Abstract
This chapter situates itself in the climate justice discourse and unpacks the paradoxes in state and grassroots action. It argues that due to market-orientated and neo-liberal water and sanitation governance, the failure to take into account water and climate change governance as well as ecological and institutional economics resulted in climate change chaos. Due to this paralysis, communities failed to adapt to climate variability. The illogicalities and ambiguities in what the municipality says and does leaves local communities at the vagaries of nature and to deal with the resulting chaos albeit with some doing so in quite inspiring ways. The empirical data is collected through 120 interviews and four participatory action workshops conducted with civil society actors, government officials, academics, and communities of AmaQadi situated in North Central Durban, Umbumbulu in South Durban, Wood Glen and Zamani B in Durban Outer West, Ntuzuma G and Soweto in North Central Durban. The key finding is that the municipal Climate Change Protection Unit adopted a ‘climate-resilient' strategy on the one hand, but on the other, city electricity officials built power stations in flood plains, the Economic Development Unit promoted a shopping mall in a wetland, and eThekwini Water is introducing unpopular UD toilets to deal with water scarcity, without looking at externalities in wetlands and the discharge of faecal waste from broken sewers that compromise biodiversity and ecosystem balances. This chapter is contributing knowledge of climate change resilience and adaptation by communities within the framework of new institutional and ecological economics.
TopIntroduction
This paper is a review of water, health and sanitation related climate change adaptation strategies and institutional mechanisms that are being implemented in Durban. In this paper water and sanitation governance within eThekwini, eThekwini Water and Health Climate Change Municipal Adaptation plan (2009), CSIR Headline Climate Change Adaptation Strategy (2006), eThekwini Water Conservation Guideline (2010) and other policy guidelines that eThekwini Municipality developed as attempts to mitigate and adapt to climate change and the recent Durban Climate Change Partnership established through an initiative by eThekwini Planning and Climate Protection Department in 2010, is reviewed (Roberts, 2008, Hounsome and Iyer, 2006, Constable and Cartwright, 2009). In attempting to understand and analyse water and sanitation institutional mechanisms, impacts of climate change and adaptation in these sectors, an eclectic approach drawing environmental and ecological economics framework on externality, sustainability and property rights perspectives will be used (Quiggin, 2000:2, van den Bergh, 2007). The paper will outline background information about institutions and policies associated with water, sanitation, health and climate change adaptation, climate change hotspots in Durban, impacts of climate change on water availability and future access and externalities associated with floods, sea level rise and other disasters, preparedness of the municipality and its people to adapt to climate change, resources allocated to adaptation in Durban and the experiences and the role of civil society actors in adaptation (Roberts, 2008). This article is divided into contradictions in the water and climate change adaptation within eThekwini Municipality, theoretical framework, methodology, thematic areas and key observations on how communities deal with the negative impacts of climate change that are not mitigated by the Durban state, but on the ‘opposite sponsored’.
Figure 1.
Map of Rural Areas in Durban