Abstract
Adaptation to climate change depends centrally on what is done in urban centres and cities. climate change and rapid urbanization have become two major issues related to human welfare and development around the world. One of the environmental aspects that are influenced by urbanization is urban micro-climate. Human activities and urban developments have a significant effect on the increase in local air temperatures in cities. Permeable land surfaces which were once covered by vegetation have now being replaced with impermeable and high emissivity surfaces and mostly un-shaded, and such urban surfaces tend to absorb the solar radiation and emit it later, which causes an increase in local temperatures. The rapid urbanization compounded by underlying population places pressure upon urban green spaces within cities, and they constitute a major environmental resource of the urban landscape. In Africa, data show that urban green spaces are depleting at an alarming rate with green spaces now occupying small proportion of the landmass of several urban areas, despite the well documented crucial roles they have in improving the environmental quality and sustainability, providing a broad range of services and enriching social, ecological, and cultural values including landscape aesthetics, outdoor recreations, noise reduction and the most important of all, its cooling efficiency. The task ahead is to transform our existing cities to become more sustainable and liveable. Therefore, this study will attempt to explore the role played by urban green spaces in mitigating and adapting cities to urban heat island effects in building climate-resilient cities within the African context. It will examine the relationship between urban heat island and spatial patterns, composition and configuration of urban green spaces in a comparative study of two African cities, Lagos (Nigeria), and Nairobi (Kenya). Assessing the vulnerabilities and opportunities in governance in order to develop sustainable strategies to address the problems affecting the sustainable management of urban green spaces, which in turn will be an effective way of proposing solutions to minimize the impacts of urban heat island exposure to urban dwellers by ensuring the adaptive capacity of urban systems in terms of the ability to self-organise and adjust in relation to externally driven changes.
