Durban: Challenges and Successes?

While reflecting upon a the article “Environment and Urbanization,” Debra Roberts analyzes the past, present, and future challenges facing the government of Durban. The challenges the city faces are significant, but the question I was left wondering was if the Durban government the way it is, is ready to face the issues specifically facing the city. On page 523 of the issue of environmental policy is specifically addressed, “simultaneous elevation and revision of both the environmental and development agendas has created a significant dilemma for local government.” Can Durban overcome this issue to enact effective environmental policy when they face implementation issues compounded by high unemployment, insufficiant housing, and high HIV/AIDS rates?

Several “positives” towards near-future implementation are addressed by Roberts. It is in this positive light that I see future government’s role enacting South Africa’s long-term development goals. Roberts addresses mainly the ideas of sustainable development practices beginning to take-off of recent in the city.

More specifically the example of the Imagine Durban coalition between Durban and 35 other cities on sustainability projects looks promising. This development seeks to make Durban more livable, promote sustainable development, and even addressing, social attitudes towards sustainable development. <http://www.imaginedurban.org/> In the coming years, this could be most interesting to watch succeed.

Secondly, the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) implementation, provides the funding to make these sustainable developments to occur. The CDM feeds into the governments feelings of pressure to develop, while simultaneously addressing climate change. This is a positive in the sense that South Africa is still competing to address the critical issues of developing economically to compete on the world market, and socially to overcome the old Apartheid attitudes. Typically, when issues of economy and social development are prevalent, clean development and environmental issues get pushed to the back-burner. Therefore, when South Africa is addressing sustainable development through CDM or other independent sustainability mechanisms, then this can be seen as a promising sign of the future environmental picture of Durban. This sign coupled with South Africa’s most progressive constitution, looks exceedingly bright for the city.

The final point of interest that suggests positive signs, is the Municipality Climate Protection Programme (MCPP). This specifically emphasizes Durban’s adaptation, not mitigation stance. The realization that infrastructure will be affected (including human health and flooding/water issues), is positive from a awareness level. The plan further addresses new guidelines for the implementation of such new infrastructure, covering everything from electricity, transport, food security and agriculture, and disaster risk reduction. This means that South Africa is attempting to “cover all their bases”—even if physical infrastructure can’t be put in place right away, at least the acknowlegement is there, and not many other cities (notably in the US) seem to acknowledge these developments as broadly as South Africa.

It is the financial and human resource availability that South Africa needs to address. This is the real challenge facing Durban. So while other countries may have the financial and human resources to deal with the climate challenges, Durban has the ideological mind-set to implement development in the future. Hopefully in the future, South Africa can combine increased resources, stronger government and politics, and their progressive development plans to tackle climate change. So far, it looks like South Africa has a real chance at this target.