Growth, Sustainability and Dematerialisation: Resource Use ... · 4.4 Water and Sanitation ... and...

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Growth, Sustainability and Dematerialisation:

Resource Use Options for South Africa 2019

Paper commissioned by the Presidency for presentation at the

Workshop on Scenarios for South Africa in 2019, July 2007.

Professor Mark Swilling

Sustainability Institute, School of Public Management and Planning

Stellenbosch University

Contents Executive Summary .............................................................................................................. 2

Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 7

1 Global Context ............................................................................................................. 8

2 Macro-Economic Policy vs Section 24 (b) of the Constitution ................................. 12

3 Sustainable Resource Use as a ‘Binding Constraint’ ................................................ 16

4 Natural Resources and Eco-System Services: Trends, Risks and Opportunities .... 18

4.1 Climate Change ................................................................................................... 19

4.2 Oil Resources ....................................................................................................... 24

4.3 Energy ................................................................................................................. 27

4.4 Water and Sanitation .......................................................................................... 32

4.5 Solid Waste .......................................................................................................... 38

4.6 Soils ...................................................................................................................... 43

4.7 Biodiversity.......................................................................................................... 48

4.8 Coastal and Marine Environment ...................................................................... 51

4.9 Air quality ........................................................................................................... 54

4.10 Summary and Conclusion ............................................................................... 61

5 Sustainability, Micro-Economics and the National Infrastructure Programme ..... 61

5.1 Micro-Economic Reform Strategy (MERS): Summary Overview .................... 61

5.2 Spatial planning: NSDP and IDPs ...................................................................... 63

5.3 Rethinking the National Infrastructure Investment Programme ..................... 64

5.4 A Sustainability Perspective on Short-Term Risks and Opportunities ............ 67

List of References ............................................................................................................... 70

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Executive Summary

It will be argued in this paper that it is highly unlikely that South Africa will achieve its

growth targets for 2014 and beyond because our various macro-economic policy frameworks

have failed to identify our rapidly degrading natural resources and eco-system services as

„binding constraints‟. It will be demonstrated that we will only achieve the longer-term

growth targets set by various macro- and micro-economic policies if immediate steps are

taken to „dematerialise‟ the nature of economic growth in South Africa.

It will also be argued that South Africa‟s national infrastructure investment programme -

which is the cornerstone of our long-term growth strategy - offers a unique opportunity to

make a choice between sustainable and unsustainable growth strategies.

Seven globally significant mainstream documents, plus a key website, will in one way or

another shape the way our generation sees the world that we need to change. They are as

follows:

Global warming: the broadly accepted reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change (IPCC) confirm that global warming is taking place due to release into the

atmosphere of greenhouse gases caused by amongst other things the burning of fossil

fuels, and that this is going to lead to major socio-economic changes (IPCC, 2001).

Eco-system degradation: the United Nations Millennium Eco-System Assessment

compiled by 1360 scientists from 95 countries and released in 2005 (with virtually no

impact beyond the environmental sciences) has confirmed for the first time that 60% of

the eco-systems that human systems depend on for survival are degraded (Millenium

Ecosystem Assessment, 2005).

Inequality: According to the United Nations Human Development Report for 1998, 20%

of the global population who live in the richest countries account for 86% of total private

consumption expenditure, whereas the poorest 20% account for 1.3% (United Nations

Development Programme, 1998).

Oil peak: although there is still some dispute over whether we have hit peak oil

production or not (despite agreement that we are only finding one barrel of oil for every

four we consume), the fact remains that even the major oil companies now agree and

mount public campaigns to say that oil prices are going to rise and alternatives to oil must

be found sooner rather than later. Our cities are designed for systems that depend on

cheap oil and changing them will mean fundamentally rethinking the assumptions

underpinning nearly a century of urban planning dogma (see www.peakoil.net; Heinberg,

2003)

Urban majority: according to generally accepted reports of UN Population Statistics, the

majority (i.e. just over 50%) of the world‟s population is now officially living in urban

areas, but that over 60% of this urban population live in small cities (less than 1 million

people) and that this is more than likely going to continue (United Nations, 2004);

Planet of slums: according to the UN Habitat Report entitled The Challenge of Slums,

one billion of the six billion people who live on the planet live in slums, or put differently

http://www.peakoil.net/

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one third of the world‟s total urban population (rising to over 75% in the least developed

countries) live in slums (United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2003);

Food insecurity: according to the World Resources Institute Report for 2002-2004 , 65%

of global agricultural soils show signs of soil degradation and that this has already started

to undermine the $1,3 trillion global agricultural industry (World Resources Institute,

2002) that is supposed to feed a population that will grow from 6 billion in 2005 to 8

billion by 2030.

Can South Africa really afford to subsidise inefficient and unsustainable systems and

simultaneously generate the funds required to eradicate poverty and compete with economies

that are dematerialising their consumption and production systems? Contrary to what most

development economists think, the depleted resource base is such that we can no longer first

eradicate poverty and then „clean up the environment‟. This much was a key finding of 1360

scientists from 95 countries who wrote the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment report for the

Secretary-General of the United Nations (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005) and

constitutes the most profound challenge to the development economics discipline since at

least post-WWII Reconstruction.

It is clear from both the ASGI-SA and NIPF documents that natural resources and eco-system

services provided by natural systems within which socio-economic systems are embedded are

simply assumed to be intact and durable. They are not identified as a „binding constraint‟

which means no action is required to prevent further degradation, and a viable set of eco-

systems and long-term supply of natural resources is not regarded as a pre-condition for

successful industrialisation.

In summary, there is broad consensus that there are two economic and social challenges for

the second decade of democracy:

how to boost growth to 6% and to make sure that there is a more equitable distribution of

economic wealth;

how to eradicate poverty, with special reference to the Millenium Development Goals

(MDGs).

The sustainability perspective means recognising there is now a third challenge:

how to decouple growth rates and poverty eradication from rising levels of natural

resource use and waste (commonly referred to as „dematerialisation‟).

The bulk of the paper is devoted to a contextual description plus a risks and opportunities

analysis for each of the following natural resources/eco-system services:

Climate Change

Oil Supplies

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Energy

Water and Sanitation

Solid Waste

Soils

Biodiversity

Coastal and marine physical environment

Coastal and marine living resources

Air quality

Each resource will be discussed from three perspectives. The first – called Trendlines - will

be the general current trends and possible future implications from the perspective of the

present. It will be demonstrated that in each case there are specific effects that can potentially

undermine economic growth. The Trendlines section is then followed by two sections that

construct an analysis from the perspective of 2019, i.e. a „looking back‟ perspective. This so-

called „backcasting‟ approach is increasingly used as an alternative to scenario building

because the latter tries to „look forward‟ and anticipate what could happen rather than work

backwards from a desired end-state. Within the emerging field of „sustainability science‟ this

can be problematic because the forward projections remain rooted in the paradigms of the

present. Given the extent of the global crisis of unsustainable resource use, it is now

necessary to imagine the future by assuming certain ecological thresholds cannot be breached

if we want to sustain the conditions for human life. Accordingly, the Trendlines section is

followed by a section called Risks to 2019 written from a 2019 perspective – this is a rough

and general assessment of the outcomes of a „business-as-usual‟ scenario projected into 2019.

After this, a section called Opportunities by 2019 also written from a 2019 perspective

describes what will have occurred if effective design and forward planning is merged with -

and informed by - a strong sustainable resource use value system and mode of analysis. The

advantage of writing back from a 2019 perspective is that the risk of capture by the

paradigms of the present is reduced.

The analysis confirms that thresholds are now being reached which if ignored will generate

dysfunctional economic costs that will undermine investments in growth and poverty

eradication. The question that must now be addressed is whether our national infrastructure

investment programme could be oriented in way that will lead towards more sustainable

outcomes by 2019.

This review of the main trends, risks and opportunities in the key strategic resource sectors

reinforces the assumption that South Africa has a rich endowment of natural resources, but it

also reveals that it is no longer possible to take this endowment for granted. It is clear that we

are rapidly using up our natural resources as we pursue growth and seek to eradicate poverty.

These natural resources are not simply primary physical resources such as water, coal, fish

and soils, but also natural resources that can be degraded, i.e. air quality, water systems

(rivers, dams, acquifers, etc), biodiversity systems, and marine systems. Growth and poverty

eradication strategies are not decoupling from unsustainable natural resource use and

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exploitation. To this extent, our transition has not broken away from the natural resource

exploitation model put in place by colonial conquest and refined during the apartheid era.

However, it is also clear that technologies and practices exist that open up opportunities for

decoupling unsustainable resource use from growth and poverty eradication strategies.

Based on the analysis, below is a list of perfectly feasible and affordable 2019 outcomes

using some of the headings of the ASGI-SA priority investment focus areas:1

Electricity:

Energy Efficiency: after boosting the size of the Demand-Side Management

(DSM) fund, removing it from ESKOM control and establishing an efficient

decision-making system, energy efficiency of the average commercial and

industrial building increased by 20% compared to 2007 levels, and the efficiency

of the average household increased by 30%;

Renewable Energy: 70% of the energy required by 2019 is provided by coal-fired

power stations using clean coal technologies (funded in large part using CDM

funds), hydrogen storage and transportation, and nuclear power, while the

remainder is supplied from large-scale wind, solar, wave and biomass plants;

Solar roof tops: given that grid-connected solar roof tops (constructed using solar

roof tiles) can generate more than the house can consume, one million new houses

are constructed in this way by 2019 funded partly by the owner and partly with

funds that would have been invested in new generation;

Special deals aimed at supply cheap subsidized electricity to large-scale

agricultural, commercial and industrial users is terminated.

Water and sanitation:

instead of building more dams, a major switch to sustainable ground water

exploitation and management (including storage and acquifer replenishment) will

have taken place;

the national water efficiency campaign gets backed up with investments that

reduce the loss of water from leakages from 40% in certain areas in 2007 to 10%

by 2019;

the combined impact of investments in leak reduction, enforcement via municipal

bye-laws of the use of water efficient household fittings, grey water recycling and

rainwater harvesting has reduced average consumption of water by domestic

households by 40% compared to 2007 levels;

instead of building more centralised sewerage treatment plants, a new generation

of neighbourhood-level plants are built that recycle grey water back into the

buildings for toilet flushing, capture methane gas for energy generation, and they

capture the nutrients for re-use in food production and greening.

1 . These projections are informed by the preliminary results of a multi-year sustainable infrastructure future

modeling research project coordinated by the author on behalf of the City of Cape Town, with funding from

UNDP. For the results from the first phase see Swilling (2006).

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Transport and logistics:

Massive investments in urban public transportation systems will have succeeded

by 2019 in breaking the tyranny of the private car culture, with special reference

to Bus-Rail-Transit (BRT) systems;

Long distance freight transport will be predominantly via rail; and

the dependence of the transport sector on imported oil will be broken, with a

major shift to the electric motor vehicle, the use of hydrogen and the use of

ecologically sustainable biofuels.

Housing:

By 2019 the process of locating low density sprawled out housing on the urban

peripheries resulting in massive escalations in transport subsidies and reduced

access to economic opportunity will have been reversed. At the same time, the

housing backlog will have been eliminated. This will have been achieved via

massive investments that resulted in the restructuring of property, land and

housing markets in favour of the poor, and in particular the location of the urban

poor much closer to the centres of employment.

By 2019 the populations of the major metropolitan areas will have increased

considerably in size, but the geographical extent of these metropolitan areas will

be the same as they were in 2007. This will have been achieved by massive

increases in densities, from the current average of 15 – 20 dwelling units per

hectare to 35 – 45 dwelling units per hectare. This will entail smaller plots sizes,

multi-story living, and neighbourhood designs that minimise the need for private

vehicle transportation.

Finally, all local governments had implemented by 2019 a set of bye-laws

modelled on the German „green house‟ regulations that made it compulsory for all

building plans to incorporate a standard set of design features, i.e. correct north-

south orientations, insulation, solar hot water heating, maximum cement content

level, elimination of toxic building materials responsible for sick building

syndrome, appropriate natural ventilation, appropriate use of natural lighting,

correct wall thickness, a rainwater harvesting system, and appropriate electricity

and water efficiency appliances.

Social instructure to support safety and justice, revitalising public schools and hospitals,

nutrition and healthy lifestyles, feeding schemes, HIV/AIDS and other communicable

diseases:

The publicly funded buildings that make up the social infrastructure will be built

in accordance with the highest standards of ecological design, i.e. correct north-




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LED infrastructure:

The LED Framework for South Africa developed for public comment in 2006 by

the Department of Provincial and Local Government provides for a set of

institutional arrangements for sustainable community development that are a

radical break from the neo-liberal orthodoxy of competing cities. Based on

substantial public sector investments to support the development of these

institutions, by 2019 numerous metropolitan and secondary cities had

implemented successful LED strategies that contributed significantly to the

overall achievement of the national growth targets.

Introduction

It will be argued in this paper that it is highly unlikely that South Africa will achieve its

growth targets for 2014 and beyond because our various macro-economic policy frameworks

have failed to identify our rapidly degrading natural resources and eco-system services as

„binding constraints‟. It will be demonstrated that we will only achieve the longer-term

growth targets set by various macro- and micro-economic policies if immediate steps are

taken to „dematerialise‟ the nature of economic growth in South Africa. „Dematerialisation‟ is

the essence of sustainable development – as will be explained later on, it means increasing

the average GDP per capita while simultaneously reducing the economy‟s total material

requirements per capita. It is a concept that makes it possible to define natural resources and

eco-systems as „binding constraints‟, and it therefore also suggests the solutions that can be

applied. This will require policy frameworks and interventions that are currently absent in our

economic policy documents and ignored by South Africa‟s economic policy makers. Except

for the National Framework for Sustainable Development policy framework that was

published for comment by DEAT in November 2006 (but at the time of writing [May 2007]

had not been adopted), our development policies are out of line with economic and

sustainable resource use thinking that is rapidly becoming mainstream amongst many of our

trading partners and competitors, especially since the publication of the Stern Report (Stern).

If we continue with our current approach, by 2019 South Africa will have built a carbon-

intensive resource inefficient economic infrastructure that will drastically undermine our

capacity to participate effectively in the global economy and eradicate poverty.

It will also be argued that South Africa‟s national infrastructure investment programme -

which is the cornerstone of our long-term growth strategy - offers a unique opportunity to

make a choice between sustainable and unsustainable growth strategies. It is generally

accepted across the developed and developing world that large-scale public investments in

national infrastructure as catalysts for future (largely urban-centred) economic growth tend to

take place periodically rather than continuously and that these periods (quite often separated

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by decades rather than years) are marked by particularly intense clustered investments across

a range of infrastructures (water and sanitation, transport, energy, harbours, waste, roads,

etc); high levels of public investment (often including extensive internal and external debt)

with significant multiplier effects; and outcomes that create a platform for a particular pattern

of (intended and unintended) economic and spatial developments over the medium- to long-

term. These periods of intensive investment in new infrastructure should, therefore, be

carefully planned with at least a two or three decade forward planning horizon in mind. These

periods of intensive infrastructure investment are therefore key opportunities for determining

the future course of events. With 2019 in mind, the big question is whether our national

infrastructure investment programme has been appropriately conceived and coordinated to

ensure that economic growth rates are decoupled from resource consumption rates so that

over time we prepare for a sustainable rather than an unsustainable future.

There are indications that at least two key Ministers are implicitly aware of the challenges we

face, both of whom used their Budget Speeches in Parliament in 2007 to announce significant

dematerialisation campaigns. The Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry announced the

launch of a National Water-Wise Campaign and the Minister of Minerals and Energy

announced that by October 2007 legislation will be tabled to enforce much greater energy

efficiency in households and businesses. These may be small steps, but they reflect the fact

that the material reality of looming resource thresholds has started to register in key policy

circles. The challenge is whether these small steps can translate into giant strides quickly

enough to catapult South Africa from a „sustainability lagger‟ to a „sustainability leader‟ in

the techno-economic peloton that is driving global dematerialisation.

1 Global Context

In 1987 the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) published a

report entitled Our Common Future (World Commission on Environment and Development,

1987). More commonly known as the Brundtland Commission after it‟s leader Gro Harlem

Brundtland, it was this report that attempted to reconcile the ecological limits to growth

articulated by the Northern green movement since the early 1970s and the need for growth to

eliminate poverty as articulated by Southern developing country governments (for overviews

see Mebratu, 1998; Dresner, 2002), quite a number of whom had recently broken free from

colonial control. This extremely influential report provided the strategic foundation for the

1992 Earth Summit in Rio, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) that

took place in Johannesburg in 2002, and numerous international sectoral policy conferences

over the thirty years 1972-2002 (UNEP). It was both a product of and catalyst for the

construction of an elaborate multi-lateral governance system for building and implementing

sustainable development on a global scale. Since the release of Our Common Future, we have

learnt a lot more about the challenges we face: numerous crises that were predicted years ago

have materialised and many nations across the world are being forced to respond, but in

reality very little has been done to address this „polycrisis‟ (Sneddon, Howarth, & Norgaard,

2006).

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Seven globally significant mainstream documents, plus a key website, will in one way or

another shape the way our generation sees the world that we need to change. They are as

follows:

Global warming: the broadly accepted reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

Change (IPCC) confirm that global warming is taking place due to release into the

atmosphere of greenhouse gases caused by amongst other things the burning of fossil

fuels, and that this is going to lead to major socio-economic changes (IPCC, 2001).

Eco-system degradation: the United Nations Millennium Eco-System Assessment

compiled by 1360 scientists from 95 countries and released in 2005 (with virtually no

impact beyond the environmental sciences) has confirmed for the first time that 60% of

the eco-systems that human systems depend on for survival are degraded (Millenium

Ecosystem Assessment, 2005).

Inequality: According to the United Nations Human Development Report for 1998, 20%

of the global population who live in the richest countries account for 86% of total private

consumption expenditure, whereas the poorest 20% account for 1.3% (United Nations

Development Programme, 1998).

Oil peak: although there is still some dispute over whether we have hit peak oil

production or not (despite agreement that we are only finding one barrel of oil for every

four we consume), the fact remains that even the major oil companies now agree and

mount public campaigns to say that oil prices are going to rise and alternatives to oil must

be found sooner rather than later. Our cities are designed for systems that depend on

cheap oil and changing them will mean fundamentally rethinking the assumptions

underpinning nearly a century of urban planning dogma (see www.peakoil.net; Heinberg,

2003)

Urban majority: according to generally accepted reports of UN Population Statistics, the

majority (i.e. just over 50%) of the world‟s population is now officially living in urban

areas, but that over 60% of this urban population live in small cities (less than 1 million

people) and that this is more than likely going to continue (United Nations, 2004);

Planet of slums: according to the UN Habitat Report entitled The Challenge of Slums,

one billion of the six billion people who live on the planet live in slums, or put differently

one third of the world‟s total urban population (rising to over 75% in the least developed

countries) live in slums (United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2003);

Food insecurity: according to the World Resources Institute Report for 2002-2004 , 65%

of global agricultural soils show signs of soil degradation and that this has already started

to undermine the $1,3 trillion global agricultural industry (World Resources Institute,

2002) that is supposed to feed a population that will grow from 6 billion in 2005 to 8

billion by 2030.

Assembled together, the above trends combine to conjure up a picture of a highly unequal

rapidly urbanising world connected to eco-system services that are degrading at alarming

rates, with looming threats triggered by climate change, high oil prices and food insecurities.

This is what the mainstream literature on unsustainable development is worried about. This is


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the growing shadow of modernity that has been denied for so long, in particular by those in

the developing world who equate development with material modernisation.

After all is said and done and all the verbiage put aside, the challenge of sustainable

development in the current global conjuncture is about eradicating poverty once and for all,

and doing this in a way that rebuilds the eco-systems and natural resources that we depend on

for our collective survival as a species. In practice, the challenge of sustainability will be

faced in the mushrooming cities of the developing world where the realities of daily life and

urban governance are profoundly different to the realities that the world‟s over-consumers

assume to be the norm that all should aspire to achieve. Cities may well provide the spatial

context for imagining and institutionalising new cultural frameworks for more sustainable

living. This may sound simple and logical and some might well disagree, but in reality it will

entail a profound transformation of our understanding of development which, in turn, directly

challenges the existing structures of political and economic power. Sustainability challenges

the way the city is imagined by the design professions and it also challenges the existing

circuits of capital that drive the production and operation of the urban system (from the way

the built environment is constructed, through to the way it is spatially distributed, traded,

lived and travelled) .

The simplest way to understand the tension between ecological limits and the aspiration to

modernity is that if poverty is to be eradicated via a development strategy that promises

everyone that they can all live like the (city-based) global middle class which comprises

approximately 20% of the population (about 1 billion people) but consumes over 80% of

extracted and manufactured resources, there will simply not be sufficient material

(ecologically constituted) resources available to make this happen2. Ironically, the financial

resources to eradicate poverty are available, but if this is done in old ways, it is the ecological

limits created by unequal consumption that will prevent a poverty eradication agenda from

succeeding. Human needs have expanded while the eco-systems we depend on have

remained formally finite and are in the process of being substantively eroded. As leading

thinkers in the Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean currently argue, the

only way poverty eradication can be achieved is if we radically decouple economic growth

rates (Read: growth in GDP per capita) from the rate of consumption of primary resources

and eco-system services (Gallopin, 2003). This is what is referred to as “dematerialisation”

or, in more popular terms, reduction in the size of our average “ecological footprint”

(Wackernagle & Rees, 2004). What Gallopin calls non-material economic growth is now

technically possible: entire cities can now meet all their material needs by re-using all their

solid and liquid wastes, using renewable energy instead of burning fossil fuels to meet at least

50% of their energy requirements (Monbiot, 2006), renewing rather than degrading soils for

food production, cleaning rather than polluting the air, preserving instead of cutting down

forests and natural vegetation, under- and not over-exploiting water supplies, and conserving

instead of killing off other living species (in particular marine species). If it is technically

2 . This statement is a generalized interpretation of the figures referred to at the outset of the chapter from the

1998 Human Development Report.

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possible, what‟s left is to make the necessary policy and financial decisions. However, it

would be naïve to ignore the fact that this will cut across the way most production and

consumption systems are currently configured. This, in turn, means that sustainability - and

dematerialization in particular - will more than likely be opposed by some of the most

powerful economic stakeholders obsessed with short-term financial gains rather than long-

term system viability and durability. The role of General Motors in suppressing the

commercialisation of the electric car has become the contemporary iconic story of the tension

between long-term public interest and the short-term profits of the most powerful institutions

in the global economy.

The Wupperthal Institute in Germany is a renowned sustainable economics think tank and

producer of the highly influential best seller Greening the North (Sachs, 2002). Below is a

remarkable Table produced by this Institute that summarizes research into the relationship

between GDP growth per capita against Total Material Requirements (TMR)3 per capita over

specific periods of time for several developed economies plus China and Poland. What this

Table graphically reveals is that the relationship between GDP growth per capita and

TMR/capita is not fixed but is, rather, highly contingent and dependent on the nexus between

policy choices, technology and economic structure. China, for example, adopted in 2005 the

notion of a „circular economy‟ as the cornerstone of its national economy policy because it

has realised that GDP growth per capita will be undermined if TMR/capita growth continues

at current rates – the Chinese realise there are simply insufficient resources available in the

world to sustain material-intensive economic growth for such a large economy. The USA

responded to the oil crisis in 1973 with massive investments in efficiencies that

fundamentally changed the long-term relationship between TMR/capita and GDP

growth/capita – a precedent that some have sued to say that the world‟s biggest over-

consumers can do it again without giving up their middle class life styles (Lovins, Datta,

Bustnes, & Koomey, 2005). Similarly in Germany, the policy influence of the Green Party in

Government during the 1990s has resulted in quite dramatic investments in dematerialisation

in the energy sector in particular (solar, wind), but also in building design, land-use and food

production (subsidies to promote organic farming). Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet

Union probably represents the most dramatic, far-reaching and systemic example of

dematerialisation across many sectors, in particular food, transport and energy. Japan would

not have been able to achieve such remarkable levels in GDP growth per capita without

substantial investments in dematerialisation. In short, context matters and in each case there

is a specific story of a relationship between TMR growth/capita and GDP growth/capita

mediated by a matrix of policy decisions, institutional arrangements and financial flows.

3 . Total Material Requirements refers to the total quantity of primary resources consumed divided by the size of

the population – this includes energy, water, food, building materials, forest products, etc.

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Can South Africa really afford to subsidise inefficient and unsustainable systems and

simultaneously generate the funds required to eradicate poverty and compete with economies

that are dematerialising their consumption and production systems? Contrary to what most

development economists think, the depleted resource base is such that we can no longer first

eradicate poverty and then „clean up the environment‟. This much was a key finding of 1360

scientists from 95 countries who wrote the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment report for the

Secretary-General of the United Nations (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005) and

constitutes the most profound challenge to the development economics discipline since at

least post-War Reconstruction. Nor is there much sense in the neo-liberal resource economics

argument which tries to suggest that the poor benefit from unsustainable resource use by the

rich because this is what drives global growth (and trickle down), and that as scarcities kick

in, the market will trigger demand for more sustainable production and consumption systems.

The alternative perspective sees sustainable resource use as a precondition for poverty

eradication. This will mean dealing with inequality which is the root cause of poverty and, in

particular, the economic and political power structures that reproduce these inequalities.

Over-consumers will have to cut back and be satisfied with sufficient to meet their needs, and

the savings this generates will be needed to ensure that poverty is entirely eradicated by

making available infrastructures, services and goods that have been produced and consumed

in accordance with efficient and sustainable resource use approaches. The call for

„sufficiency‟ seems to capture what this means – or to use a slogan used by the South African

Government‟s Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, “some for all forever”. This is very

different to the current global consumerist culture which can be depicted as “all for some for

now”.

2 Macro-Economic Policy vs Section 24 (b) of the Constitution

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It is common cause that South Africa‟s GDP grew at an average of 3% per annum between

1994 and 2003, and at 4.5% since 2004. At the same time, the tradable sectors (agriculture,

mining and manufacturing) declined from 32% to 28% of GDP between 1994 and 2005;

while private non-tradable sectors (financial services, construction, trade, catering and

accommodation, transport, communications and other private services) grew from 47% to

56% of GDP for the same period. Expanding domestic household consumption (supported by

rising local debt levels for the richer households and state welfare expenditures for the poorer

households) has been the driving force of this growth, with strong global commodity prices

(driven by Indian and Chinese demand) in the latter years also making a significant

contribution. As consumption starts to level out as household debt starts to hit saturation

point, South Africa must find other economic drivers if it wants to hit the target of an average

growth rate of 6% between 2010 and 2014.

In line with the ideological shift in 2002 towards the „developmental state‟ approach,

economic policy makers hope that public sector infrastructure investments plus targeted state-

facilitated industrial sector strategies will create a new platform for sustained economic

growth rates (Swilling, Forthcoming). Fortunately, the 2002 break from the crude neo-liberal

economic policies of the Washington Consensus has resulted over the past three years in the

emergence in economic policy documents of a far more nuanced and contextual analysis of

the South African economy. Instead of the neo-liberal emphasis on „getting the prices right‟,

the focus is now on specific „binding constraints‟ that must be dealt with via concerted state-

coordinated action, including institutional change, targeted regulation, strategic policy-driven

public investments, and other interventions that run contrary to traditional neo-liberal

prescriptions.

The ASGI-SA framework lists the following „binding constraints‟ and associated

„interventions‟:

Currency volatility. Intervention: macro-economic policies and strategies to stabilize the

currency, target inflation, improve fiscal expenditures, increase investment component of

the budget.

Cost, efficiency and capacity of the logistics and transport system. Intervention:

infrastructure investment programme.

Shortage of skilled labour. Intervention: skills development strategies.

Barriers to entry and limits to competition. Intervention: „2nd

economy‟ interventions.

Regulatory environment. Intervention: governance and institutional capacity.

State capacity. Intervention: governance and service delivery improvements.

The National Industrial Policy Framework (NIPF) lists four pre-conditions for effective

industrialisation via industrial sector interventions:

a stable and supportive macro-economic regulatory environment;

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an adequate supply of skilled labour supported by an appropriate educational

infrastructure;

the existence of traditional and modern infrastructure: traditional infrastructure includes

transport, electricity, water; and modern infrastructure refers to wireless, satellite,

broadband, fixed line and mobile telecommunication networks;

innovation capabilities to foster the development of domestic technologies and systems.

It is clear from both the ASGI-SA and NIPF documents that natural resources and eco-system

services provided by natural systems within which socio-economic systems are embedded are

simply assumed to be intact and durable. They are not identified as a „binding constraint‟

which means no action is required to prevent further degradation, and a viable set of eco-

systems and long-term supply of natural resources is not regarded as a pre-condition for

successful industrialisation.

The only hint to the contrary appears in a comprehensive presentation dated June 2005 by the

National Treasury entitled Accelerating Economic Growth – A Diagnostic Scan where it is

argued that there were “six critical issues” that needed to be addressed to ensure the

acceleration of growth, one of which was “inefficient urban landscape & under-development

of low-income residential areas”. However, this important point which acknowledges the

inefficient use of space and related transport-generated resource use issues (e.g. dependence

on imported oil, emissions, costly road space, distances that eat into productive time,

congestion, road accident costs, etc) never appeared again in subsequent more formal

economic policy documents.

Our macro-economic policy documents make no reference to Section 24 (b) of the

Constitution which refers to the need to “secure ecologically sustainable development and use

of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development.” Maybe

someone should ask the Constitutional Court to rule on whether our macro-economic policies

comply with the Constitution?

Section 24 (b) of the Constitution is, however, the point of departure for the National

Framework for Sustainable Development (NFSD) published for public comment by the

Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism in late 2006. The problem statement

identified in this document is as follows: “We have in general pursued economic growth and

social development strategies that have often conflicted with a wide array of sophisticated

natural resource management strategies. This has led to an increasing stress on our

environmental systems and natural resources. South Africa‟s abundant natural wealth has led

to the assumption that all economic growth must of necessity consume more materials, eco-

system services, and energy. We continue to behave in a manner that assumes that resources

such as water, energy, minerals, plant and animal products and air quality will constantly be

available no matter how we live, produce and consume.” It proceeds to map out a vision and

“pathways” to a more sustainable future. The vision statement is as follows:

15

“South Africa aspires to be a sustainable, economically prosperous and self-reliant

nation state that safeguards its democracy by meeting the fundamental human needs

of its people, by managing its limited ecological resources responsibly for current and

future generations, and by advancing efficient and effective integrated planning and

governance through national, regional and global collaboration.”

The five “pathways” are as follows:

enhancing systems for integrated planning and implementation

sustaining our ecosystems and using resources sustainably

investing in sustainable economic development and infrastructure

creating sustainable human settlements

responding appropriately to emerging human development, economic and environmental

challenges.

Unfortunately, the NFSD has not as yet been adopted as policy [August 2007] thus exposing

the Government to criticism from powerful players in the global and local context

In April 2006 the National Treasury published for comment a remarkable document entitled

A Framework for Considering Market-Based Instruments to Support Environmental Fiscal

Reform in South Africa. The very first paragraph of the Executive Summary echoes the

NFSD:

“Sustainable development is about enhancing human well-being over time and

managing a broad portfolio of economic, social and environmental assets that society

has at its disposal in order to sustain a flow of consumption. As the South African

economy continues to develop, it is increasingly important to ensure that it does so in

a sustainable way and that, at the same time, issues of poverty and inequality are

effectively addressed. It is, therefore, important to appreciate that it’s not just the

quantity of growth that matters, but also its quality.” (emphasis in the original)

(Republic of South Africa. National Treasury, 2006)

The National Treasury document proceeds to argue that an “environmental tax is a tax on an

environmentally-harmful tax base” ( (Republic of South Africa. National Treasury, 2006: ii

emphasis in original). The “environmental taxes” that the report examines are the transport

fuel levies (General Fuel Levy, Road Accident Fund Levy, Equalisation Fund Levy, Customs

and Excise Levy); Vehicle Taxation (Ad Valorem Customs and and Excise Duty, Road

Licensing Fees); Aviation Taxes (Aviation Fuel Levy, Airport Charges, Air Passenger

Departure Tax); Product Taxes (Plastic shopping bags levy); Electricy (NER Electricity

Levy; Local Government Electricity Surplus); Water (Water Resource Management Charge,

Water Resource Development and use of Water Works Charge, Water Research Fund Levy),

Waste Water (Waste Water Discharge Charge System - proposed). What is not addressed

specifically are activities that have harmful environmental effects that are effectively

16

incentivised, for example chemical fertilizers and pesticides used by farmers are Vat-free.

Nevertheless, what is remarkable is that together the above mentioned tax instruments

account for approximately 2 per cent of GDP and just under 10 per cent of total tax revenue

(of which the general fuel levy accounts for 70%). The Report proceeds to argue that in light

of the sustainable development challenge, tax shifting is required that so that the taxes levied

on “bads” (such as pollution) can be increased and the taxes on “goods” (such as labour) can

be reduced. This, the report argues, is the “double-dividend hypothesis” – “minimising the

burden of environmentally-related taxes on the affected sectors, whilst creating the required

behavioural incentives to achieve certain environmental outcomes” (Republic of South

Africa. National Treasury, 2006:v). This effectively means that taxes from unsustainable

practices should increase, and re-invested in more sustainable practices. This is why tax

instruments are probably the most significant instrument for promoting dematerialisation.

In support of the basic logic of the NFSD, the next section will demonstrate why it is

necessary to bring our macro-economic policies into line with Section 24(b) of the

Constitution. Many of South Africa‟s leading scientists have for some time been saying that

economic growth policies are premised on incorrect assumptions about the health and

durability of our natural resources and eco-system services. Aligning economic policy with

Section 24 (b) of the Constitution is not simply about preserving the environment. As other

countries have experienced, it is also about preventing wasteful expenditures on avoidable

system failures. Furthermore, it can also be about the creation of new opportunities for

driving non-material forms of growth that improve quality of life for all, forever.

3 Sustainable Resource Use as a ‘Binding Constraint’

To date, economic growth and social development strategies have been pursued in parallel to

natural resource use management strategies. Natural resources such as water, energy,

minerals, wood and air quality are regarded as naturally available inputs that can be taken for

granted; or natural resources such as rivers, seas, land and air are seen as sinks for depositing

solid, liquid and airborne wastes. South Africa‟s abundant natural wealth has led to the

assumption that all economic growth can be equated to material economic growth. The result

is that as per capita consumption rises, so do the major indicators of material consumption

growth and unproductive waste outputs. For example, with steady economic growth over the

past decade, there has been:

rising electrical power consumption per capita (currently at around 3860 KWh);

rising freshwater consumption per capita;

rising CO2 emissions per capita (currently at 7.4 metric tons);

rising food consumption per capita while soil productivity declines via nutrient

destruction, erosion and urbanisation;

rising demand for increasingly costly oil supplies without an increase in the

production of alternative renewable fuels (such as biodiesel, or bioethanol, etc);

17

increasing rather than decreasing the average distance travelled between home and

work each day; and

faster growth of municipal solid waste than the average economic growth rate, now

around 2 kg per person which is 3 to 4 times higher than many European cities.

However, we know that poverty increased between 1994 and about 2001/2 which means

rising resource consumption and waste is more than likely distributed in highly inequitable

ways across classes and races. Technologies exist to counteract the above trends, for example

to reduce electricity consumption while increasing the use of energy; reducing freshwater

consumption by reducing leakages and recycling waste water to re-use in households and

businesses; reducing waste to zero by recycling all solid wastes; promoting organic farming

to rejuvenate the soils and increase the productivity of marginal land; or far-reaching

measures to promote cleaner and more resource efficient production and consumption

systems. All these approaches are adopted by many other countries, some of them key

competitors. By not using these technologies, the economy will remain dependent on

inefficient and unsustainable resource use practices. Experience from many contexts tells us

that development strategies that depend on the acceleration of material economic growth will

hit increasingly costly resource constraints resulting in unsustainable development.

In summary, there is broad consensus that there are two economic and social challenges for

the second decade of democracy:

how to boost growth to 6% and to make sure that there is a more equitable distribution of

economic wealth;

how to eradicate poverty, with special reference to the Millenium Development Goals

(MDGs).

The sustainability perspective means recognising there is now a third challenge:

how to decouple growth rates and poverty eradication from rising levels of natural

resource use and waste (commonly referred to as „dematerialisation‟).

Two examples are used here to illustrate the argument. Firstly, it is generally recognised that

South Africa is squeezed between the high costs of much-needed mainly Western owned

technologies on the one hand, and cheap products manufactured in China and India on the

other. Unsurprisingly, we need to find niche markets that build on our unique conditions –

well, we have some of the best wind and solar power resources in the world. Germany is a

major exporter of solar systems and expertise, and it is cloudy most of the time in that

country. Why is this not a lead sector for innovation and investment?

Similarly, it is generally recognised now that inequality is a growth constraint because people

and entrepreneurs in poorer communities get cut off from information flows that are critical

for development. However, eco-systems such as soil quality and abundant marine life are

18

critical for the survival of millions of South Africans. If these systems collapse, then the

people they support will require jobs, welfare, and other forms of support. Why are we not

following countries like Germany, Cuba and India that have prioritised organic farming to

rejuvenate the soils? Why are we allowing the wholesale exploitation of marine resources by

mainly foreign-owned fishing companies to the detriment of local fishing communities?

A commitment to sustainability means accepting that if we fail to deal with the third

challenge, we will undermine the preconditions required for successfully dealing with the

first and second challenges. This is so because the financial disadvantages of an unsustainable

resource use approach start to outweigh advantages as certain eco-system thresholds are

breached. If all three challenges become the focus of attention of the developmental state, the

result will be sustainable shared and accelerated growth or, in short, authentic sustainable

development strategies that are appropriate for the South African context.

4 Natural Resources and Eco-System Services: Trends, Risks and Opportunities

Up to this point the phrase „natural resources and eco-system services‟ has been used. The

reason for this phrase is that the natural system within which socio-economic systems are

embedded provides two things - formal resources such as coal or fish which are extracted

and consumed; as well as functional systems such as air quality regulation that ensures we

have clean air to breathe or soil formation which ensures we can grow food to eat. Clean air

and healthy soils are resources, but they are primarily systems that need to function if we are

to survive as a species, i.e. they are resources if they function as living systems. When

systems are degraded and break down the knock-on effects ripple through all the systems

within which they are located. Ultimately, of course, coal and fish depend on wider systems –

billions of years of biomass decomposition in the case of coal, and the hugely complex

oceanic systems in the case of fish. However, resources like fish and coal can be extracted

from their wider host systems to the point where we talk about a resource that has been over-

exploited and has run out and must therefore be replaced with a substitute of some kind.

Whale oil is a good example of a resource that was over-exploited and needed to be replaced,

which is what happened. As already pointed out, there is now scientific consensus that 60%

of the eco-system services that we as a species depend on are degraded, including climate

regulation systems (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). Many of these systems,

however, are irreplaceable. This time it is the human species that will pay the price.

This section will provide a contextual description plus a risks and opportunities analysis for

each of the following natural resources/eco-system services4:

Climate Change (Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, 2005)

4 . This section is based primarily, but not exclusively, on the background research materials that were commissioned in

preparation for the writing up of the National Framework for Sustainable Development. The author was a member of the

research team. The materials were circulated publicly and most are available on the DEAT website. The commissioned

research papers are referenced in the list of key resources listed above. However, additional research was also integrated

where necessary. Because this section relies quite heavily on these papers, they are not specifically referenced. The

supporting research and backup references can be found in these commissioned papers.

19

Oil Supplies5

Energy (Agama Energy, 2005)

Water and Sanitation (Rowlston, 2005)

Solid Waste (Von Blottnitz, 2005)

Soils (Laker, 2005)

Biodiversity (Driver, Smith, & Maze, 2005)

Coastal and marine physical environment (Clark & Atkinson, 2005b)

Coastal and marine living resources (Clark & Atkinson, 2005a)

Air quality (Cairncross, 2005)

Each resource will be discussed from three perspectives. The first – called Trendlines - will

be the general current trends and possible future implications from the perspective of the

present. It will be demonstrated that in each case there are specific effects that can potentially

undermine economic growth. The Trendlines section is then followed by two sections that

construct an analysis from the perspective of 2019, i.e. a „looking back‟ perspective. This so-

called „backcasting‟ approach is increasingly used as an alternative to scenario building

because the latter tries to „look forward‟ and anticipate what could happen rather than work

backwards from a desired end-state. Within the emerging field of „sustainability science‟ this

can be problematic because the forward projections remain rooted in the paradigms of the

present. Given the extent of the global crisis of unsustainable resource use, it is now

necessary to imagine the future by assuming certain ecological thresholds cannot be breached

if we want to sustain the conditions for human life. Accordingly, the Trendlines section is

followed by a section called Risks to 2019 written from a 2019 perspective – this is a rough

and general assessment of the outcomoes of a „business-as-usual‟ scenario projected into

2019. After this, a section called Opportunities by 2019 also written from a 2019 perspective

describes what will have occurred if effective design and forward planning is merged with -

and informed by - a strong sustainable resource use value system and mode of analysis. The

advantage of writing back from a 2019 perspective is that the risk of capture by the

paradigms of the present is reduced.6

In a concluding section, it will be argued that it makes no sense for macro-economic policy to

ignore these factors, especially if they also represent significant opportunities for innovation

and growth. They are, therefore, a collective „binding constraint‟ that must be addressed by

our macro-economic policy and planning processes.

4.1 Climate Change

Trendline 2019

5 . A paper specifically on peak was not commissioned. However, the work by Jeremy Wakeford is acknowledged

(Wakeford, 2007). 6 . I would like to acknowledge that this approach was influenced by the What Next? journal published by the

Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation.

20

Using the Global Climate Models the following changes to the South African climate within

the next 50 years were predicted:

a continental warming of between 1 and 3°C;

broad reductions of approximately 5 to 10 % of current rainfall;

increased summer rainfall in the northeast and the southwest, but a reduction of the

duration of the summer rains in the northeast;

nominal increases in rainfall in the northeast during the winter season.

increased daily maximum temperatures in summer and autumn in the western half of

the country;

an extension of the summer season characteristics.

Carbon dioxide is the most significant greenhouse gas for South Africa. It contributed more

than 80 % of the total of the three greenhouse gas emissions for both 1990 and 1994. The

main source of carbon dioxide emissions was from the energy sector, which generated 89.7 %

of the total carbon dioxide emissions in 1990 and 91.1 % in 1994. The high level of

emissions from the energy sector relates to the high energy intensity of the South African

economy, which is dependent on large scale primary extraction and processing, particularly

in the mining and minerals beneficiation industries.

The total nitrous oxide emissions were 75 Gg and 67 Gg for the years 1990 and 1994,

respectively. The main contributor was the agricultural sector, which generated 77 % in 1990,

and 80 % in 1994 of the total nitrous oxide emissions. Road transportation contributed to

more than half of the transport sector emissions, which increased by approximately 36 %

between 1990 and 1994.

Although South Africa is still a developing economy, it‟s dependence on coal-driven energy

sources and the energy intensive nature of the economy has resulted in an extremely high

carbon emission level per unit of GDP compared to the rest of the world:

21

Although a separate study will discuss climate change in greater detail, the point here is that

South Africa‟s energy-intensive economy driven by cheap energy has consequences that will

start to generate rising costs as the global community escalates its efforts to slow down global

warming. Most independent analysts, however, are of the view that there is no way of

avoiding a massive global collapse – or more accurately a chain reaction of collapses - caused

by global warming. This could easily take place during the period leading up to 2019

resulting in South Africa being forced into global agreements that will force up energy prices

to incorporate the costs of CO2 sequestration and the diversification of energy generation (in

particular wind and solar which are acknowledged as the only viable long-term proven

alternatives7).

7 . Nuclear is a proven technology. But there is great uncertainty about the commercial viability of nuclear

power stations, including the still to be prove PBMR. Solar and wind power in their various manifestations are

proven technologies that are commercially viable. Together with major changes in patterns of energy use, the

bulk of evidence suggests that a post-oil world might require coal fired power stations to stabilize the grid (50%)

while rest can come from solar, wind, and biomass.

22

Finally, it is worth sounding a warning note about the global mainstream consensus on

climate change, championed in particular by Al Gore‟s An Inconvenient Truth and the Stern

Report on the economics of climate change commissioned by the UK Government and

released in 2006 (Stern, 2006). What is striking about this consensus is that it is based on

agreement that global warming is a major problem, but little is said about the solutions. This

does not mean these players have no solutions in mind – it simply means they prefer to

emphasize the problem because the solution is at this stage unpalatable for various reasons.

There is substantial evidence that the solutions being thought of are grand highly costly

techno-fixes aimed at geo-reengineering the planet underwritten by the 1% of global GDP

that the Stern Report says is required to finance the solution. These techno-fixes will involve

combinations of nanotechnologies, biotechnologies and bio-informatics which in recent years

have started to merge into powerful integrated tools. If these experiments go wrong, toxic

environments could emerge with genocidal consequences.

Risks by 2019

If current trendlines in climate change continue largely unchanged over the decade leading up

to 2019, this will mean that by 2019:

rainfall patterns will have changed, causing severe water scarcities in certain areas, and

water surpluses in others with related pressures on stormwater drainage capacity;

intensified hurricanes and storm surges that will cause on a greater scale the kind of

damage recently experienced by the KwaZulu-Natal coastline;

temperature increases could enlarge the area prone to malaria and other insect-carried

deseases;

maize and wheat production could be affected by 10-20% by temperature changes either

way;

higher CO2 levels could reduce proteins in grasslands in livestock producing areas, in

particular in poorer drier parts of the country;

fisheries will be affected by changes in the sea temperature thus negatively affecting the

livelihoods of fishing communities;

the Cape floral kingdom could be significantly reduced, with major negative implications

for tourism;

a global corporate techno-fix to geo-reengineer the planet to the benefit of the richer

countries.

Opportunities by 2019

In response to key trendlines that made it clear that climate change is going to fundamental

change key aspect of South Africa‟s eco-systems and natural resource base, the Government

initiated a range of sustainable resource use interventions that created new opportunities by

2019, including:

23

rising awareness of climate change and therefore the need to find more sustainable

production and consumption processes, in particular in the energy sector;

financial benefits of the CDM mechanism, in particular after the USA and China sign the

Kyoto Protocol because this will generate huge flows of funds for investments in low

carbon infrastructure in South Africa8;

gradual shift towards more robust farming methods such as organic farming to build soil

quality and the biological resilience of local eco-systems to respond to change;

active support by Government and South African-based global corporations at the

international level for measures to counter-act climate change, with evidence that

suggests that the corporate sector is ahead of government when it comes to awareness of

the need for viable climate change response strategies.

8 . I say this despite the well documented fundamental problems with the CDM mechanism, including the fact

that it favors the rich and therefore entrenches existing global inequalities, it will make very little difference

given the minimalist nature of the reduction targets, and the highly bureaucratized process of application and

award. Nevertheless, the Kyoto Protocol predates the scientific consensus on global warming, and is thus at least

a recognition that there is a problem. But like most solutions generated by the North, they favour the North.

24

4.2 Oil Resources

Trendline 2019

Imported oil meets approximately 16% - 20% of South Africa‟s energy needs. Just when a

remarkably high number of developing economies are starting to grow consistently, and just

at the point when Africa is integrating into the global economy, the most critical key

condition that made it possible to grow the developed economies over the past 100 years is

about to fall away, namely cheap oil.

(Source: www.peakoil.net)

The Table above from the respected UK-based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre is a scenario

which is based on the fact that “[w]e have produced almost half what is there, and we have

found about 90%. We consume 22 Gb [giga barrels] a year but find only 6 Gb. That is to say,

we find one barrel for every four we consume from our inheritance of past discovery.”

(http://greatchange.org/ov-campbell,outlook.htmlFeb 2002) The result is that we have

probably hit peak oil production in 2005 at precisely the moment when demand looks set to

grow at unprecedented levels in emerging economies. The result, as the table below reveals,

is the „oil gap‟.

OIL AND GAS LIQUIDS

2004 Scenario

US-48

Europe

Russia

Other

M.East

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020 2030 2040 2050

Bill

ion

Bar

rels

a y

ear

(Gb

/a)

US-48 Europe Russia Other M.East Heavy etc. Deepwater Polar NGL


25

THE GROWING GAP

Regular Oil

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

1930 1950 1970 1990 2010 2030 2050

Gb

/aPast Discovery

Future Discovery

Production

Past discovery based

on ExxonMobil (2002).

Revisions backdated


This is what lies behind the inexorable rise in the oil price as illustrated in the table below:

Oil Price

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

1996 1998 2000 2002 2004

Bre

nt

Cru

de

$/b


During the last week of June 2005, the oil price hit $60 pB. Goldman Sachs has predicted the

price will rise to $105 pB. There might be rises and falls over the next few years, but the

general overall trend is up. The South African Reserve Bank and the Industrial Development

Corporation have both issued statements acknowledging that growth will be constrained by

oil price increases because the oil price substantially undercuts hard won economic gains

made by businesses and households. Cities like Cape Town where 56% of all energy

consumed in the city is derived from oil will become one of the least attractive places to run a

household and do business as the oil price continues to rise.

The Table below illustrates that if the demand for liquid fuels in South Africa (essentially the

hydrocarbons petrol, diesel and jet fuel) is driven by current transport demand patterns and



26

transport modes, even modest growth rates of 3% and 6% per year would lead to increases of

1.8 and 3.2 times current (2004) volumes.

Past and projected consumption of transportation fuels (million litres/ year)

Low

Growth

Rate (3%)

High

Growth

Rate (6%)

Year 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2024 2024

Petrol 10153 10566 10798 10883 10861 10396 10340 10335 10667 10985 19840 35230

Diesel 5432 5759 5875 5959 5993 6254 6488 6831 7263 7679 13869 24628

Jet Fuel 1368 1601 1777 1877 1995 2020 1924 1967 2099 2076 3749 6658

(Source: Cairncross, 2005)

If the achievement of a growth rate of 6% assumes increasing the consumption of petrol,

diesel and jet fuel by over 300%, and if oil peak means rapid price increases at rates much

higher than the average inflation rate, then it follows that either growth rates must be revised

downwards, or massive investments are required to substantially reduce the absolute and

relative consumption of hydrocarbons.

The current macro-economic policy documents do not address the challenge of peak oil. This

means there is no estimate of the rate of increase of the oil price, nor is there an assessment of

the potential impact if oil prices continue to rise. Given the inflationary effect of oil price

increases that cannot be mitigated by increasing the BA rate, it follows that oil dependence is

geo-politically unstable world makes little sense. South Africa should follow Sweden by

setting a date after which there will be no oil imports. It should follow the Pentagon and

commission a study on how the revenue we export to pay for oil could be better used to fund

massive efficiency drives and alternatives to oil (Lovins, Datta, Bustnes, & Koomey, 2005).

Risks by 2019

If current trendlines in global oil production and consumption continue largely unchanged

over the decade leading up to 2019, this will mean that by 2019:

economic growth rates could be undermined by rising oil prices driven primarily by

massive increases in demand from Asian economies without significant investments in

alternatives by major global players and South Africa;

massive increases in the cost of transport with knock effects for poor households and

therefore labour costs, with particularly serious consequences for the financial viability of

our towns and cities;

key industrial sectors with substantial growth potential could be undermined, e.g.

chemicals, materials, agriculture, tourism, construction, and maybe plastics (which

originates in oil but an ever-increasing quantity of plastic components is made from

recycled plastic);

27

food shortages and biodiversity destruction as massive quantities of land get used to grow

crops for biofuels that are deemed to be a viable sustainable alternative;

geo-political instability as remaining oil resources become the focus of political, civil and

military contestation and confrontation, which in turn will push up oil prices even further.


In response to key trendlines that made it clear that over-dependence on imported oil is a

„binding constraint‟, the Government initiated a range of sustainable resource use

interventions that created new opportunities by 2019, including:

as the oil price goes up, a wide range of renewable energy technology options became

financially competitive thus creating new investment opportunities, in particular in the

transport sector;

a wide range of ad hoc and incremental adjustments were made - largely in response to

market dynamics but reinforced by new environmental taxes - by households, businesses

and economies to counter-act rising costs, e.g. buying smaller cars (or energy-efficient

cars), manufacture of biodiesel or bio-ethanol, increasing use of public transport,

recycling plastics, and the design and manufacture of alternative building materials (esp.

alternatives to cement products);

an entirely new energy sector gradually emerged with decentralised businesses trading in

all sorts of energy products, including the manufacture of an electric car using South

African technology with global exports.

4.3 Energy

Trendline 2019

Just over 70% of South Africa‟s energy is derived from coal. This is a long-term trend and

will more than likely continue well into the future. The remaining 30% is derived from oil

(20%), gas (1,5%), nuclear (3%) and biomass (5,1%). As far as energy carriers are

concerned, coal accounts for 33%, liquid fuels and gas for 28%, electricity 22% and biomass

17%. Significantly, coal-to-liquid and gas-to-liquid technologies accounts for 30% and 8%

respectively of the total liquid fuel supply.

Cheap energy (possibly the cheapest in the world) and abundant coal supplies has made it

possible to build an energy intensive economy. The Table below reveals how resource

intensive the South African economy is compared to other parts of the world.

28

At the same time, over the last ten years access to electricity has been extended from 60% of

all households in 1995 to 70% by 2000 (Republic of South Africa, 2005).

The biggest future challenge for the energy sector is the rapid growth in demand without a

clear plan to increase generation capacity. In the Table below, each band is a new power

station and its lifespan, with the blue line representing the unanticipated growth in demand.

29

Peak demand may start to outstrip supply as early as 2007 if no new generation capacity is

constructed, or if effective peak load management is not found.

As far as consumption is concerned, the following table representing 1999 figures is

suggestive of trends in the recent past and if nothing changes, the future pattern will be

similar.

H E X R IV E RS A L T R IV E R

C E N T R A L W E S T B A N K

C O LE N S O

C O N G E LLOS O U T H C O A S T

U M G E N I

B R A K P A N

K L IP

R O S H E R V IL LE

T A A IB O S

V A A LV E R E E N IN G IN G

W ILG E

W IT B A N KG E O R G E

V IE R F O N T E INH IG H V E LD

K O M A T I

IN G A G A N E

C A M D E N

G R O O T V LE I

H E N D R IN A

A R N O T

G A R IE P

K R IE L

A C A C IA P O R T R E X V A N D E R K L O O F

M A T LA

D U H V A

C A H O R A B A S S A

D R A K E N S B E R G

K O E B E R G

T U T U K A

L E T H A B O

M A T IM B A

K E N D A L

P A L M IE T

M A J U B A

0

5 , 0 0 0

1 0 , 0 0 0

1 5 , 0 0 0

2 0 , 0 0 0

2 5 , 0 0 0

3 0 , 0 0 0

3 5 , 0 0 0

4 0 , 0 0 0

5 5 6 0 6 5 7 0 7 5 8 0 8 5 9 0 9 5 0 0 0 5 1 0 1 5 2 0 2 5 3 0 3 5 4 0 4 5 5 0 5 5 6 0

Y e a r

Me

ga

wa

tt In

sta

lle

d

5 5 6 0 6 5 7 0 7 5 8 0 8 5 9 0 9 5 0 0 0 5 1 0 1 5 2 0 2 5 3 0 3 5 4 0 4 5 5 0 5 5 6 0

Levels of demand

30

Although the above figures are averaged out across the country, in cities transport accounts in

some cases for 50% of the total energy used in the city (54% in Cape Town, for example).

This reflects the consequences of the apartheid spatial form that resulted in long travel

distances between home and work.

To date there has been little attention paid by policy-makers to large-scale energy efficiency

(EE) and renewable energy (RE) interventions. However, the White Paper on Renewable

Energy (November 2003) identified a RE target of 4% by 2013 and a 12% reduction in

energy consumption by 2014. Scenario building exercises have provided evidence that up to

50% of South Africa‟s future energy supply could stem from RE by 2050. However, for this

to be translated into reality, planning and investments would need to focus on this long-term

trend. In other words, there is agreement that the energy sector needs to be dematerialised,

but no agreement exists on how far this should go and what the balance should be beween RE

and EE.

In the short-term, immediate electricity generation needs will be met by re-commissioning

old coal-fired power stations and by escalating R&D support for the controversial Pebble Bed

Modular Reactor (PBMR) which, it is hoped, will be commissioned sooner rather than later.

However, the long-term financial viability and security of nuclear power must still be

verified. Short-term high impact investments in proven wind and solar power technologies

could rapidly create the basis for a long-term supply of renewable energy.

Other significant initiatives in the sector include:

ESKOM‟s demand side management (DSM) which is not so much an EE initiative, but

rather shifting loads around to manage peak loads in the mornings and evenings;

the start of funding support for RE and EE initiatives;

Industry 40%

Mining and quarrying 7%

Transport27%

Residential17%

Other1%

Non-energyuse 1%

Agriculture 3%

Commerce andpublic services 4%

31

establishment of the SA National Energy Research Institute;

an increasing interest in bio-fuels, in particular bio-diesel and bio-ethanol;

the institutional separation of generation, transmission and distribution which may also

clear the way for the proliferation of Independent Power Producers;

introduction of the Regional Electricity Distributors (REDs), which will now be more

tightly linked to Local Government than originally envisaged by ESKOM;

slow but growing interest in the potential of solar water heaters (SWHs);

Energy sits at the intersection point between economic growth, poverty eradication and

sustainable resource use. This means that sustainable development is impossible without the

energy sector playing a central role. However, it is unlikely to play an effective role in

achieving a balance if the system continues to be dominated by a centralised supply-driven

approach. A decentralised and distributed system with market opportunities for a range of

different Independent Power Producers (IPPs) will create the innovation, investment

incentives and people-centred energy services approach that can best respond to the need to

decouple growth and poverty eradication from dependence on coal and oil-based generation

capacity. This would not only achieve the sustainability objectives, but also open up the

possibility of a transition to a RE economy involving a wide mix of energy sources which can

include solar, wind, biofuel, hydrogen, etc into the current coal and oil-dominated market.

However, this should not be a crude privatisation drive that hands over the system to large

corporate investors. The state will need to continue to play a central role.

Risks to 2019

If current trendlines in energy production and consumption continue largely unchanged over

the decade leading up to 2019, this will mean that by 2019:

economic growth potential was undercut as peak demand outstripped supply forcing

many fast growing areas located in the south of the country to turn away potential

investors who ironically were looking for clean air and low traffic congestion locations;

the persistent absence of a comprehensive and publicly available set of energy data for

effective long-term planning will have persisted and undermined effective public debate

and research into alternative energy futures;

little will have been done to restructure the hugely inefficient and unsustainable

transportation sector, which is partly due to the spatial structure of our towns and cities;

the non-electrification of many rural and some urban housing will have persisted;

the long delayed application of a feed-in tariff created market disincentives for IPPs who

were keen to invest in RE which, in turn, effectively eliminated the technology innovation

and employment potential of a new solar and wind economy sector;

confusion about the role of the REDs, with Local Government refusing to surrender

control of electricity in light of the fact that electricity is Constitutionally a local

government function, persisted well into the decade leading up to 2019;

32

the effects of the belated acceptance of the potential for RE will be felt as other countries

surge ahead – these include the 48 countries that had already RE promotion policies by

2005, including 14 developing countries, and leading nations like China, India and Brazil

have all adopted a multi-pronged approaches (including extensive biofuels programmes);

incredibly expensive investments in nuclear power will have expanded our nuclear power

generation capacity, but compared to the RE plants being built (that benefitted from a

fraction of the R50 million per month invested in R&D for the PBMR over a number of

years) they prove to be far more costly than originally anticipated and the source of

increasingly acrimonious conflict between government, environmental NGOs and

businesses who know from their own knowledge networks that there are more financially

viable alternatives.


In response to key trendlines that made it clear that non-renewable energy generation is a



a wide range of new investment and employment opportunities for renewable energy in

four markets, namely power generation, hot water and space heating, transportation fuels,

and rural (off-grid) energy supplies;

the most viable options include grid-connected solar photovoltaics (PV), wind power

(Germany has an installed wind generation capacity of 17 GW which is approximately

50% of South Africa‟s electrical power generation capacity), massive solar power

stations, wave energy, and production of energy from biomass (as long as this is done in

an ecologically sustainable manner);

compared to many other developing countries, South Africa‟s dependence on internal

resources is what partially shelters it from the effects of oil price increases – this,

however, can only translate into an economic benefit if the import parity price mechanism

is reconsidered;

DME‟s „multi-market model‟ which envisages the creation of market opportunities for

IPPs who want to invest in new generation (up to 30%), but this can only happen if the

pricing mechanism is appropriate;

the REDs could provide a major opportunity not only to standardise tariffs and trigger re-

investment in municipal electricity infrastructures neglected by cash-strapped Local

Governments, but also to become energy distributors and not just electricity distributors

– this widening of the mandate would allow the REDs to include RE and EE approaches

extensive R&D initiatives to suppot RE, EE and distribution alternatives.

4.4 Water and Sanitation

Trendline 2019

33

Due to the topography of the land, the natural availability of water is unevenly distributed

across the country, with more than 60 % of the river flow arising from only 20 % of the land

area9. South Africa has very little ground water and it is mainly underlain by hard rock

formations. No major groundwater aquifers have been found that can be utilised on a national

scale. The groundwater that is available is mostly used for agricultural purposes and rural

water supply. Most metropolitan and industrial growth centres have developed around

mineral deposits and harbour sites, which are remote from major river courses. This has

resulted in water requirements exceeding the natural availability of water in several river

catchments. Supply water resources are impounded and diverted not only within the country,

but also through co-operation from adjacent countries.

There is no doubt that since 1994 the water sector has been profoundly transformed. This

applies in particular to the systematic integration of all the water authorities and institutions

into a single integrated system, coupled to substantive decentralisation. Water is now a

defined and protected national resource. The 1996 Water Law Principles are a leading

example of a sustainable resource use approach that takes into account both eco-system and

human system needs.

The Department of Water Affairs (DWAF) assumes the following trends:

Total system yield: Total water requirements:

2000: 13.227 x 109m

3 12.871 x 10

9m

3

2025 (base): 14.166 x 109m

3 14.230 x 10

9m

3

2025 (high): 14.940 x 109m

3 16.814 x 10

9m

3

In summary, by 2000 there was still surplus capacity of around 1,4%. However, by 2025

requirements will exceed availability in both the scenarios that were modelled here by the

Department of Water Affairs and Forestry. The Table is instructive when it comes to finding

out where the greatest growth is going to be.

9 . This section relies on the following documents: (Department of Water Affairs and Forestry) (Department of

Water Affairs and Forestry, 2004) (Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, 2002)

34

Table: historical consumption and projected water requirements for 2030 per sector.

Sector m3/annum

1996 2030

Urban and domestic 2 171 6 936

Mining and industrial 1 598 3 380

Irrigation and afforestation 12 344 15 874

Environmental 3 932 4 225

Total 20 045 30 415

Significantly, it is the urban and domestic consumption sector where consumption increases

are set to triple. Taken together, the above two Tables graphically represent the resource use

crisis that will be generated by economic growth and poverty eradication if existing water

management systems and processes remain unchanged. The urban sector is the sector that is

easiest to transform via regulation, infrastructure investments and behavioural change that

will improve quality of life, reduce costs and prevent unsustainable resource use practices

from undermining poverty eradication. Because make no mistake, if the current water

management systems continue thus jeopardising long-term sustainable water resource use, it

will not be the rich who suffer, but rather the poor who will lack the financial capacity to buy

themselves out of trouble.

The physical-chemical requirements of some users have been defined in the Water Quality

Guidelines produced by DWAF (1996). Reduced quality of water for use is generally

associated with the activities of humans but can also be due to natural processes. Typical

pollutants found in South Africa and the impacts of these are outlined in the following table.

Of South Africa‟s 19 water management areas, 6 are declared as needing urgent attention in

terms of the water quality due to the impact on biodiversity. Only 6% of our rivers are still in

their natural condition. 28% are in poor condition, and 44% are rated “fair”. 22% are still in

“good”, but not in their “natural”, condition.

Pollutant Impact

Salinity Salination of irrigated soils, reduction in crop yields,

corrosion of pipes, species transformation of the biota

Bacteria and parasites Health problems such as diarrhoea, dysentra, skin

35

infections, cholera and bilharzias

Low oxygen levels Anaerobic breakdown of organics resulting in the

formation of sulphide if sulphate are present

Eutrophication High nitrate levels are toxic to fish and the high nutrient

levels result in the excessive growth of algae making the

water body anaerobic

Suspended solids Changes in the composition of the stream bed

community, increased turbidity resulting in a reduction in

photosynthesis by plants

Hydrocarbons Toxic effect on the respiratory organs of aquatic animals

Acidification Mobilisation of toxic metals

Inorganic and organic litter Release toxins and blockage of the watercourse

The quality of water resources is impacted by human activities in particular:

industry and mining,

increased urbanisation,

agricultural drainage,

waste disposal and

land use.

(Source: Blignaut, 2006)

Due to economic growth and development an increase in industrial activity will result in a

proportional increase in toxic effluents produced. This coupled with increased urbanisation

will see unprecedented increases in water resource pollution. The exact concentrations of the

various pollutants cannot be predicted but given this scenario a decrease in water quality will

36

certainly occur. Measures are underway to implement cleaner production and source

reduction techniques to reduce the release of pollutants. These initiatives include:

implementation of environmental management systems, and

guidelines for the implementation of Clean Technologies.

If clean technology principles are adhered to, non-toxic pesticides are used and current

pollutants are rendered harmless there should not be a net increase in the level of pollutants in

water resources and consequently the quality of water resources will not deteriorate.

However, all this costs money. What needs to get weighed up is the cost of implementing

preventive measures now versus the costs of dealing with the consequences later on. Our

national infrastructure programme should become a core focus of a preventive approach

which, in the long run, will be more cost effective.

Access to piped water supplies has increased from 76% of all households in 1995 to 82% of

all households by 2000. However, by 2000, 52% of the poorest households (earning below

$1/day) still did not have access to piped water (Republic of South Africa, 2005). To deal

with affordability problems, a free basic water allocation was adopted. However, affordability

remains a challenge as long as unemployment and poverty levels remain high. The

consequences of limited privatisation measures certainly do not confirm the optimistic

predictions of the proponents of water privatisation.

The various municipal sanitation systems process ??? cubic metres of sewerage per annum.

This is growing at ??% per annum. The sewerage flow combines toilet waste and grey water

(baths/showers/basins/kitchens) from households as well as the large bulk of sewerage

outputs from the commercial and industrial sectors. These flows are treated in large

centralised bulk sewerage treatment works, after which the effluent is fed back into the river

system, the sea or onto the land via irrigation systems. The residual sludge is usually

extracted and disposed in landfills. In many other countries where policy makers have

decided that the costs of centralised unsustainable sanitation systems are too high, the

emphasis has shifted to recycling and the productive use of the effluent. For example, a

number of cities elsewhere have developed biogas digesters which treat the effluent and in

the process methane gas is captured for re-use. For example, Stockholm provides fuel for 150

busses in Stockholm‟s passenger bus service from methane gas captured from sewerage

treated in biogas digesters. This is a stark example of how to decouple resource use from the

consumption requirements of growing urban economic systems. Not only is productive use

made from waste with financial benefits, but the pollution and greenhouse gas impact is

diminished. Other examples include using sewerage to grow algae which can, in turn, be

converted into biodiesel at low cost and then used to run diesel engines (with no

modifications to the engine).

From a sustainability perspective, there is clearly scope for major water saving in two sectors,

namely urban and domestic use and the agricultural sector. Recycling waste water in urban

systems for re-use is clearly a major priority. For example, between 40% and 50% of all

water piped into households is used to flush the toilets. 61% of all water used in Cape Town‟s

37

urban-industrial system was used to flush toilets and transport sewerage. Of this, only 5%

was recycled (Gasson, 2002). It is technically possible to flush toilets from on-site grey water

flows (in particular for large middle class homes), or via neighbourhood-level closed loop

systems that recycle water for re-use in households to flush toilets. Rainwater harvesting and

grey water supplies for irrigation also have potential. In agriculture, water saving is a major

priority, especially in combination with organic farming methods that simultaneously rebuild

the biological capacity of the soils and the moisture retention capacity of the top layers.

However, a major review of water management in the agricultural sector is clearly required,

taking into account irrigation systems, use of aquifers and rivers.

It is clear that Government is aware of the severe constraints on water supplies. In her 2007

Budget Speech, the Minister of Water Affairs and Forestry dedicated considerable space to

her water efficiency campaign, which it would appear is going to translate into regulations

and tighter controls. However, compared to what the water scientists say is required, it would

appear that the Minister intends proceeding far too slowly and cautiously. If increases in

water consumption have historically tracked economic growth patterns, then it follows that a

6% economic growth rate will clearly be undermined by water shortages and related

dysfunctionalities (like salinisation of acquifers etc) if existing water management practices

remain unchanged. The research results are clear: available physical extra capacity in 2000

was at most 1.7% higher than existing requirements, but the growth in demand for water to

keep up with economic growth and poverty eradication could be as much as 25% higher than

available yield by 2025 if we use existing water management systems. Even if demand only

increases by 1% per annum, by 2014 the economy will already be facing severe water

shortages on a number of fronts. By 2019, water shortages will have pulled the economy into

a downward spiral of low growth an increase socio-economic inequalities, with associated

mini-„resource wars‟ over water supplies. No further evidence is required to conclude that

water supplies are, indeed, a „binding constraint‟. However, as Prof. James Blignaut has

argued, there is sophisticated modelling work by University of Pretoria researchers that

shows that a combination of physical, fiscal, institutional and technological interventions

could turn this potential „binding constraint‟ into a major opportunity for effective sustainable

resource use (Blignaut, 2006). However, for this to occur, water resources will need to be

seen as a „binding constraint‟, and Government will have to seriously invest in the sustainable

resource use approach advocated by all the leading researchers and policy managers in the

water resource sector.

Risks to 2019:

If current trendlines in water resource use continue largely unchanged over the decade

leading up to 2019, this will mean that by 2019:

the combination of climate change and increased demand will result in severe water

shortages (in certain areas) if existing technologies and management practices remain

unchanged;

38

declining quality of water supplies and resultant cost increases if infrastructure design and

expenditure do not take into account the need to mitigate pollution impacts from human

systems;

shrinking supply relative to demand coupled to an agriculture and industry bias in pricing

structures might push up prices for domestic households beyond affordability levels of

poor communities within increased political tensions;

impact of climate change on both water supplies and irrigation requirements of the

agricultural sector in certain critical river catchment areas;

rising levels of sewerage output as middle class settlements expand, with limited efforts

to re-use and recycle these flows of nutrients and chemicals;

if the existing fiscal, institutional, technological and regulatory framework is left

unchanged, serious system breakdown by 2019 is absolutely certain.

Opportunities by 2019:

In response to key trendlines that made it clear that water resources are a „binding constraint‟,

the Government initiated a range of sustainable resource use interventions that created new

opportunities by 2019, including:

a progressive orientation in the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry won broad

government support resulting in the implementation of a sustainable resource use

approach that is integrated with economic growth and poverty eradication strategies via

cross-sector planning and implementation;

the decentralisation of water management to local areas to facilitate closer cooperation

with users and communities;

the development of „unconventional‟ water sources, such as rainfall augmentation,

desalinisation of sea water, rainwater harvesting, sustainable acquifer utilisation and eco-

efficiency technologies;

restructuring of municipal water systems to promote closed loop zero waste systems, i.e.

the re-use of all sewage for grey water supply, nutrients, humus and methane;

a focus on agriculture and water saving approaches;

recycling of sewerage to capture nutrients for productive re-use and biogas for re-use as a

fuel for various purposes.

4.5 Solid Waste

Trendline 2019

Solid waste includes all municipal waste and industrial waste (e.g. industrial areas, mining,

power generation, construction, etc). As of 2005, the solid waste system managed the

39

disposal of 20 Mt (Mt=1 million metric tonnes or 1 billion kgs) of municipal solid waste

(MSW), 450 Mt of mining related wastes and 30 Mt of power station ashes.

In some cities, the quantity of MSW is rising above the daily average of 2 kg/person, which is

3-4 times that in many European cities. Significantly, the quantity and nature of solid waste

differs considerably across the socio-economic spectrum. People who live in informal

settlements generate on average 0,16kg per day, whereas over 2 kg per day is not unusual for

people who live in affluent areas. As far as the waste stream is concerned, food and green

waste makes up 35% of all waste from affluent households, compared with 20% for poor

households. 54% of the waste from poor households is inorganic matter such as ash and

materials swept from floors, whereas this only accounts for 6% in affluent households.

According to the 2001 Census, 11% of all urban households did not have a waste disposal

service. Cape Town generates a total of 2 million tons of solid waste p.a., or nearly 6000 tons

per day. In 1998, residential waste accounted for nearly half of this, at 895 000 tons/year. The

remainder was mainly industrial and commercial waste. Significantly, 60% of Cape Town‟s

industrial waste is recycled, with only 6,5% of residential and commercial waste recycled.

Of the 895 000 tons of residential waste generated in 1998 in Cape Town, no less than 492

967 tons (over 50%) was generated from the high (excluding the middle) income residential

areas, which is equal to 16% of Cape Town‟s 800 000 households. The distribution across

income categories in Cape Town in 1998 was a follows: 1,3 kg of waste/person/day for high

income areas, 0,7 kg/person/day in middle income areas, and 0,35 kg/person/day. This

effectively means that the large poorer communities on the Cape Flats host rubbish dumps

that absorb wastes generated by a tiny minority of rich Capetonians who have one of the

highest waste levels and lowest recycling rates in the world. There is no reason to believe that

the situation is much different in all of South Africa‟s metropolitan and secondary cities.

MSW quantities are growing faster than the economy in many cities, e.g. at 7% in Cape

Town.

MSW Growth in Cape Town

40

(Source: City of Cape Town Waste Department, 2007)

The growing minerals and coal-based energy sector immediately translates into increased

industrial wastes with limited productive recycling and re-use. In other words, economic

growth and the gradual increase in the size of the middle class translates directly into rising

levels of waste. This is a clear example of the way unsustainable resource use is coupled to

growth and poverty reduction. The technologies and processes for decoupling waste from

growth and poverty eradication are simple, low cost and extensively used throughout the

world.

Significantly, waste recycling is a major job creator. In other words, if a waste recycling

approach is not adopted, increasing costs will be incurred to build more landfills and finance

the transport costs that are rising at rates higher than inflation. There is also an opportunity

cost as jobs that could be created in recycling fall away. Investment in recycling is one of the

most immediate, tangible and low-cost investments in dematerialisation available. It saves on

capital costs, creates jobs, and forces the middle classes to take greater responsibility for the

resources they throw away. It is also normally a highly competitive sector, with sophisticated

value chains with respect to resources like used engine oil, used vegetable oils, a wide range

of plastics, building rubble, organic matter for composting, glass, cans, paper, etc. There are

numerous studies that confirm that recycling has very positive economic benefits with respect

to job creation, manufacturing and technology and innovation.

Although many other countries have for many years now moved away from „disposal-to-

landfill‟ as the primary means of solid waste management, in South Africa the large bulk of

41

MSW in the early 1990s was disposed of in 4000 disposal sites spread out across the country.

Of these, only 200 met minimum environmental standards. Since the late 1990s, controls

have improved, many small landfills have been closed down, and better managed regional

disposal sites have been selected. Although national costs of landfills have not been

calculated, it is more than likely that these costs are similar to those that pertain in Cape

Town where the cost of managing landfills – and the related dumping costs - increased 100%

between 2000 and 2004. Here is yet another example of how dematerialisation can reduce

poverty via job creation, and enhance economic growth by stimulating the already vibrant

and highly competitive waste recycling industry. Furthermore, waste recycling also has

significant export potential.

The turning point for South Africa came in 2000 when the White Paper on Integrated

Pollution and Waste Management for South Africa was produced by DEAT. This advocated

the application of the internationally accepted waste management hierarchy, namely cleaner

production, then recycling, treatment and disposal as a last resort. This led to the National

Integrated Waste Management Bill and frameworks requiring Local Government to prepare

Integrated Waste Management Plans to complement their IDPs.

The stage is now set to move South Africa decisively into a post-disposal approach with

respect to MSW, with a special focus on middle and high income consumers. However,

mining and power generation wastes are the biggest challenges. The Minerals and Mining

Policy for South Africa led to the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act which

makes specific provision for waste management and pollution control in the mining sector.

This Act, together with the emerging MSW approach, provides the basis for the emergence of

a vast decentralised network of market-driven and community-based recycling businesses,

plus a major move towards cleaner production as outlined in the National Cleaner Production

Strategy compiled for DEAT by the CSIR.

Risks to 2019

If current trendlines in waste generation continue largely unchanged over the decade leading

up to 2019, this will mean that by 2019:

the lack of capacity at Local Government level while have remained unresolved resulting

in a pervasive failure by Local Governments to formulate and implement Integrated

Waste Management Plans as sub-components of their IDPs;

the mining sector will continue to pay lip service to cleaner production approaches, but

the greater costs involved in responsible disposal will have gradually result in ever-

increasing quantities of un-recycled mining waste building up in dumps that often contain

minerals and toxic materials that leach out into the ground and onward into the

underground water tables;

42

the national legislature will have failed for three years to pass the National Integrated

Waste Management Bill – although it is hard to imagine that there will be no National

Integrated Waste Management Act by 2019, there is a strong possibility that vested

interests, political lethargy, bureaucratic bungling and conflicts between the different

spheres of government result in a watered down Act and therefore a national waste

management system that does little to substantively dematerialise the urban economies;

the recycling sector will still be dominated by a handful of large recycling businesses that

continue to eliminate opportunities for (B)BEE operators, community-based non-profit

initiatives and informal sector waste pickers which, in turn, could drastically reduce the

potentially large „second economy‟ employment and livelihood opportunities that could

be created by 2019;

limited incentive frameworks and weak legislative compulsion to ensure a successful

transition away from the current dispose-and-forget approach, in particular at Local

Government level, has resulted in the construction of huge extremely expensive landfills

located long distances from the expanding towns – the roads to the landfills require

expensive maintenance work, and the trucks use a combination of increasingly expensive

fuels (oil- and bio- based) that must be paid for from already over-stretched operating

budgets;

as a result of all the factors cited above, instead of using capital budgets to house the

poor, significant proportions of the capital budgets have gone into landfills and related

costs that have filled up at rates faster than intended because over 50% of the waste

comes from the expanding rich elite, i.e. the poor pay the price for the profligate and

polluting consumer behaviour of the rich – even in many conservative countries the

unfairness of this is not tolerated.


In response to key trendlines that made it clear that waste generation is a „binding constraint‟,

the Government initiated a range of sustainable resource use interventions that created new

opportunities by 2019, including:

a robust National Integrated Waste Management Act has been in place for at least ten

years, with an annual high profile competition amongst Local Governments as to who has

managed to achieve the “zero waste” targets in the most efficient and effective manner –

the annual prize giving ceremony presided over by none other than the President of the

country;

the emergence and consolidation of recycling as a major economic sector and job

generator, probably differentiated according to waste stream category, i.e. cans, glass,

plastics, paper, biomass, and general waste – the end result being that South Africa

becomes internationally acknowledged as a leader in the global “zero waste” movement;

the rapidly diminishing spare landfill capacity in many major cities and the high costs

associated with large regional landfill sites located beyond city boundaries creates the

43

financial incentive required for innovation at Local Government level, in particular in the

metropolitan governments;

the Cleaner Production Strategy has been beefed up and provides the basis for

establishing incentives and legal requirements aimed at the adoption by the business

sector – in particular Mining and Construction - of Cleaner Production Systems (CPS)

with a special focus on responsible waste management via investments in recycling

businesses (i.e. no longer responsible disposal);

the organic waste stream has been separated out from non-organic waste streams and used

to produce methane gas via biogas digesters, possibly in combination with sewerage.

4.6 Soils

Trendline 2019

South Africa falls within the so-called “third major soil region” which is typical in countries

in mid-latitudes on both sides of the equator. The result is that South Africa is dominated by

very shallow sandy soils with severe inherent limitations from an agricultural point of view.

In most parts of the country with annual rainfall levels of between 500 mm and 700 mm that

could support agriculture, unsuitable soils prohibit intensive farming. This is why 35% of

South Africa receives sufficient rain for dryland crop production, but only 13% (or 14 million

hectares) is suitable arable land. Most of the available 14 million hectares is marginal land.

Only 3% of the land is considered high potential land. If we use the international norm of 0.4

hectares of arable land to feed a person, then South Africa‟s 14 million hectares would feed at

most 35 million. The result is over-exploitation as we try to exceed the carrying capacity of

our soils. (In comparison, the USA has 350 million people, but has enough arable land to feed

800 million people.)

There is limited potential for irrigation in South Africa. It is estimated that a maximum of 1.5

million hectares can be irrigated. This is due to a mix of limited water availability, but also

because – as in some southeastern areas where there may be enough water - the soils are

inappropriate. By comparison, Iran which is similar in size, can irrigate 7.5 million hectares.

The main consequence of our geological legacy is that our soils are extremely vulnerable to

various forms of degradation and have low resilience (i.e. their potential to recover after

degradation is very low). This fact, coupled to a tendency to over-exploit our limited carrying

capacity to meet growing food requirements by using inappropriate farming methods, has

resulted in far-reaching nationwide degradation of our soils. It may be time to follow the

example of Cuba by making soils a “National Security Priority”. To save it‟s soils Cuba

triggered a nation-wide organic farming revolution twenty years ago and today it‟s people

enjoy the healthiest food available because it is produced without chemical inputs or GMOs

by tens of thousands of small farmers who received government support to develop seed

varieties that are appropriate to their own micro-ecosystems.

44

Our legacy of racist land ownership and exploitative farming methods has left an inheritance

of degraded land to future generations. Land reform can return ownership of the land to the

people, but not restore the unique life giving energy of the soil. The following trends will

have to become the focus of a national soil reclamation initiative:

Water erosion remains our biggest problem. South Africa may have lost 25% of it‟s

topsoil during the c.20th and continues to lose 2.5 tons per hectare per annum. Annual soil

formation rates are estimated to be 0.3 tons per hectare per annum. However, soil loss

rates are dropping in certain areas but this is because soil loss is so great there is nothing

left to be lost. The worst areas are in the former homelands where planners set up

irrigation schemes on highly erodable non-arable soils that were previously good

rangelands. However, all over South Africa over-grazing (with especially sheep) has

caused the loss of dense protective grass cover. This is exacerbated by sprawled out

paddock-managed grazing patterns copied from Europe which destroy nutrient levels and

grasses have limited time to recover.

Wind erosion affects 25% of South Africa‟s soils. This affects large swathes of our maize

producing areas in the Northwest Province and northwestern Free State. However, it is a

problem that is largely ignored in farming practice.

Soil compaction started to become a major problem from the early 1960s and is now

common wherever intensive mechanized cultivated agriculture takes place. Compaction is

caused by heavy farm vehicles that traverse cultivated soils. The result is that root growth

is restricted to a very shallow depth, yields per hectare are limited and drought risk is

aggravated because the plants cannot reach the moisture stored below the compacted top

layer. In some areas farming practices have been modified with great success. But in the

maize belt, for example, 80% of cultivated land is prone to compaction.

Soil crusting is caused by over-irrigation using over-head spray systems and micro-

irrigation system. Overgrazing which removes protective grass cover creates bare patches

that crust and are eventually abandoned. It has been reported that the Limpopo Provincial

Government has prescribed overhead irrigation systems to replace short furrow systems

that local farmers have used successfully for centuries – this is a mistake because the soils

in that Province are not suitable for overhead irrigation systems.

Waterlogging and salinisation/sodification due to over-irrigation with saline or sodium

rich water has not been a major problem compared to other countries.

Acidification affects more than 5 million hectares of arable land. This is directly caused

by poor farming practices, in particular incorrect fertilizer practices and inadequate lime

applications. Acid rain caused by strip coal mining in Mpumalanga also causes

acidification.

Soil fertility degradation is caused by the annual loss of the three main plant nutrients,

namely 30 000 tons of Nitrogen (N), 26 400 tons of Phosphorous (P), and 363 000 tons of

Zinc (K). Although chemically produced N P and K has since the 1960s been used to

counteract nutrient loss caused by top soil loss from erosion, there is evidence that more

and more chemical inputs are required to retain the same levels of soil fertility. Given that

these chemical inputs are derived from oil and that oil prices are rising, it follows that it is

45

becoming increasingly costly to purchase more and more of increasingly expensive off-

farm chemical inputs. In places like India, Brazil, China, Cuba and many African

countries, it is this dynamic that is driving the transition to organic farming. Supported by

the new agricultural sciences, organic farming can rebuild soil nutrient levels without

chemical inputs by engineering micro-ecosystems to save and capture nutrients from a

multiplicity of naturally available sources (e.g. legumes that capture nitrogen from the

atmosphere in their root systems, etc). Organic farming is also better suited to small

farmers which is a good thing because the 400 million small farmers in the world are still

the largest food producers. Organic farming and small farmers, however, are not yet

regarded by South African policy makers as significant elements of our future agricultural

system – this despite the fact that research shows that small farmers are more productive

per hectare than large farmers.

Pollution is caused by a wide variety of human practices, including mining (acidification,

heavy metals), industrial effluent of various kinds and sewage sludge (including the

impact of pit latrines). Besides soil degradation, underground water supplies can be

affected causing increased purification costs downstream when the water gets to rivers

that supply human systems.

Urbanisation has resulted in urban sprawl caused by developers who have bought up

what is often high value arable land on the outskirts of cities and then use their influence

to convince authorities to approve new urban settlements.

It will only be possible to reverse the above trends if locally trained soil scientists are

produced that recognise that our soil conditions are unique (because they are “third major soil

region” soils) and therefore we cannot copy solutions generated in countries with a different

soil profile. Location specific technical solutions are required because blanket solutions have

proven to be unworkable. Locally trained soil scientists working together with local leader

farmers via horizontal learning practices is an urgent requirement. This is what has worked in

India and Cuba and many other places in the developing world and is urgently required in

South Africa.

Once degraded, there is limited potential for recovery. This is why it is necessary to focus on

areas where degradation is limited so that efforts can be focussed on prevention via

appropriate farming practices. It is not appropriate to use the American eight class land

capability evaluation system – a South African system is needed that is suitable for our

conditions. This will need to be coupled to detailed soil mapping for use for planning

purposes.

All the evidence from research suggests that indigenous knowledge systems, the new whole

system soil-focussed agricultural sciences and organic farming practices can in combination

revitalise and rejuvenate over-exploited soils. Small-scale experiments in various parts of the

country support this contention. Lessons from elsewhere – especially Cuba and India – also

provide support for this approach. It is the recommended approach that emanates from all the

many policy forums on sustainable agriculture. Organic farming is also the most sensible

approach for supporting the growth of small farmers via the land reform programme.

46

Finally, although the data does not exist, it is possible to calculate the financial value of soil

degradation. If soil degradation did not exist, crop yields would be better and input costs

lower. This diminished yield (Y) and higher input cost (I) can be calculated. The cost of soil

rehabilitation ( R) can also be calculated. It follows that without R, Y and I will remain

constants. If Y and I remain constants, the agricultural sector will not perform as envisaged in

the Macro-Economic Reform Strategy. It follows, that R could be seen as “infrastructure”

and therefore a justifiable target of public investment to put in place the conditions for

effective performance of the sector.

Risks to 2019:

If current trendlines in soil quality continue largely unchanged over the decade leading up to

2019, this will mean that by 2019:

soil degradation will have gone unchecked and eventually it will have become a major

threat to food security, the land reform programme (as farms transferred to black people

collapse because the white farmers extracted everything they could from the soils before

selling) and the shared and accelerated growth programme which prioritized the potential

of agriculture as a job creator but this failed to materialize because soils were not

identified in time as a necessary part of the national infrastructure investment programme;

soil degradation and associated remedial practices such as sustainable farming methods

(which range from organic farming, to biodynamic farming, permaculture, natural

farming, and „low-imput-sustainable-agriculture‟ (LISA)) continued to be seen as the

Cinderella of big agro-science that dominated the thinking of the Department of

Agriculture‟s policy-makers for much too long (partly thanks to the policy of giving

Monsanto far too much influence in government circles) – it was only much too late that

South Africans trained in Europe‟s, Cuba‟s and India‟s leading agricultural Universities

were hired in the Department to reverse the damage and recuperate from tragic

opportunities that were lost;

after ignoring the scientific consensus amongst the country‟s leading soil scientists,

University-based education and R&D funding support for soil science education and

research continued to be inadequate thus forcing dependence on soil categorisation

systems copied from other contexts and foreign expertise who have no knowledge of our

unique soil profiles and problems;

the destruction of high value arable soils continued unabated for years as the sprawling

low density cities and towns are allowed to expand despite long drawn out EIA processes

that were ultimately ignored;

many soils suited for livestock agriculture have been severely degraded by Provincial

Governments that promoted over the previous decade (with foreign donor support and

advice from local Universities) investment in capital intensive irrigation systems in areas

that soil scientists had warned years before should not be put under irrigation;

47

the cost of off-farm inputs had risen so high due to massive increases in the oil price10

that only major commercial farming operations and multi-national agro-businesses were

able to survive due to the fact that they could make profits from low margins generated by

vast economies of scale – the only other sector that survived was the small independent

organic farming sector and the traditional agricultural sector controlled by rural villages

(in particular the cattle herds).


In response to key trendlines that made it clear that soils were a „binding constraint‟, the

Government initiated a range of sustainable resource use interventions that created new

opportunities by 2019 including:

following the Cuban example by announcing that soils had become a national priority and

that all the national agricultural support and funding institutions would henceforth focus

on the facilitation of a major organic farming revolution, supported by massive R&D

investments in the science of sustainable agriculture (including linkages between South

African and international Universities such as Wageningen University in Holland),

indigenous knowledge systems, and a national horizontal learning programme of farmer-

to-farmer visits within the country, but with other countries (in particular Cuba, India,

China, Kenya, Germany, Holland and the USA);

investments in soils because soils had been included in the definition of infrastructure

which made possible investments in soils linked directly to the shared and accelerated

growth strategy and the land reform programme ;

the inclusion in all IDPs and the NSDP of total ban on the conversion of high value

agricultural land for purposes of urban development;

following international trends by promoting urban agriculture, with a specific focus on

production within city boundaries and along the urban edge so that nutrients captured

from the liquid and solid waste streams could be utilized for food productions and

landscaping;

the creation of new centre of excellence in soil science that is also the repository of a new

fully fledged GIS-based soil profile of the country using classifications that are generated

from empirical realities rather than derived from other contexts;

initiatives that built on the rapidly expanding thriving market for non-chemical off-farm

organic fertilizers, pesticides and other treatments that had emerged in the late 1990s –

this resulted in public and private sector investments in this sector which positioned South

Africa as a world leader and exporter in such products as farmers around the world

scrambled to find alternatives to oil-derived off- farm inputs.

10 . Most chemical inputs on farms are derived from oil

48

4.7 Biodiversity

According to the global Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, over the past 50 years humans

have changed ecosystems more, than in any other comparable period of time in human

history (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). This has come about largely to meet

growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fibre and fuel. This has resulted in substantial

and largely irreversible loss of biodiversity.

Trendline 2019

Terrestrial Environment

About 34% of South Africa‟s terrestrial ecosystems are formally categorised as threatened. In

the terrestrial environment, loss and degradation of natural habitat is the most significant

cause of biodiversity loss and the corresponding loss of ecosystem functioning. The next

most significant cause of biodiversity loss is invasion by alien species. It is currently

estimated that 8% of SA surface area is infested with alien species. At a conservative

expansion rate of 5% p.a., the impacts could double by 2019. The economic costs with

respect to water loss, soils and agricultural potential are incalculable.

Other causes of biodiversity loss are unsustainable harvesting and hunting of species,

pollution of water and air. All of these impacts are on the increase.

Climate change scenarios for South Africa all show that there will be severe impacts on the

spatial spread and quality of our biodiversity.

Freshwater Biodiversity

82% of South Africa‟s mainstem river ecosystems are formally classified as threatened. This

has a negative impact on irrigation supplies, soil quality and drinking water. As a general

rule, the more polluted the river systems are, the more expensive it becomes to prepare

irrigation and potable water supplies for human use.

It is estimated that 50% of the wetlands have already been destroyed11

, and that 36% of

freshwater fish are threatened (due largely to the poor conditions of the water courses).

Furthermore, up to 60% of those that are endemic may be threatened due to introduced fish

species.

River ecosystems are under pressure from over-abstraction of water on a large scale, and this

will escalate as economic growth uses up the last remaining 1.2% – 1.7% surplus water

capacity that is left. River biodiversity is also directly impacted by land management – poor

11 . Wetlands play the most important role in natural systems as water purifiers. The fewer wetlands there are,

the more money needs to be spend on mechanical/chemical water purification systems.

49

management of land results in loss of river ecosystem functioning due to leeching, run-off of

nutrients, soil erosion, and salinisation.

Marine Biodiversity

65% of marine biozones are formally categorized as threatened. 8 of the 13 estuary groups

that play a key role in maintaining marine biozones are formally categorized endangered.

Furthermore, climate change leading to changes in the passage or volume transport of the

Agulhas and Benguela currents is likely to have enormous implications for marine biota

along the South African coast. The first evidence of this emerged this year as Namibian

fishing fleets reported that concentrations of fish were migrating to nodes far removed from

there normal locations resulting in significant declines in the fishing economy.

In the marine environment, unsustainable harvesting of marine living resources is the single

most significant cause of biodiversity loss. South African fishers (commercial, subsistence,

artisanal and recreational) catch over 250 marine species, however, less than 5 % of these are

actively targeted and together comprise 90 % of the catch. Major fisheries include the

pelagic purse seine fishery which targets sardine and anchovy, the demersal trawl and

longline fisheries that targets mostly hake, sole and horse mackerel, the traditional linefishery

that targets a wide variety of linefish species, and the west coast rock lobster and abalone

fisheries.

Loss of natural habitat often occurs together with this harvesting, for example when the sea

bed is trawled. Over-fishing, the destruction of the sea bed and the geographical dispersion

and shrinkage of fisheries by climate change will have two major effect: fishing communities

that depend on these fisheries for their livelihoods will lose out (as they already are), and the

economy will suffer the consequences of a declining fishing industry estimated to be worth

R4.5 billion per annum. Specifically, it is a source of cheap food, a key export sector and it

meets the high demand for high value fish in upper income and tourism markets.

Although South Africa has invested enormous public, private and community resources into

the expansion of protected areas, conservation areas and reserves, in future innovative

partnerships will be required to ensure that the burden for all this is not carried entirely by the

public fiscus. To this end the Protected Areas Act provides a unique opportunity. It provides

for any land, including private or communal land, to be declared a formal protected area, and

allows for co-management of such a protected area by the landowner(s) or any suitable

person or organisation. This means that formal protected area status, with an associated

property rates exclusion in terms of the Municipal Property Rates Act, is not limited to state-

owned land, and that government agencies are not the only organisations that can manage

protected areas, opening the way for a range of innovative protected area arrangements that

were not previously possible. A related challenge is to make the links between protected area

development, sustainable tourism, and benefits to surrounding communities who should be

key stakeholders in protected areas.

50

Risks to 2019:

If current trendlines in biodiversity loss continue largely unchanged over the decade leading

up to 2019, this will mean that by 2019:

Very little will have been done to the research infrastructure required to improve access to

the quantitative information about historical or long-term trends in the condition of

South Africa‟s stock of biodiversity. If this is not addressed shortly, we risk further loss

of biodiversity, leading to amongst other things, reduction of our potential to protect

ourselves from and recover from disasters, sustain the livelihoods of those dependent on

these biodiversity resources, and keep the eco-systems going within which our socio-

economic systems are embedded.

We will still be virtually completely ignorant about the extent and quality of our marine

species which have to date not been systematically assessed at all.

There will still be no active knowledge about alien species and alien control program in

the marine environment with respect, in particular, alien species.

The value of the fishing industry (commercial, recreational, subsistence) estimated to be

worth R4.5 billion per year will have halved pushing up poverty and unemployment

levels in the coastal Provinces and undermining employment in downstream food

processing industries.

The value of our cultivated crops could be at risk due to the fact that biodiversity loss can

result in the elimination of the natural predators (such as Ladybirds) that retard the

unrestricted expansion of predators that feed off crops (such as afids); and it can also

result in a decline of the bee population with consequences for pollination.


In response to key trendlines that made it clear that biodiversity is a major asset and therefore

threats to biodiversity were a „binding constraint‟, the Government initiated a range of

sustainable resource use interventions that created new opportunities by 2019, including:

nation-wide grassroots initiatives to minimise the loss and degradation of natural habitat,

especially in threatened ecosystems. This required working with production sectors that

are major land users (such as agriculture, infrastructure and property development,

forestry and mining), as well as communities and local government, to develop and

implement sector-specific community-based wise-practice guidelines to minimise loss of

natural habitat and species in threatened ecosystems, and to protect ecosystem

functioning.

the intensification of measures introduced in the 1990s to control the impact of invasive

alien species (plants, animals and micro-organisms) by preventing them from entering

the country and controlling those already present, including improved coordination of

institutions involved such as Department of Water Affairs and Forestry, Department of

Agriculture, DEAT (including Marine and Coastal Management), Department of Health,

51

Customs and Excise, and Department of Transport (through their management of

harbours and airports).

the implementation of a completely new approach to conserving our fisheries for the

benefit of South African and poor fishing communities in particular thus making South

Africa a world leader in the field – this entailed extensive engagements with the

commercial fishing industry and local fishing communities resulting in a new Act that

placed severe limits on large-scale commercial fishing and ecologically destructive

fishing methods, favoured the fishing rights of local fishing communities but within

regulated ecological constraints, and established a monitoring and regulation system

informed by a new University-based database on the status of marine species.

the inclusion of biodiversity opportunities and constraints, as well as integrated natural

resource management, into the IDPs of Local Governments – an achievement that was

made possible by a nation-wide capacity building programme for Local Government co-

managed by the Department of Provincial and Local Government and the Department of

Environmental Affairs and Tourism with major funding from the Global Environmental

Facility.

using the Protected Areas Act as amended, the expansion of the protected area network

through various innovative mechanisms, including public-private-community

partnerships - significantly, certain eco-villages and sustainable neighbourhoods were

defined as „protected areas‟ because they were designed to be autonomous with respect

energy, water, sanitation and solid waste and in return benefitted from reduced property

taxes.

4.8 Coastal and Marine Environment

Trendline 2019

Three main issues affect the physical marine and coastal environment of South Africa, these

being Climate change, Marine pollution and Modification/Loss of habitat.

Climate change

The effects of global climate change are becoming increasingly apparent in effects on key

atmospheric and oceanographic parameters around the world (e.g. increasing frequency and

intensity of extreme weather events and rising sea levels). Long term monitoring of sea

surface temperatures, mean sea level and rainfall in South Africa indicates that changes in the

local environment are similar to those of global patterns. Many of these changing parameters

are likely to have significant consequences for marine ecosystems and the fisheries they

support, predicted to most severely impact on subsistence and small-scale fishing sectors.

The key parameter that is expected to most greatly impact on the marine environment are

rising sea surface temperatures, rising mean sea level, decreasing rainfall, changing

pressure/wind fields, increasing CO2 concentration, and increasing UV radiation. Sea surface

temperatures off southern Africa are reported to have increased by 0.25 C per decade over

the past four decades.

52

Marine Pollution

Pollution of coastal waters can originate from:

shipping activity (accidental or deliberate discharges, garbage dumping);

land-based sources (industrial, municipal, agricultural run-off); and

atmospheric gases.

By international standards, coastal waters around South Africa are considered to have very

low levels of pollution, but this may well be changing:

it is estimated that as much as 82 000 tonnes of oil has been accidentally or deliberately

discharged into South African coastal waters since 1994;

approximately 1.3 million cubic meters of wastewater is discharged through as many as

67 discharge points into South Africa‟s marine environment on a daily basis;

since 2000 there has been a significant increase (as much as 62%) in the amount of daily

wastewater discharged into the marine environment;

more than 50% of the discharge points release effluent into the surf zone with the

remaining discharge points releasing effluent into estuaries or offshore.

Modification and/or Loss of coastal and marine habitat

Over the past 50 years, coastal cities around the world have grown dramatically and are

predicted to continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The general appeal of living at the

coast, increased tourism, increased opportunities for coastal retirement and coastal holiday

homes and the quest for employment have resulted in increasing populations and

development along the coastal regions of South Africa. As much as 40 % of South Africa‟s

population lived within 100 km of the coast in 2005, resulting in substantial development

pressure for infrastructure, housing, roads etc. The increasing population and development

pose severe threats to sustainability of resources in the coastal zone. Conserving the

biodiversity of natural or undeveloped coastal areas is increasingly threatened by large-scale

urban developments, mostly residential or recreational estates (e.g. golf estates which have

particularly adverse affects on natural systems and resources).

South Africa‟s marine and coastal environment is mined for heavy metals (titanium and

zirconium), fossil fuel (oil) and diamonds. The process of mining unavoidably results in

disruption of the sediment, the extent of which is determined by the type of mining. Rapid

advances in mining technology are also enabling the mining industry to mine in increasingly

deeper water and to mine increasingly lower grade ores which will also ensure that virtually

no areas are left untouched in the future, unless they are protected by legislation.

Risks to 2019:

If current trendlines in coastal and marine physical environmental degradation continue

largely unchanged over the decade leading up to 2019, this will mean that by 2019:

53

temperate changes caused by global warming, increases in the mean sea level and higher

sea temperatures will have significantly altered the marine eco-systems in most of our

coastal regions;

the continued increases in the pollution of coastal waters from shipping activities, land-

based sources and atmospheric gases will have contributed extensively to the degradation

of our marine eco-systems with negative consequences across a number of economic

sectors, e.g. fishing, tourism, property development in holiday towns, and municipal

waste management;

loss of coastal and marine habitat due to the growth of coastal cities, again with negative

consequences for the future development of these towns and cities.


In response to key trendlines that made it clear that the coastal and marine environment is a

major asset and therefore the pollution and degradation of this environment constitutes a



Climate Change: incorporation into a Climate Change Response Strategy for South Africa

of an appropriate set of adaptation strategies with respect to changes in the marine and

coastal physical environment. Although there was in the 2007-2010 period substantial

uncertainty about the exact nature, magnitude and timing of the impacts that climate

change will have on marine biota and fisheries, judicious practical steps were taken to

address the potential affects of climate change on the coastal and marine environment –

steps which by 2019 began to pay off compared to other middle developing countries who

only started to act after it was much too late to make a difference. Some of these steps

included:

- the mounting of a general awareness campaign regarding the likely effects and

potential impacts of climate change so that the relevant interests, communities and

institutions could start planning ahead;

- monitoring of key atmospheric, oceanographic and biotic parameters for early

warning of changes;

- the promotion of research into and the development of various means to reduce

reliance on marine resources;

- establishment of rigorous control measures for the development of the coastal zone to

eliminate marine pollution entirely, in particular with respect to sewerage.

54

Marine Pollution: in order to implement the well developed legislation governing marine

pollution that had been formulated prior to 2005, a special Marine Pollution Unit was

established within an appropriate Department (DEAT? SAPS? Provinces?) to police

marine pollution. It was provided with staff and a budget, and an operating framework

that made it possible to work directly with Local Governments. The Unit managed a

nation-wide monitoring system to determine the exact location and scale of every

discharge unit along the coast, and it also managed the monitoring of the implementation

of pollution control directives.

Modification and/or Loss of Habitat: Although legislation to control development in the

coastal zone had developed prior to 2005, it was fragmented and did not provide clear

guidelines for implementation at provincial or municipal levels. As a result, DEAT and

DPLG cooperated to harmonise legislation and land-use regulations across all the coastal

Provinces.

4.9 Air quality

Trendline 2019

„Poor Air Quality‟ is frequently associated with visual emissions such as visible stack or

vehicle emissions or smell. However, the standard scientific practice is ambient air quality

monitoring that measures concentrations of specific air pollutants, commonly sulphur dioxide

(SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon monoxide (CO), particulate matter (PM) and ozone

(O3). However, the limitations of ambient air quality monitoring as the only method of

assessing air quality should be recognised: of the more than 100 pollutants present in a

typical urban environment, continuous monitoring stations usually only measure

concentrations of the common five main pollutants referred to above. Due to cost or technical

limitations, pollutants such as Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs), Polycyclic Aromatic

Compounds (PAHs), dioxins/ furans and lead compounds are not continuously measured.

Furthermore, data obtained at a few locations in an area typically covering hundreds if not

thousands of km2 cannot be assumed to be representative of exposure throughout the area.

Thus, whilst important, ambient air quality monitoring data are not a sufficient basis for

assessing air quality.

A second widely used method of assessing air quality is the compilation of an Emission

Inventory, a compilation of all significant pollution sources and the emission rates from these

sources, compiled into an electronic database to facilitate analysis of the data.

Ozone and a significant fraction of PM2.5 are secondary pollutants – they are not emitted

directly from sources but are the result of atmospheric transformation processes. Air pollution

modelling is required to determine the relationship between precursor pollutants - VOCs and

NOx for ozone, SO2 , NOx and ammonia for PM2.5.

Defining and assessing „air quality‟ thus requires:

55

ambient air quality monitoring, including both continuous and periodic

measurements;

the compilation of a comprehensive Emissions Inventory; and

air pollution modelling.

Sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides (NOx, consisting of nitrogen dioxide [NO2] and nitric oxide

(NO), carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds and particulate matter are emitted from

vehicles, coal fired power plants and the fuels (coal, wood and paraffin) commonly used (in

the absence of electricity) for domestic cooking and space heating. VOCs and PM are generic

terms for groups of individual chemical compounds. Typically, 50 to 80 individual VOC

species are discharged from vehicles; similarly PM consists of a large number of species,

including heavy metals, sulphates, nitrates, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and

dioxins/ furans. Ozone (O3) is formed as a result of the reactions involving precursors NOx,

VOCs and CO, in the presence of sunlight (ultraviolet). Secondary PM2.5 (PM less than 2.5

microns in diameter) is formed though atmospheric chemistry involving the acidic gases SO2

and NO2 and ammonia NH3. There are thus, typically, more than 100 individual pollutants in

the typical urban atmosphere, each with widely differing health and environmental impacts.

The main greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide

(N2O). Fossil fuel (coal, petrol, diesel, fuel oil) combustion is the main source of these gasses.

Other activities that contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions include agricultural

activities, cement manufacture, landfills, petrochemical production, agricultural residue

burning and coal mining.

Stratospheric ozone depleting substances, including several potent greenhouse gases, are

discharged as fugitive emissions from air conditioning and other systems.

Air pollution causes or contributes to:

ill-health and premature mortality (deaths)

crop and vegetation damage

deterioration in visibility

global warming/ climate change

food contamination

corrosion damage to structures and building

stratospheric ozone depletion

Ambient air quality cannot be directly controlled and regulated. Only the activities that cause

deteriorated ambient air quality can be managed and/or regulated. It is therefore of

fundamental importance to identify the activities that are the main sources (direct and

indirect) of air pollution, and to understand the societal and technological drivers of these

activities.

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The demand for energy is a major - but not the only - contributor to deteriorated air quality.

The demand for energy and the mode of energy production are the main drivers of poor air

quality in South Africa. Emissions from petrol and diesel powered vehicles, (electric) power

generation plants, domestic fuel combustion and industrial plants are the main sources of air

pollution.

Road Transportation:

Road transportation is the dominant mode of transport in South Africa. 90% of all trips to

work and education facilities are by road (car, bus, taxi). The sprawled out spatial pattern of

the cities (partly due to the apartheid legacy) means that low-income commuters travel on

average 30kms and for around 70 minutes each way. 80% of the 900 million tons of freight

moved each year is done by road. This highlights the significance of pollutants derived from

hydrocarbon usage. The following table reflects two scenarios: the „business-as-usual‟

scenario that retains the linkage between growth, hydrocarbon use and pollution levels, and a

second that includes emission controls and improved fuels (ignoring, for the moment, the

need to reduce total consumption of hydrocarbons for financial reasons):

Table: Petrol and diesel driven vehicle emissions at 3% and 6% growth rates

(in 1000s of tonnes/ year)

No change in emission

controls and fuels

With emission controls and

improved fuels

2004 2024 at 3% 2024 at 6% 2024 at 3% 2024 at 6%

Petrol Diesel Total Petrol Diesel Petrol Diesel Petrol Diesel Petrol Diesel Total

VOCs 260 94 354 470 169 835 300 71 34 125 60 185

CO 2442 148 2590 4411 267 7833 475 662 58 1175 103 1278

PM 0 51 51 0 92 0 164 0 9 0 17 17

NOx 199 452 651 360 817 639 1450 54 82 96 145 241

SO2 15 39 55 28 71 49 126 16 0 28 0 28

CO2 25085 20733 45819 45307 37447 80452 66495 40776 33702 72407 59845 132252

Except for CO2, drastic reductions in emissions are possible if emission controls and

improved fuels are introduced. This is a practical example of decoupling growth and resource

impact (in this case clean air) resulting in significant dematerialisation and cost benefits via

reduced spending on human and animal health, and on measures to combat degradation of

soils, food and buildings.

Cars use three times more energy per passenger-kilometre than busses, and five times more

energy per passenger-kilometre than trains. Therefore shifting from cars to busses and rail

transport modes immediate has energy efficiency and therefore air quality benefits. When it

comes to freight, air and road transport modes use 8 and 7 times respectively more energy per

tonne-kilometre than rail. These figures point to the important of modal choices.

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Coal-based Energy Production

The linkage between coal-based energy production and air pollutants is represented in the

table below, with two 2024 scenarios, i.e. one at 3% growth and the other at 6%.

Table: Eskom Electricity Production, Coal Usage and Selected Air Emissions, current

and projected

Year

Electricity from

Coal, TWH Coal Burnt, Mtpa CO2, Mtpa SO2, ktpa

NOx,

ktpa PM, ktpa

1995 152 79 147 1200 600 115

1996 164 85 159 1300 650 112

1997 170 90 169 1380 690 83

1998 165 87 163 1580 670 65

1999 166 88 159 1510 670 67

2000 172 92 161 1510 670 66

2001 175 94 169 1500 680 60

2002 182 96 175 1490 700 58

2003 194 104 190 1730 760 59

2004 202 110 198 1780 800 59

2024 365 198 368 3310 1480 107

2024 648 351 634 5710 2560 190

Mtpa: million tonnes per annum; ktpa: thousand tonnes per annum

TWH: Tera-Watt-Hours (1012

watt-hours)

Once again, it is clear that if increases in coal-based energy production are coupled to rising

economic growth, and if „clean coal‟ technologies are not used, South Africa will be faced

with unacceptably high emissions of a range of substances with negative climate change,

health and natural system impacts. Energy from coal probably provides the strongest case of

all for dematerialisation. Coal-fired power stations will be required over the long-term to

stabilise the grid. However, there are only three relevant questions: How can they be made

for efficient (e.g. by productively using the surplus electricity generated at night)? What is the

minimum percentage that must be carried by coal-fired power stations to ensure the stability

of the grid with remainder generated from renewable energy? How can the CO2 be captured,

re-used and/or stored? There are no references to integrated research that answers these three

questions in a definitive evidence-based manner.

Paraffin

800 million litres of paraffin is used annually for domestic fuels. 15%-21% of South African

households use paraffin, all of them low income households. Paraffin generates high levels of

pollutant emissions (PM, SO2, NOx).

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Table 6: Domestic Fuel Usage and Pollutant Emissions, 2001 onwards (constant)

Usage Pollutant Emissions (tonnes per annum)

tpa (lpa) SO2 NOx VOCs PM10 CO2 CO

Coal 2 500 000 37500 3750 12500 10250 5 500 000 467 500

Paraffin (800 000) 6800 80 6880 200 2 080 000 36 000

LPG 2000 0.02 2.8 1 0.14 5 200 28

Wood 4 750 000 855 23750 104500 76000 7 125 000 546 250

tpa: tonnes per annum lpa: litres per annum

The enormous impact of the „dirty‟ fuels – wood and coal - compared with the cleanest fuel

available (other than electricity) – LPG - is clear. The high wood and coal emission rates are

due to poor combustion conditions; pollutants are discharged at ground level, exacerbating

their impact. Wood and coal combustion efficiencies are much lower than those of gas and

paraffin, increasing the energy cost of these fuels. The low thermal efficiencies of the

majority of low-income housing increases the demand for space heating in winter. The

continued use of these highly polluting and hazardous (paraffin) fuels constitutes a public

health and environmental disaster.

Standards

The limited data available indicates that WHO/ EU ambient air guidelines (standards) are

frequently exceeded in areas such as the Vaal Triangle, Cape Town, and South Durban,

particularly with respect to PM and SO2 concentrations.

Risks to 2019:

If current trendlines in air quality continue largely unchanged over the decade leading up to

2019, this will mean that by 2019:

we will still suffer the consequences of an inadequate air quality monitoring system and

therefore an absence of reliable data about the increasing economic costs of deteriorating

air quality;

we will still have energy production systems that are responsible for high levels of

emissions that negatively impact on social, economic and ecological systems (such as soil

quality with knock-on effects on food production);

a much higher proportion of public health expenditure and private medical aid insurance

will be required to cover the rising economic costs of mitigating the impact of

deteriorating air quality, e.g. rising health care costs in public hospitals and loss of

productivity in the workplace related to the steeply rising incidence of respiratory

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illnesses in that Province, or like in China investments in large-scale de-toxification or

soils and water courses;

acidification of soils, and incorporation of negative substances into the food chain with

knock-on effects for individual health and the health care system;

like in many other polluted parts of the world, investors will make locational decisions for

their business premises based on environmental considerations such as levels of traffic

congestion levels (time it takes to get to and from work), access to public transport (cost,

convenience, safety), and air quality – this dynamic might favour secondary economic

nodes within South Africa by 2019, but not if all our main cities are equally polluted.


In response to key trendlines that made it clear that air quality is a major asset and therefore

the pollution of our air resource is a „binding constraint‟, the Government initiated a range of

sustainable resource use interventions that created new opportunities by 2019, including:

Emission controls

The introduction of regulations and „environmental taxes‟ to finance the use of (South

Africa‟s well known capacity for producing) catalytic converters to reduce vehicle

tailpipe emissions by up to 90% (tests show that up to 90% NOx, VOCs and CO

emissions can be prevented from polluting the air).

The introduction of more stringent regulations (with a monitoring unit financed by an

environmental tax) that resulted in the installation of emission control devices (gas

scrubbers, electrostatic precipitators, filters, etc.) on industrial stacks that reduced

NOx emissions by 70%, SO2 emissions by 95% and PM emissions by up to 99% - this

particular intervention was hailed as one of the cheapest and most effective

dematerialisation initiatives of the decade, with particularly beneficial results for the

poorer communities living around industrial areas like South Durban, Sasolburg, etc.

The introduction of regulations that resulted in the application of much more stringent

technology standards on VOC storage and distribution facilities which succeed by

2019 in reducing emissions by up to 70%.

Energy demand reduction

The successful introduction of public transport systems in all our major urban areas,

coupled to the enforcement of new urban design parameters that substantially reduced

the average distances between home and work and between home and educational

facilities (making cycling possible for most people thus reinforcing the Department of

Transport‟s cycling promotion campaigns). These measures contributed significantly

to reduced motor vehicle use, reduced private motor vehicle ownership, reduced road

60

congestion and reduced spending on road construction, thus freeing up resources for

poverty eradication.

In line with initiatives that started with the launch of ASGI-SA, freight transport

systems were restructured to rationalise freight movement resulting a major shift from

road to rail-based freight movement over the decade leading up to 2019 – this

included reversing the unbridled privatisation of logistics at harbours and railway

stations that was the cause of huge inefficiencies.

The energy efficiency regulations announced by the Minister of Minerals and Energy

in her budget speech in 2007 resulted in regulations that forced industries to make

major energy efficiency improvements with respect to insulation, more efficient

electric motors, less energy intensive building materials, the application of ecological

design principles to all new buildings, the replacement of all incandescent lighting

and over time fluorescent lighting with LED („low energy diode‟) lighting (as the

prices fall for this new lighting technology), and the introduction of geo-thermal

heating/cooling systems – these energy efficiency measures reduced energy

consumption in industrial areas by 20%.

The energy efficiency regulations referred to above were also introduced into

domestic houses, resulting in reductions of consumption of grid electricity by 40%

compared to average household consumption in 2007. Domestic energy demand was

reduced through improved housing insulation; the use of solar hot water heating; LP

gas for cooking but by 2012 the introduction of a new electric stove with hot plates

made from a new material built by a South African manufacturer using a patented

nanotechnology that made it possible to instantly heat the hotplate using a 5% of the

energy used by a normal electric stove; correct north-south orientation; underground

geo-thermal passive heating/cooling systems; appropriate building materials

(including – following France and Ireland – the stimulation of a new building

materials sector using hemp grown on marginal land in poor rural communities); and

(following the example set by Governor Schwarzennegger in California) the

introduction of grid-connected rooftops made from solar roof tiles (i.e. roof tiles with

built-in photovoltaic chips that generate energy into the grid) to build the roofing for 1

million houses within a legal structure that made it possible for ESKOM to finance

and own the roofs of these houses (together they would be equivalent to an installed

capacity of 3 million KWh).

It is worth noting that by 2019 the South African experience confirmed what many

authorities were arguing a decade earlier, namely that energy efficiency measures are

probably the quickest, easiest and most cost effective dematerialisation interventions.

It was therefore unsurprising that the single biggest global sustainability initiative was

the announcement by the Clinton Foundation in 2007 that the biggest multi-billion

dollar fund ever created to finance sustainability was for increasing the energy

efficiency of buildings on a global scale. South Africa was able to access these funds

and related expertise.

61

Promotion of clean fuels and renewable energy

The use of coal, wood and especially paraffin as domestic fuel were replaced entirely

by 2019 by LPG, ethanol gel fuel and electricity;

As has happened in the city of Delhi and various Brazilian cities, the eventual

termination of oil imports as various ecologically sustainable biofuels were introduced

had the indirect effect of massively improving air quality in the major urban areas.

4.10 Summary and Conclusion

This review of the main trends, risks and opportunities in the key strategic resource sectors

reinforces the assumption that South Africa has a rich endowment of natural resources, but it

also reveals that it is no longer possible to take this endowment for granted. It is clear that we

are rapidly using up our natural resources as we pursue growth and seek to eradicate poverty.

These natural resources are not simply primary physical resources such as water, coal, fish

and soils, but also natural resources that can be degraded, i.e. air quality, water systems

(rivers, dams, acquifers, etc), biodiversity systems, and marine systems. Growth and poverty

eradication strategies are not decoupling from unsustainable natural resource use and

exploitation. To this extent, our transition has not broken away from the natural resource

exploitation model put in place by colonial conquest and refined during the apartheid era.

However, it is also clear that technologies and practices exist that open up opportunities for

decoupling unsustainable resource use from growth and poverty eradication strategies.

The analysis confirms that thresholds are now being (b)reached which if ignored will

generate dysfunctional economic costs that will undermine investments in growth and

poverty eradication. The quest that must now be addressed is whether our national

infrastructure investment programme could be oriented in way that will lead towards more

sustainable outcomes by 2019.

5 Sustainability, Micro-Economics and the National Infrastructure Programme

5.1 Micro-Economic Reform Strategy (MERS): Summary Overview

The national infrastructure investment programme must be contextualised within the MERS

framework. It is common cause that growth acceleration will require more purposive and

strategic interventions to overcome the „binding constraints‟. The MERS has three main

elements: to address deficiencies in input sectors such as transport and communications; to

exploit opportunities to improve crosscutting interventions such as small business

development and the performance of state-owned enterprises (SOEs); and to develop and

improve sector specific strategies for sectors which have significant potential for growth

and/or employment creation and/or exports. The NIPF describes the framework the industrial

sector interventions.

62

The MERS focus areas are:

Input sectors/utilities:

Transport and logistics (with useful references to the importance of rail);

Energy (focussed mainly on new generation capacity, not sustainable resource use);

Telecommunications ;

Water (focussed mainly on investments in more bulk storage and pricing rather than

sustainable resource use);

Crosscutting interventions:

Human resource development (HRD);

Technology and R&D;

Access to capital;

Infrastructure – the key opportunity for sustainability;

Management of state owned enterprises (SOEs);

Economic development capacity of local government – closely linked to infrastructure

with major opportunities in sustainable resource use businesses (Xuza & Swilling,

forthcoming);

Geographic spread;

Small enterprises;

Investor perceptions;

Black Economic Empowerment (BEE);

Africa

Priority growth and employment sectors are:

Agriculture/agro-processing (with no reference to soils and soil quality)

Tourism (which assumes biodiversity conservation is successful)

Cultural and Craft industries

Information and Communication Technology (ICTs)

Mining & metals

Clothing & textiles

Chemicals & biotechnology (which depends on our rich heritage of genetic resources)

Auto & transport

63

Services

From a sustainable resource use perspective, the MERS will need to upgrade it‟s conception

of “input sectors” and it may need a new “cross-cutting intervention” called Sustainable

Resource Use with, for example, a special focus on so-called environmental industries such

as the recycling sector, renewable energy sector, organic farming, biotechnology (not the GE

variety, but rather the more profitable bio-mimicry and health food orientations), new

building materials sectors (e.g. hemp), and ecologically sustainable biofuels, etc.

5.2 Spatial planning: NSDP and IDPs

The resurgent commitment across state structures to building a developmental state, the

virtual disappearance of talk about privatisation, and constant references to state-led

investment, raises the obvious question as to the spatial dimensions of investment strategies.

This is where the remarkably influential National Spatial Development Perspective comes in.

This document cuts right across the rural development agenda by articulating a commitment

to an urban bias for state-led investments, in particular infrastructure investment. Based on

the argument that investment should target spaces where there is a combination of highest

social need (i.e. poverty) and greatest potential for growth, this document concludes that most

rural areas have low potential and most inner city areas don‟t have high enough needs. The

result is the targeting of new growth areas within certain non-core parts of metropolitan areas

and in core areas of growing secondary cities. If one could map the state‟s vision of where

investments in fixed assets will land up and who will benefit, then a map of the NSDP‟s

“priority areas” would fit the bill. Whether the private sector follows the state into these areas

will depend heavily on the influence of BEE interests and whether key Financial Directors in

the Private Sector can reconcile quarterly reporting of profits with long lead times between

investment and break-even points.

From a sustainable resource use perspective, the twin criteria of social need and growth

potential to guide spatial location decisions will need to be complemented by a sustainable

resource use criterion. For example, if the social need and growth potential criteria on their

own result in investments that target non-core parts of metropolitan areas, this might result in

high value arable land being proclaimed for industrial and urban development. Similarly,

these two criteria on their own might result in investments that trigger unintended negative

consequences that a sustainable resource use perspective could have foreseen (e.g.

investments in transportation infrastructure that assumes that oil prices will not rise at rates

much higher than inflation). Furthermore, if the sustainable resource use criterion was

included this might reveal opportunities that a narrower growth potential and social need

perspective would not spot, for example the West Coast of the Western Cape Province is

probably ideal for massive large-scale wind farms that can trigger unprecedented local

economic development in the area and substantially boost generation capacity. Another

example would be areas that are perfectly suited for organic farming even though they may

64

be on marginal soils. Cleaner production opportunities provide yet another example,

especially if these have positive CDM spin-offs.

As far as the IDPs are concerned, to date they have with few exceptions ignored sustainable

resource use issues. This is in large part due to the failure by urban researchers to deal with

these issues (Swilling, 2004). However, DEAT has published guidelines on “greening” the

IDPs and Integrated Waste Management Plans which, together with various related

interventions, start a process that will result in the inclusion of sustainable resource use

criteria into IDPs and Provincial Growth and Development Strategies.

5.3 Rethinking the National Infrastructure Investment Programme

Despite the importance attached to the national infrastructure investment programme as a key

catalyst for increasing investment in fixed assets to 25% of GDP, a single integrated

document that spells out the details of this programme has not been released to the public.

Instead, the Deputy-Presidency has a presentation that states that R370 billion will be spent

over the “current MTEF period” and that this expenditure can be broken down as follows:

50% will be spent by the three spheres of government;

5% will be spent via public-private partnerships;

3-5% will be spent by the development finance institutions; and

40% will be spent by the State Owned Enterprises.

With respect to specific focus areas, the following priorities are identified:

Electricity (ESKOM, PBMR)

Water and sanitation

Logistics, i.e. Transnet

Transport, i.e. ACSA, public transport

ICT, i.e. broadband

Housing and roads

Maintenance



deseases

LED infrastructure

Significantly, besides the well known skills shortage that will negatively affect the

implemention of the infrastructure investment programme, the Deputy-Presidency refers to a

shortage of supply materials. Presumably this refers to cement in particular, but also timber,

fired clay bricks, and high tech materials.

There is no doubt that public investment in infrastructure is the best way to ensure that

growth sets up the conditions for authentic and meaningful poverty reduction by 2019.

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However, from the point of view of this paper, there are two key questions. The first is

whether any of them address the challenges discussed in Section 4. There are some obvious

positive investments, such as in public transport, upgrading of the rail infrastructure, housing

and water and sanitation. There are also some obvious gaps, e.g. investments in soil

rehabilitation, air quality and renewable energy on scale.

The second question is less about what it is being built, but rather about how the large number

of projects will be designed and implemented. There is an enormous opportunity to design

and build low-carbon infrastructures and buildings that could contribute significantly to

dematerialisation. Furthermore, the way infrastructures and buildings are designed and

implemented on scale could be the single biggest catalyst we may ever have to drive a long-

term commitment to sustainable resource use that, in turn, frees up resources for poverty

eradication. Finally, doing things in new ways opens up a wide range of new value chains

that could be exploited by new entrants into the sector with major employment creation

opportunities.

Below is a list of perfectly feasible and affordable 2019 outcomes using some of the ASGI-

SA priority investment focus areas:12

Electricity:

Energy Efficiency: after boosting the size of the Demand-Side Management

(DSM) fund, removing it from ESKOM control and establishing an efficient

decision-making system, energy efficiency of the average commercial and

industrial building increased by 20% compared to 2007 levels, and the efficiency

of the average household increased by 30%;

Renewable Energy: 70% of the energy required by 2019 is provided by coal-fired

power stations using clean coal technologies (funded in large part using CDM

funds), hydrogen storage and transportation, and nuclear power, while the

remainder is supplied from large-scale wind, solar, wave and biomass plants;

Solar roof tops: given that grid-connected solar roof tops (constructed using solar

roof tiles) can generate more than the house can consume, one million new houses

are constructed in this way by 2019 funded partly by the owner and partly with

funds that would have been invested in new generation;

Special deals aimed at supplying cheap subsidized electricity to large-scale

agricultural, commercial and industrial users is terminated.

Water and sanitation:

instead of building more dams, a major switch to sustainable ground water

exploitation and management (including storage and acquifer replenishment) will

have taken place;

12 . These projections are informed by the preliminary results of a multi-year sustainable infrastructure future

modeling research project coordinated by the author on behalf of the City of Cape Town, with funding from

UNDP. For the results from the first phase see Swilling (2006).

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the national water efficiency campaign gets backed up with investments that

reduce the loss of water from leakages from 40% in certain areas in 2007 to 10%

by 2019;

the combined impact of investments in leak reduction, enforcement via municipal

bye-laws of the use of water efficient household fittings, grey water recycling and

rainwater harvesting has reduced average consumption of water by domestic

households by 40% compared to 2007 levels;

instead of building more centralised sewerage treatment plants, a new generation

of neighbourhood-level plants are built that recycle grey water back into the

buildings for toilet flushing, capture methane gas for energy generation, and they

capture the nutrients for re-use in food production and greening.

Transport and logistics:

Massive investments in urban public transportation systems will have succeeded

by 2019 in breaking the tyranny of the private car culture, with special reference

to Bus-Rail-Transit (BRT) systems;

Long distance freight transport will be predominantly via rail; and

the dependence of the transport sector on imported oil will be broken, with a

major shift to the electric motor vehicle, the use of hydrogen and the use of

ecologically sustainable biofuels.

Housing:

By 2019 the process of locating low density sprawled out housing on the urban

peripheries resulting in massive escalations in transport subsidies and reduced

access to economic opportunity will have been reversed. At the same time, the

housing backlog will have been eliminated. This will have been achieved via

massive investments that resulted in the restructuring of property, land and

housing markets in favour of the poor, and in particular the location of the urban

poor much closer to the centres of employment.

By 2019 the populations of the major metropolitan areas will have increased

considerably in size, but the geographical extent of these metropolitan areas will

be the same as they were in 2007. This will have been achieved by massive

increases in densities, from the current average of 15 – 20 dwelling units per

hectare to 35 – 45 dwelling units per hectare. This will entail smaller plots sizes,

multi-story living, and neighbourhood designs that minimise the need for private

vehicle transportation.

Finally, all local governments had implemented by 2019 a set of bye-laws

modelled on the German „green house‟ regulations that made it compulsory for all

building plans to incorporate a standard set of design features, i.e. correct north-






67



diseases:

The publicly funded buildings that make up the social infrastructure will be built

in accordance with the highest standards of ecological design, i.e. correct north-






LED infrastructure:

The LED Framework for South Africa developed for public comment in 2006 by

the Department of Provincial and Local Government provides for a set of

institutional arrangements for sustainable community development that are a

radical break from the neo-liberal orthodoxy of competing cities. Based on

substantial public sector investments to support the development of these

institutions, by 2019 numerous metropolitan and secondary cities had

implemented successful LED strategies that contributed significantly to the

overall achievement of the national growth targets.

5.4 A Sustainability Perspective on Short-Term Risks and Opportunities

2019 may seem far away, but twelve and a half years is a medium- rather than a long-term

time span. How we respond to some short-term challenges will determine our options over

the medium- to long-term. Below are a set of risks and opportunities that are, in my view,

particularly critical from a sustainability perspective.

From a sustainability perspective, future economic growth strategies face the following key

risks:

Economic growth driven mainly be rising household consumption underpinned by rising

debt is clearly economically unsustainable. It is also socially unsustainable because while

some households are enjoying increased consumption, this does not apply to the majority,

with 20% at the poorest end of the spectrum probably experiencing declines in life

quality. Rising household consumption is also resource use intensive (energy, waste,

water, sewage, space) and therefore also ecologically unsustainable.

State-led infrastructure investments as catalyst for increasing total investment levels to

25% of GDP could exacerbate unsustainable resource use if technical specifications that

guide the detailed design of physical structures are not brought into line with international

68

best practice. This applies in particular to improving the levels of energy efficiency, waste

reduction, improved water use and a transition to public transportation.

Spatial planning via the NSDP and IDPs continues to ignore the challenge of ecologically

sustainable resource use, the result will be further marginalisation of rural development

and the continued failure to make our towns and cities more sustainable. This, in turn,

could exacerbate poverty rather than alleviate it.

Sectoral intervention policies and strategies are not yet linked to what Chinese Economic

Policy makers refer to as the “circular economy”, namely “cleaner production and

consumption” systems whereby, for example, waste outputs are regarded as productive

inputs, efficient resource use is prioritised, and renewable energy gets built into industry‟s

energy planning.

The new emphasis on agriculture as an employment generator and the re-prioritisation of

land reform is directly threatened by the unrecognised degradation of our soils and the

negative impact of the over-use of oil-derived chemical inputs, erosion and inappropriate

irrigation policies.

The following opportunities arise from the analysis taking into account sustainability

perspectives:

The most significant opportunity is the inclusion of sustainable resource use criteria into

the specifications that will guide the R400 billion investments in infrastructure. Instead of

designing infrastructures that many governments elsewhere are trying to dismantle, state-

led infrastructure investments to catalyse private investments could trigger a massive

fundamental shift away from unsustainable resource use approaches. For example,

investments in sewerage treatment capacity could emphasize new ecological approaches

such as biogas digestion; instead of investing in pro-private car transport systems invest

in public transportation; structures such as dams and habours and public buildings could

have in-built energy efficiency and renewable energy systems; and the definition of

infrastructure could include investments in wind power or the direct subsidisation of a

million solar roof tops (which is exactly what is happening in California, Japan and

China).

The immediate need to prevent rolling blackouts as supply outstrips peak demand could

translate directly into investments in internationally proven wind, solar, biofuels,

hydrogen and biomass energy strategies, starting with specific local projects that feed

energy directly into the grip.

As soil degradation becomes an increasingly obvious obstacle to employment growth in

the agricultural sector and land reform, there is a clear opportunity to develop a national

capacity for soils analysis coupled to investments in know-how that will reduce

dependency on chemical inputs (e.g. organic farming, bio-dynamic farming, bio-

mimickry, etc).

Fiscal expenditures on social and economic services must clearly continue their upward

trend, but partnerships with communities to ensure effective capture and developmental

use of these resources will be necessary. In particular, fiscal expenditures should

69

contribute to the capacity of poorer households to effectively engage in a wider set of

entrepreneurial activities that improve household incomes. Extending credit via various

means (with a special focus on women‟s savings groups) is clearly a major opportunity.

Science and technology investments need to take into account the need for greater

funding for technology improvements that can both improve sustainable resource use and

contribute to poverty eradication.

Biodiversity conservation must continue to be a key focus, not least because this is a

resource that the growing tourist economy depends on. However, non-tourist related

resources need greater attention, such as marine resources and fresh water supplies.

Biodiversity is not just a „green policy‟ issue, it should be a focus of our economy policy.

70

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