From Risk to Resilience: Building Equitable, Climate-Ready Cities After COP30

In the wake of COP30, cities are increasingly at the forefront of climate adaptation - tasked with turning global commitments into local action.

In this session, Tamsin Faragher, Principal Resilience Officer for the City of Cape Town, will share lessons from leading resilience efforts in one of the world’s most climate-exposed and unequal urban contexts. Drawing on her background in the built environment and public-sector strategy, Tamsin will explore how systems thinking and urban metabolism approaches are being applied to strengthen food systems, water management, and climate-responsive urban design.

The discussion will highlight Cape Town’s work on equitable adaptation, including food systems planning, water-sensitive design, and cross-government collaboration to reduce climate risk while supporting vulnerable communities. Fellows will gain practical insights into bridging policy and implementation, balancing environmental and development priorities, and inspiring actionable, city-led solutions that build resilience where it is needed most.

About the Speaker

Tamsin Faragher is the Principal Resilience Officer for the City of Cape Town. Tamsin is a built environment specialist (landscape architect) with experience both locally (Cape Town) and internationally (London, Dubai and Abu Dhabi). She has worked across disciplines both as a designer, planner and policy strategist in the private and public sector (provincial and local government) within the planning, built environment, infrastructure planning, environment, water and most recently – food “spaces”.

Tamsin’s interest in development policy has matured and narrowed to focus on the nexus between policy, practice and implementation, particularly as it relates to sustainable, resilient city-making and the contrasting, competing demands between the environment and development. Most recent work at the City of Cape in the Resilience Department has allowed for the exploration of this focus and includes the application of systems thinking and an urban metabolism approach to Cape Town’s Food System for the City of Cape Town’s Food Programme. This work will identify specific actions and policy interventions to improve food security. With the advent of COVID-19, the scope of this work has expanded to include food systems planning, inter-governmental co-ordination and external partnership-building around food relief programme development that has culminated in a Food Systems Programme.

Other focus areas have included extensive policy work around the application and limitations of non-potable water use within the City of Cape Town and the ongoing development of livable urban waterways demonstration projects using water sensitive design. Her boundless passion and enthusiasm flows over into work building the landscape architecture profession where she has curated and hosted a series of webinars focused on the ‘new normal’ and climate action through design on behalf of the Institute of Landscape Architecture, where she was an active member until recently. Current work includes establishing ways to implement water sensitive design across built environment professions.

She has a bachelors in architectural studies and two masters degrees – in landscape architecture and infrastructure design and management, both from the University of Cape Town