Designing and assessing water management intervention in informal settlements: an international cooperation project in Beira, Mozambique

More than half of the world's population lives in cities, and 1.12 billion inhabit informal settlements. In Sub-Saharan Africa, one of the regions most exposed to climate change, rapid urbanisation has resulted in 53% of the urban population living in informal settlements, according to UN-Habitat. In these contexts, insecure land tenure, non-compliance with building and spatial planning regulations, and limited access to improved water and sanitation services exacerbate climate-related risks. 

This is the case of the Macuti neighbourhood, hosting approximately 17’000 residents  (2017) over 220 hectares in the coastal city of Beira, central Mozambique. Between 2022 and 2025, Macuti benefited from the MUDAR project, an EU co-funded initiative for local authorities on capacity building and urban upgrading. 

The University of Trento, as part of a broader project partnership comprising public authorities, NGO, and educational institutions, carried out a context assessment aimed at identifying priority urban resilience interventions and studying their impacts once implemented. 

A multidisciplinary methodology combining more than 800 questionnaires and 200 interviews with residents and stakeholders, in-situ measurements, the collection of existing cartographic information, and satellite imagery helped overcome data availability constraints. The outcomes of this analysis, together with a structured participatory process involving municipal authorities, technicians, and local communities, informed the design of tailored, modular and replicable small-scale interventions, namely a street, a recreational area and two retention ponds for flood mitigation, embedded within a broader neighbourhood-scale urban planning framework.

Preliminary results assessing the impacts of the interventions show tangible changes both on the physical fabric of Macuti and the everyday conditions experienced by residents, consistent with an urban upgrading approach. Social surveys, carried out before and after the MUDAR’s intervention and subsequently compared, show a marked improvement in perceived road conditions, with negative ratings (bad or very bad) decreasing from 78% in 2024 to 1.6% in 2025, while 83% of respondents now rate the road as good or very good. The street also enabled the implementation of a waste collection system serving 81% of Macuti’s inhabitants weekly. Moreover, two-dimensional hydrological-hydraulic modelling performed with HEC-RAS indicates good performance of the two ponds in collecting runoff from the densely inhabited lower-lying surroundings and in conveying it to the existing free-flowing channels, even under tidal constraints. However, it clearly appears that to fully understand the impacts of such a project further and transversal investigation is needed. In this sense, a comprehensive approach able to detect intervention’s multifunctionality, valuation, spatial and temporal relevance and the equity implications is crucial.

The present study contributes to the session discussion by presenting an applied case study of urban water management that integrates participatory processes and multi-stakeholder collaboration. It concludes by highlighting the importance of a comprehensive approach to support the development of context-based impact assessment frameworks, informing more adaptive and sustainable water management and urban policies worldwide.