On 19-20 April 2016, Kathleen, Sarah and Bahle attended a project meeting for the Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) for eThekwini Municipality. This project falls within the Durban Research Action Partnership (D’RAP) between the municipality and the University of KwaZulu-Natal. Our inputs are to help contribute towards thinking around indicators and variables on the social outcomes from strategic priority areas of the integrated development planning document of the city. We are pleased to participate as much of this work may influence our own Climate Change and Poverty Reduction project which is also exploring the socio-economic elements within EM’s climate change projects.
The SEA hopes to be used to help with the upcoming Spatial Development framework of the city. The work that is being done now reminds me just how much time it takes to prepare for ensuring good contributions towards larger policy documents. It is also a privilege to be part of the process and see the thinking and development of locally bounded thresholds of both environmental and social elements come together in order to meet dual goals of ensuring human development thrives within clear environmental needs of the city kept intact (or perhaps expanded?).
With the growing population of eThekwini, the city needs to think about issues of water quality, air quality, environmental and occupational health and other issues and therefore it raises questions of what types and amounts of environmental resources need to be invested, in this case, by the city, to ensure our citizens can have a decent quality of life. This point on environmental resource requirements is not easy to resolve since human needs are multi-dimensional and complex. But the UKZN and EM are endeavouring to put together some work which can help make informed spatial recommendations which will ensure green space (like the D’MOSS areas) or our catchments, rivers and ocean areas as well as our air can be maintained at a good quality.
Photo: Brainstorming around water
[photo credit: eThekwini Municipality]
The workshop also allowed the participants to start to work out the connection between planetary boundaries and socio-economic elements. Some brainstorming around water and its connection to health and reach came up as a few themes of exploration. Overall, it was a useful meeting and look forward to see how the Assessment unfolds.