture production in the catchment area. For these reasons, the proposed project is designed to serve as a programmatic platform for future investments. By providing the required analytical underpinnings (e.g., solid waste management studies, core urban planning documents, etc.) and strengthening the technical and operational capacity of national and local institutions, it can facilitate the identification and preparation of future projects to fully address the city’s diverse urban resilience challenges across a variety of sectors (e.g., water and sanitation, SWM, municipal finance, etc.).