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Sustainability for survival in South Africa
PII: S0959-3780(98)0009-0
Global Environmental Change, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 99—108, 1998 ( 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0959-3780/98 $19.00#0.00
Viewpoint
Sustainability for survival in South Africa Tim O’Riordan Sustainable development tends to be regarded in the North as a luxury item, whose time may come, but not necessarily yet. In the South, for the most part, survival and the maintenance of social order seem to be the prime motives, and sustainable development, being regarded as essentially a northern agenda, continues to receive short shrift from politicians and community leaders. These are misleading generalizations. In South Africa, sustainable development is emerging in a host of ways, though the actual phrase itself has no political franchise. It is a country seeking to heal the deep wounds of apartheid through which blacks gain access to the levers of democratic power and economic change. It is a country that is slowly and painfully recreating an active civil society at the very heart of its local government, backed by a powerful, but untested, constitution. It is a country that wishes to include environmental protection and resource conservation close to the centre of its policy and planning procedures. It is a country that recognises the significance of sustainability indicators as an index of environmental and social health, linked to economic opportunity. But it is also a country riddled by corruption, by dangerous levels of nepotism, by bureaucratic and managerial mismanagement, and by complex criminal syndicates that stir up almost endemic violence across the land. The relationship between global economic pressures, sustainability, and the maintenance of a democratic civil society remains a close call in South Africa. It is a drama that frames the sustainability transition in a myriad of paradoxes and tensions. As the drama is played out, sustainability, South Africa style, will have its course set out for it. Q 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All right reserved. Tim O’Riordan is an Associate Director of the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich. CSERGE is jointly located in University College London and UEA, and is core funded by the Economic and Social
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On the value of ecosystem maintenance and social order In a recent controversial analysis, Bob Costanza and his colleagues1 sought to place a value on the natural fabric that maintains life support on the planet. That fabric consists of a bewildering array of functions that arguably cannot be replaced by human artefacts, either because these functions are irreplaceable, or would prove too costly to reproduce by artificial means. This is not the place to pursue that analysis nor the dispute it provoked.2 Suffice to say here that in its the recent critique of environmentalist gloom and doom, the redoubtable Economist,3 did not mention the role of ‘natural capital’, namely the interconnected life support processes that keep the planet habitable. For all the many difficulties of valuation, the Costanza exercise should at least encourage society to look more carefully at those phenomena which society has never sought properly to measure or to care for in a comprehensive way, and over which no institutional mechanism for ownership or care are yet adequately designed. The Costanza initiative will run on and on. It needs to be supported by a similar heroic mission impossible, namely estimating the value of ‘social capital’. Like ‘natural capital’ social capital is an ambiguous phrase. In essence it covers two linked ideas. One is the scope for coping and adapting peaceably to change, in such a way as to reinforce social cohesion. The other is the investment in education and in community leadership to create a society that can learn its way to that special style of coping that is just, peaceful and secure for all citizens. The breakdown of civil order carries with it severe economic dislocation, not just social distress. The New Economics Foundation and others4 are trying to come up with ‘ecological footprint’ or ‘ecological space’ measures the form of a wider index of sustainable economic welfare. These seek to capture this very palpable value of any lower costs of social maintenance when a civil society becomes purposefully more harmonious through education, care, empowerment and creative opportunism. So far, even Costanza-like pioneering attempts at calculating social capital has eluded our measurement skill and, for the most part, our organized attention. However imperfect the first attempts may prove to be, the coupling of social and natural capital accounts is likely to be a concept that will attract political attention in the near future. One early sign is the fresh look at sustainable development recently published by the Government as a consultation paper (Department of Environment, 1998). Here the
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Continued from page 99 Research Council. Professor O’Riordan’s study leave visit to South Africa was financed by the Oppenheimer Foundation, part of the charitable arm of the Anglo-American Corporation. He is enormously grateful to the Foundation for the support he received, as well as to colleagues in the Universities of Natal and Cape Town. 1 The original analysis was written by Bob Costanza et al. (1997). 2 The most prominent critique of the Costanza analysis is by Pearce (1998) In this article there is also a vociferous reply by the Costanza et al. A future issue of the Journal of Ecological Economic’s will cover commentary by 13 teaching ecologists and economists. 3 This was a partly serious effort by the Economist to debunk the gloomsters for always being economically naive. It is an analyse that is certainly worth a read. See The Economist (1997). 4 For a comprehensive review of the footprint concept, see McLaren et al. (1998), and Sachs et al. (1998) The New Economics Foundation work is based on Jackson et al. (1997). 5 This point is made in a recent article in The Economist (1998).
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emphasis is upon a ‘revised’ Agenda 21 for the UK The rhetoric embraces the ‘modernist’ buzz phrases of the new Government, ‘to find solutions rather than emphasise conflicts; to build a decent society for all our people in which each citizen has a stake; to move forward, rather than look to the past’ (p. 3). The current debate around the theme of social inclusion and local democratization recognizes that the public sector burden of crime prevention, secure detentions, educational under-achievement, drugs abuse, the detrimental cycle of unemployment, poverty, ill-health, poor diet and family disunity, all of these matters are combining to prove insupportable for a global competitive economy to accommodate. Of course, it is also relevant to point out that in part, it is the globalization of economic competitiveness which is undermining the public sphere of social care and ecological viability. The dominance of the global economic viewpoint channels analysts towards a view that state dominance in the provision of social order is not the way to achieve results. Hence the fresh look at ‘tandem budgets’, joint strategies, and partnership deals. The new-look sustainability agenda is seeking to capture this desire to public—private partnerships and long-term shared responsibility for the maintenance of ecological functioning and the social order. As yet there is no champion of this new amalgam of social and community empowerment within a sustainability framework (For an analysis, see O’Riordan and Voisey, 1998). The old style environmental NGOs are beginning to come to terms with it, while the policy machinery of central and local government is still absorbing the shock of trying to integrate strategies heretofore in the hands of powerful committees and implementing structures. South Africa is a country that is very much in need of that calculation. It gives the appearance of standing on the threshold of the breakdown of civil order in many of its poorer townships and communities. The lack of capacity in local governance is showing up in an inability to regulate environmental mischief, simply because government macro-economic strategy, combined with bureaucratic mismanagement at the provincial level have led to a shortage of trained people on the ground, and insufficient money to pay for their services. For example, in Kwa ZulaNatal there are only two air pollution officers for the whole Province. In Johannesburg, over 2500 environmental impact assessments await to be monitored by a team of three officials. The role of the criminal justice institutions is also under examination. The courts are fickle in their handling of what appears to be similar cases, judges are increasingly suspected of corruption, and the police service is regularly shown to be linked to criminals and political protectors.5 In South Africa, the civil order is close to being undermined by crime (see Box 1), though one should be careful of facile conclusions. In the townships where the informal economy is the mainstay of survival, criminality is an additional part of the economic jigsaw. It may not be pretty, and it may lead to longer term social disintegration. But for the present, small-scale criminality may have its place in the disorder of things. The major difficulty comes when that criminality becomes syndicated and institutionalized, and that is what is happening now. At present, there is little prospect of deriving an indicator that might show how giving local communities a real stake in their survivable futures might turn round the tide of despair, personal violence, and economic disruption that criminality entails in modern South Africa. Nevertheless, the search for an effective antidote to this despair is part of the South African citizen empowerment initiative.
Sustainability for survival in South Africa: T O+Riordan Box 1 Crime in South Africa A particular theme of sustainable development for South Africa is the scope for community empowerment, via serious efforts to incorporate local governance into neighbourly well-being, to turn around the rising statistics of crime and violence. Not only is crime in general proving to be costly in terms of property losses and immense personal suffering, but crime saps community confidence and makes it difficult to encourage constructive community power. According to The Economist (13 December 1997, 20) the South Africa police know of 481 criminal syndicates involved in smuggling drugs, guns, diamonds, rhino horn, animals skins and luxury cars. The armed robber is often at the foot of a highly organised criminal chain. Nevertheless, it can be argued that crime is to some extent an outcome of failed promises to provide basic human livelihoods for poor South Africans who were promised much more than the ANC has subsequently delivered. The fixation with neo-liberal economic doctrines has caused the ANC to cut back public spending on critical social maintenance. South African Crime Statistics
Murder Robbery Carjacking Rape Assault Burglary
1994
1995
1996
1997 (to September)
19 672 62 877
19 131 60 354
29 399 204 984 235 081
33 139 303 076 243 778
18 639 50 414 9 790 36 137 311 884 250 207
17 709 50 416 9 869 37 905 312 949 249 754
Source: South Africa Central Statistical Services, reported in The Cape Times, 17 December 1997. See also ‘On Crime and Neo-Liberalism’, South African Report, September 1997, 1—2.
The triple helix In its noble efforts to modernize, South Africa is entwined in a triple helix (see Box 2). This is a combination of economic redistribution; social justice via democratization and shared opportunity; and environmental protection linked in part to public health. The primary drives are economic renaissance for the poor and improving the rights and liberties of those formerly opposed by apartheid. The economic development effort is geared to the positive redistribution of income, to job training, and to employment creation under the guise of the Growth Equity and Redistribution Programme (GEAR) financed and sponsored by the Finance Ministry and the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Democratic empowerment is the brainchild of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) of the governing African National Congress. This seeks to empower a civil society across South Africa, over constitutional rights, land rights and political rights, though in the process, there are also constitutional safeguards to an ‘environment that is not harmful to environmental health and well-being’. The RDP was originally a social-economic programme. Now GEAR has taken over the economic element, and the political component of empowerment has run into some difficulty with no obvious championing ministry. The arrangements for sustainability in its broadest interpretation in South Africa are outlined in Box 3. If there is any promoting ministry for the transition to sustainability in South Africa, it is the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT). This is responsible for promoting a consultative and participatory effort called CONNEPP. This is an acronym for the Consultative National Environmental Policy Process, aimed at creating a sustainable development strategy along the lines of promoting environmental protection and inclusive public participation. In practice, CONNEPP failed to attract a wide cross-section of the many desperate poorer communities in South Africa. This was partly due to its style of approach, that welcomed
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Sustainability for survival in South Africa: T O+Riordan Box 2 The triple helix Econoimic growth and redistribution RDP; GEAR; IDP; SDI
Democratic empowerment
$&&& CONNEPP &&&"
Environmental policy and protection
Local governance civilsociety
Environmental assessment participatory consultation
Souh African Constitution
A citizen’s right f To an environment that is not harmful to health and well-being (S.24a) f To ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development (s.24b). f To information from public and private bodies (s.32). f To access to the courts for redress of grievances (s.34). f Plus intergovernmental dispute resolution procedures (S.146 for provinces; S.152 for municipalities). RDP "Reconstruction and Development Programme GEAR "Growth, Equity and Redistribution Programme IDP "Integrated Development Programme SDI "Spatial Development Initiative (for targeted economic investment) CONNEPP "Consultative National Environmental Policy Process
the articulate and motivated, but tended to alienate those not used to public meetings to reading printed words. Because CONNEPP pushed the case for the environmental cause apparently at the expense of the economy and social uplift, it also managed to disenfranchise both industry and a number of valuable elements of the emerging civil society. However, South Africa does have an active environmental consultancy sector, as well as a strong and vociferous environmental justice movement, (in the form of the Environmental Justice Networking Forum), so the consultative process was more successful than perhaps it might have been as a result of their involvement. Nevertheless CONNEPP and the more inclusive notion of sustainability that is emerging in South Africa have not yet gelled. All this suggests that the interactive and supportive qualities of the triple helix in South Africa are not being promoted in a manner that might well lead to a very distinctive interpretation of sustainability for South Africa. There appears to be five main reasons for this current failure to grasp the potential on offer. 1. ¹he governing institutions of economy, society and environment are not properly connected at any level of governance (national, provincial, local). It is frankly too early in the reconstruction process for this to occur, despite constitutional arrangements for intergovernmental dispute resolution procedures, and despite various attempts at integrated development planning notably at the municipal level, aimed to do just this. In practice, there are too few really motivated people with the support staff and the bureaucratic opportunities to promote change. The organizational scope for integration depends on people as much as administrative structures and cash, and
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6
Integrated Development Programes aim to empower citizens group, strengthen the policy machinery of local government, link informal and formal patterns of governance at the local and provincial levels, and build in ecological safeguards. The best examples are found in Durban. See Nene (1997).
all are in short supply in modern South Africa, even though some extraordinarily gifted people are in place. 2. In the CONNEPP experience created an unfortunate image that sustainability is geared to environmental protection, to viable game reserves, to safeguarding indigenous plants and animals and to reduction of protection and waste. The socio-economic values of natural and social capital are not given the attention they so properly deserve in the South African context. Nor is the link to public health and environmental quality made as clear as many community leaders in the townships would like to see it promoted. South Africa is a living example of the essential character of mutual support between environmental and social well-being. Sadly, that combination is not yet too evident as a policy initiative yet for most politicians, bureaucrats and citizens. So the opportunity for true sustainability languishes in the down play of intergovernmental disputes bureaucratic infighting, and a fixation over macro-economic strategy. But in essence, South Africa has the administrative wherewithal for the sustainability transition as suggested in Box 3, but no effective organizational focus. 3. ¹he economic drive for more jobs, for both training, for more management and ownership of companies by blacks, and for greater regional investment, notably by overseas money, distort the meaning of sustainability more towards reliable growth than sound management of natural and social capital. The push for a successful GEAR is tempered by the regular visitation of the global economy which is cutting the price of gold, reducing its throughput for primary materials, and hauling in its investment capital. All of these global pressures strike against the conventional growth patterns of South Africa. Almost as many jobs in the mining and related industries are lost because of these pressures as are increased by GEAR investment and training programmes. This is all very disheartening for those who would like to see the triple helix actually create the Agenda 21 for South Africa, when the process is being driven in a lopsided manner towards jobs and competitiveness. Economic investment through GEAR and the Integrated Development Programmes6 clash with an emerging interest in full blooded environmental assessment. Up until now EIA has always been a bit of a Cinderella exercise is South Africa, usually aimed at facilitating a controversial decision and primarily in the hands of consultants who recognize that both the planning system and investment pressures are accommodative to development rather than to environmental well-being. There is no definable link between social and environmental assessments in EIA in South Africa. The environmental justice movement continually seeks to push the case for better integration, but the EIA regulations provide too much discretion to authorizing ministers to ensure that such calls are systematically ignored. The result is a failure to integrate any code of practice for civil society empowerment into the current EIA procedures. The enduring paradox is that any meaningful transition to sustainability in South Africa requires concerted action and many social, political and environmental fronts, but not necessarily in the name of sustainable development. This is one dilemma. Another is the failure to create a cohesive relationship between all these initiatives that might link sustainability to survival for the most vulnerable in South African society. So the paradox is the scope for success for loosely connected initiatives that enable all kinds of stakeholders to get constructively involved, but the lack of vision for a sustainable future that results from this disparate set of programmes.
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Sustainability for survival in South Africa: T O+Riordan Box 3
Institutions Promoting the Transition to Sustainability in South Africa President The Judiciary
Parliament
Governmental departments
The south Aftrican Constitution
Finance
Trade and industry
National Council of provinces
Environmental affairs & tourism
Water affairs and forestry
Mineral and energy affairs
Agriculture and land affairs
Housing Welfare and population
economic development strategies Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) Growth, Equity and Redistribution Programme (GEAR) Integrated Development Programme (IDP) Spatial Development Programmes SDZ — Spatial development zones SDI — Spatial development initiatives
Environmental Policy Process (CONNEPP) Regulation of use of renewable and non renewable resources Water management initiatives Coastal management strategies Nature conservation
Development Facilitation Public Enterprises Land tenure reform Promoting energy provision Extending welfare provision and eliminating fraud
Provincial affairs and constitutional affairs Provincial Government Municipal Government Local Government traditional councils — local, rural, representational NB: This is schematic, designed to reveal broad patterns. Much depends on the particular programmes and their policy settings. An arena of potential interest is the intergovernmental arrangements for coordination in the bottom box. The governing institution in South Africa are being shaped for a particular form of sustainable development in a surprising way. This chart shows the major departmental players and their resource-environmental-social responsibilities. The growth element is promoted by the economic departments (on the left hand column), the resource-environment issues by the two coupled ministries of environmental affairs and water, and the land development issues by the smaller and less politically connected department of agriculture and land affairs. Meanwhile one must bear in mind the three tiers of government, for the main responsibilities for environmental and land management lie with the provinces of which there are nine, while local government is now alive and in dramatic early transition, with the emergence of a link between Local Agenda 21 and community empowerment.
Empowerment, sustainability indicators, and LA21 in South Africa
7
For a valuable introduction to the relevant theory, see Renn et al. (1994).
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There is a way forward from the current state of affairs, so full of potential, but sadly still lacking in delivery. One is the whole push via RDP and local government generally towards giving all groups in society a real stake in managing their affairs. Box 4 summarizes the pattern of these relationships from a broad theoretical point of view7 Until now, the economic drivers have largely been legitimisation processes where power is coercive and environmental considerations are given lip service, despite much civil protest. Where investment in tourism schemes on the coast or in or near the key national parks are at stake, ‘fast track’ legitimizing consultative procedures are usually followed, much to the disenchantment of local community and environmental groups. The social drivers in schemes aimed at redistributing resources such as agricultural land ownership, water, re-allocation, soil management and waste recovery, have led to a more facilitation-focused EIA procedure, where power is manipulated in the interests of those who enter precisely to gain. The new breed of more mediation-oriented efforts at building community power through training
Sustainability for survival in South Africa: T O+Riordan Box 4 Consultative National Environmental Policy Process and Citizens’ Empowerment Legitimation (SDI procedures, and IDP processes) f Predetermined outcomes f Post-decision EIAs f Selective consultation f Coercive power Consultation (national parks planning; land allocation; water rights) f Regulatory requirement for due process f Pragmatic inclusion of stakeholders f Use of facilitation via EIAs f Manipulative power Building participatory institutions (Local Agenda 21; IDP in modernised form; water for work programme) f Proactive community training through RDP and empowerment programmes f Active search for disempowered interests f Use of mediation and arbitration f Shared power Community action (housing; biodiversity enhancement; waste to energy schemes) f Rise of self help CBOs f Direct aid investment for disempowered community groups f Links to health, education, informal governance f Devolved power NB: This is a sequence of increasing legitimacy and empowerment. The trend is towards the building of participatory institutions, notably through the new-look integrated development programmes (IDP) and for the imaginative use of unemployed labour to remove exotic and excessively demanding trees for much more water-frugal indigenous species-hence ‘water for work’. The establishment of waste to energy schemes promotes public health, provides jobs, and generates alternatives to coal-based energy.
programmes, charitable investments and specific political efforts and local self-help schemes has begun to emerge in the more advanced integrated development programmes. Some of the most encouraging examples can be found in the Durban Metropolitan area. But one should beware the scope for real integration of social, economic and environmental uplift in the heart of the South African city. Tony Christopher (Christopher, 1997) soberly reminds us that the legacy of forced separation of races and economic activity is reinforced in the allocation of local government boundaries. In one sense, therefore, the pattern of segregation and differential opportunity remains entrenched. In another sense, however, the overlap of formal elected local government with informal, RDP-based, community networks is creating racial alliances across the old boundaries. So the picture is not all bleak, even though the racially segregated legacy is largely still in place. So it is a matter of tantalizing possibility, that the deliberate build up of community empowerment at the local level is geared to making the triple helix become more of a reality for the disadvantaged. Such a programme would need to be very tied to locality and community, for the micro-scale
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is tremendously relevant for community building in South Africa. That in turn requires a series of internationally financed capacity-building programmes specifically aimed at community building through self help schemes, extensions of LA21 programmes, community-led sustainability indicator workshops geared to future integrated development projects, and to educational efforts that ensure that constructive civic involvement is an accepted part of the curriculum. All this sounds like a wish list, the prerogative of any visiting academic, but which carries no clout. Not necessarily so. The next step in the sustainability transition could be well just this combination of economic uplift, community coordination, and environmental well-being that is on offer through LA21, integrated development programmes, and community-driven sustainability indicators that drive the future path of land use planning and investment. ¸ocal Agenda 21 is just about alive in South Africa. It is most active in Durban, it is emerging as a creative force in the new metro-lead government of Cape Town, and it has a precarious toe-hold in Johannesburg and Pretoria (Patel and Hindson, in press: Hindson et al., 1996) When LA21 is most successful is where it has f abandoned the Northern prescriptions suggested by the International Council for Local Environment Initiatives based in Toronto and Freiburg, in favour of a more home-grown variety; f formed its own coordinating office connected to the planners, the senior executives, and to the interpreted (strategic) development analysts. This is particularly successful in Durban; f promoted a social agenda more than an environmental agenda, geared to community empowerment, through which health issues, environmental quality considerations, and the protection of indigenous vegetation play their part, but always in the context of new jobs and better social service provision; f recognized that RDP based community forums can best be built upon through new local governance structures and informal community networks. It is this creative combination of three social and political forces, namely the deliberate empowerment of the most vulnerable (via RDP), the new-look local democratic structures (via local government elections) and the fusion of existing community power networks (a matter of necessity in the pre-independence days) that is beginning to connect in the most effective LA21 programmes. This experience suggests that it is still wise to roll with the evolutionary punch, than to place all the potential goodies into a sustainability basket. So the most successful local initiatives in South Africa will let LA21 lie quiet for the moment and build up the lower stages of empowerment as depicted in Box 4. Sustainability indicators are one way through which this lateral transition to sustainability might be promoted in South Africa. There is a huge industry around sustainability indicators these days. The truth remains that this is a process rather than a product. The process is driven by community empowerment and coordination of signals of well-being, rather than handed out by scientists, official and planners. The most heartening experience for South Africa is the scope for linkage between empowerment efforts (to mobilize local networks of trust and civic responsiveness), health programmes (to show that environmental care improves overall health, especially for the most vulnerable), strategic environmental
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planning (to ensure that water resources and biodiversity are mapped and safeguarded for future generations to enjoy), and quality investment (recognizing that environmental and physical security is the essential prerequisite for footloose investment and economic uplift). All of this can be accommodated in a series of sustainability indicators, community led, but co-ordinated with planning, educational and investment effort, which clear the course for improvement via a series of targets and definable programmes of coordinated effort that translate to community-led change, monitored by the very groups where futures are the focus of the coordinated exercise. For this to occur, there will need to be a clearer definition of just responsibility between national programmes, provincial responsibilities and local involvement. That is turn means both recognition of strategic information collection (via GIS schemes and other organized data displays), as well as a device for ensuring that every relevant community organization is effectively incorporated into the process. It is in this arena that overseas, aiddriven, sustainability investment would be most beneficial for South Africa.
Agenda 21 by another name Agenda 21 has no political or social recognition in South Africa, beyond some important and well meaning elements of the CONNEP process. Yet there are many aspects of both formal governance and informal civil order that are moving towards the aims of A21 by a variety of means that have nothing to do with the label of sustainability. This is the dilemma, namely whether to push for coordination under the A21 label, or to allow fruitful innovations to flourish and gently corral them towards a more sustainable development vision. Right now, in South Africa, the second approach offers the better bet. There is genuine scope for real innovation in its transition to sustainability. This could be community led, location specific, but properly connected to higher levels of governance and to the global spending patterns. But to advance this will require social stability, honest administration, meaningful participation, and coordinated investment. In the last case, local pools of money and training capital should be responsibly run by local sustainability charities accountable to civic boards, but quasi-autonomous so as specifically arrived at local well-being. This in turn require some form of developmental levy set against the use of land and water and biodiversity (subject to strategic safeguards) that provide the basis for communityled uplift in the name of the triple helix. Here we return to the all important notion of ensuring the natural and social fabric of ecological support and purposeful civil order remain intact. South Africa stands poised on the threshold of ensuring that these two vital maintenance systems are mutually supportive. This is the survival element. To be effective and enduring, this effort really should be channelled through a sustainability drive, or in whatever name it is appropriately termed. Right now the combination of survival and security is tantalizingly on offer, but not yet in place. If the international community really want to assist South Africa in its vital transition to sustainability, this is the focal point for its attention over the next decade.
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References Christopher, A. J. (1997) ‘Racial land zoning in urban South Africa. ¸and ºse Policy 14(4), 311—324. Costanza, B. et al. (1997) The value of the world’s ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature, 387, 253—260. Costanza B. et al. (1998) Ecological Economics 5(1), 26—27. Department of the Environment (1998) Transport and the Regions Opportunities for Change: A Consultation Paper on a Revised UK Strategy for Sustainable Development. Publications Despatch Centre, Blackhorse Road, London, 25 pp. Economist (1997) Not all gloom and doom, 20 December, 22—23. Economist (1998) South Africa’s profligate provinces. 28 February p. 69. Hindson, D., King, N. and Peart, R. (1996) Durban’s ¹oday and ¹omorrow: Sustainable Development in the Durban Metropolitan Area. Indicator Press, Durban. Jackson, T. et al. (1997) An Index of Sustainable Economic ¼elfare for the ºK 1950—1996. University of Surrey, Centre for Environmental Strategy. McLaren, D., Bullock, S. and Yousuf, N. (1998) ¹omorrow’s ¼orld: Britain’s Share in a Sustainable Future. Earthscan Publications, London. Nene, B. (1997) Building an ºnderstanding on Community Based Development Fora. Urban Strategy Division, Metro Government of Durban, Durban, e-mail: [email protected]. O’Riordan, T. and Voisey, H. eds. (1998) ¹he ¹ransition to Sustainability in Europe. Earthscan Publications, London (in press). Patel, Z. and Hindson, D., Local agenda 21 in Durban. In Back from the Brink: Pathways to Sustainability in South Africa, eds. R. Preston-Whyte and T. O’Riordan. Oxford University Press, Cape Town (in press). Pearce, D. (1998) Auditing the earth. Environment 40(2), 23—28. Renn, O., Webler, T. O. and Wiedermann, P. (1994) Fairness and Competence in Citizen Participation: Evaluating Models of Environmental Discourse. Kulwer Academic Publishers, Dorderecht. Sachs, W., Loske, R. and Linz, M. (1998) Greening the North: A Post-Industrial Blueprint for Ecology and Equity. Zed Books, London.
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Global Environmental Change, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 99—108, 1998 ( 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0959-3780/98 $19.00#0.00
Viewpoint
Sustainability for survival in South Africa Tim O’Riordan Sustainable development tends to be regarded in the North as a luxury item, whose time may come, but not necessarily yet. In the South, for the most part, survival and the maintenance of social order seem to be the prime motives, and sustainable development, being regarded as essentially a northern agenda, continues to receive short shrift from politicians and community leaders. These are misleading generalizations. In South Africa, sustainable development is emerging in a host of ways, though the actual phrase itself has no political franchise. It is a country seeking to heal the deep wounds of apartheid through which blacks gain access to the levers of democratic power and economic change. It is a country that is slowly and painfully recreating an active civil society at the very heart of its local government, backed by a powerful, but untested, constitution. It is a country that wishes to include environmental protection and resource conservation close to the centre of its policy and planning procedures. It is a country that recognises the significance of sustainability indicators as an index of environmental and social health, linked to economic opportunity. But it is also a country riddled by corruption, by dangerous levels of nepotism, by bureaucratic and managerial mismanagement, and by complex criminal syndicates that stir up almost endemic violence across the land. The relationship between global economic pressures, sustainability, and the maintenance of a democratic civil society remains a close call in South Africa. It is a drama that frames the sustainability transition in a myriad of paradoxes and tensions. As the drama is played out, sustainability, South Africa style, will have its course set out for it. Q 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All right reserved. Tim O’Riordan is an Associate Director of the Centre for Social and Economic Research on the Global Environment (CSERGE) at the University of East Anglia (UEA), Norwich. CSERGE is jointly located in University College London and UEA, and is core funded by the Economic and Social
Continued on page 100
On the value of ecosystem maintenance and social order In a recent controversial analysis, Bob Costanza and his colleagues1 sought to place a value on the natural fabric that maintains life support on the planet. That fabric consists of a bewildering array of functions that arguably cannot be replaced by human artefacts, either because these functions are irreplaceable, or would prove too costly to reproduce by artificial means. This is not the place to pursue that analysis nor the dispute it provoked.2 Suffice to say here that in its the recent critique of environmentalist gloom and doom, the redoubtable Economist,3 did not mention the role of ‘natural capital’, namely the interconnected life support processes that keep the planet habitable. For all the many difficulties of valuation, the Costanza exercise should at least encourage society to look more carefully at those phenomena which society has never sought properly to measure or to care for in a comprehensive way, and over which no institutional mechanism for ownership or care are yet adequately designed. The Costanza initiative will run on and on. It needs to be supported by a similar heroic mission impossible, namely estimating the value of ‘social capital’. Like ‘natural capital’ social capital is an ambiguous phrase. In essence it covers two linked ideas. One is the scope for coping and adapting peaceably to change, in such a way as to reinforce social cohesion. The other is the investment in education and in community leadership to create a society that can learn its way to that special style of coping that is just, peaceful and secure for all citizens. The breakdown of civil order carries with it severe economic dislocation, not just social distress. The New Economics Foundation and others4 are trying to come up with ‘ecological footprint’ or ‘ecological space’ measures the form of a wider index of sustainable economic welfare. These seek to capture this very palpable value of any lower costs of social maintenance when a civil society becomes purposefully more harmonious through education, care, empowerment and creative opportunism. So far, even Costanza-like pioneering attempts at calculating social capital has eluded our measurement skill and, for the most part, our organized attention. However imperfect the first attempts may prove to be, the coupling of social and natural capital accounts is likely to be a concept that will attract political attention in the near future. One early sign is the fresh look at sustainable development recently published by the Government as a consultation paper (Department of Environment, 1998). Here the
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Continued from page 99 Research Council. Professor O’Riordan’s study leave visit to South Africa was financed by the Oppenheimer Foundation, part of the charitable arm of the Anglo-American Corporation. He is enormously grateful to the Foundation for the support he received, as well as to colleagues in the Universities of Natal and Cape Town. 1 The original analysis was written by Bob Costanza et al. (1997). 2 The most prominent critique of the Costanza analysis is by Pearce (1998) In this article there is also a vociferous reply by the Costanza et al. A future issue of the Journal of Ecological Economic’s will cover commentary by 13 teaching ecologists and economists. 3 This was a partly serious effort by the Economist to debunk the gloomsters for always being economically naive. It is an analyse that is certainly worth a read. See The Economist (1997). 4 For a comprehensive review of the footprint concept, see McLaren et al. (1998), and Sachs et al. (1998) The New Economics Foundation work is based on Jackson et al. (1997). 5 This point is made in a recent article in The Economist (1998).
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emphasis is upon a ‘revised’ Agenda 21 for the UK The rhetoric embraces the ‘modernist’ buzz phrases of the new Government, ‘to find solutions rather than emphasise conflicts; to build a decent society for all our people in which each citizen has a stake; to move forward, rather than look to the past’ (p. 3). The current debate around the theme of social inclusion and local democratization recognizes that the public sector burden of crime prevention, secure detentions, educational under-achievement, drugs abuse, the detrimental cycle of unemployment, poverty, ill-health, poor diet and family disunity, all of these matters are combining to prove insupportable for a global competitive economy to accommodate. Of course, it is also relevant to point out that in part, it is the globalization of economic competitiveness which is undermining the public sphere of social care and ecological viability. The dominance of the global economic viewpoint channels analysts towards a view that state dominance in the provision of social order is not the way to achieve results. Hence the fresh look at ‘tandem budgets’, joint strategies, and partnership deals. The new-look sustainability agenda is seeking to capture this desire to public—private partnerships and long-term shared responsibility for the maintenance of ecological functioning and the social order. As yet there is no champion of this new amalgam of social and community empowerment within a sustainability framework (For an analysis, see O’Riordan and Voisey, 1998). The old style environmental NGOs are beginning to come to terms with it, while the policy machinery of central and local government is still absorbing the shock of trying to integrate strategies heretofore in the hands of powerful committees and implementing structures. South Africa is a country that is very much in need of that calculation. It gives the appearance of standing on the threshold of the breakdown of civil order in many of its poorer townships and communities. The lack of capacity in local governance is showing up in an inability to regulate environmental mischief, simply because government macro-economic strategy, combined with bureaucratic mismanagement at the provincial level have led to a shortage of trained people on the ground, and insufficient money to pay for their services. For example, in Kwa ZulaNatal there are only two air pollution officers for the whole Province. In Johannesburg, over 2500 environmental impact assessments await to be monitored by a team of three officials. The role of the criminal justice institutions is also under examination. The courts are fickle in their handling of what appears to be similar cases, judges are increasingly suspected of corruption, and the police service is regularly shown to be linked to criminals and political protectors.5 In South Africa, the civil order is close to being undermined by crime (see Box 1), though one should be careful of facile conclusions. In the townships where the informal economy is the mainstay of survival, criminality is an additional part of the economic jigsaw. It may not be pretty, and it may lead to longer term social disintegration. But for the present, small-scale criminality may have its place in the disorder of things. The major difficulty comes when that criminality becomes syndicated and institutionalized, and that is what is happening now. At present, there is little prospect of deriving an indicator that might show how giving local communities a real stake in their survivable futures might turn round the tide of despair, personal violence, and economic disruption that criminality entails in modern South Africa. Nevertheless, the search for an effective antidote to this despair is part of the South African citizen empowerment initiative.
Sustainability for survival in South Africa: T O+Riordan Box 1 Crime in South Africa A particular theme of sustainable development for South Africa is the scope for community empowerment, via serious efforts to incorporate local governance into neighbourly well-being, to turn around the rising statistics of crime and violence. Not only is crime in general proving to be costly in terms of property losses and immense personal suffering, but crime saps community confidence and makes it difficult to encourage constructive community power. According to The Economist (13 December 1997, 20) the South Africa police know of 481 criminal syndicates involved in smuggling drugs, guns, diamonds, rhino horn, animals skins and luxury cars. The armed robber is often at the foot of a highly organised criminal chain. Nevertheless, it can be argued that crime is to some extent an outcome of failed promises to provide basic human livelihoods for poor South Africans who were promised much more than the ANC has subsequently delivered. The fixation with neo-liberal economic doctrines has caused the ANC to cut back public spending on critical social maintenance. South African Crime Statistics
Murder Robbery Carjacking Rape Assault Burglary
1994
1995
1996
1997 (to September)
19 672 62 877
19 131 60 354
29 399 204 984 235 081
33 139 303 076 243 778
18 639 50 414 9 790 36 137 311 884 250 207
17 709 50 416 9 869 37 905 312 949 249 754
Source: South Africa Central Statistical Services, reported in The Cape Times, 17 December 1997. See also ‘On Crime and Neo-Liberalism’, South African Report, September 1997, 1—2.
The triple helix In its noble efforts to modernize, South Africa is entwined in a triple helix (see Box 2). This is a combination of economic redistribution; social justice via democratization and shared opportunity; and environmental protection linked in part to public health. The primary drives are economic renaissance for the poor and improving the rights and liberties of those formerly opposed by apartheid. The economic development effort is geared to the positive redistribution of income, to job training, and to employment creation under the guise of the Growth Equity and Redistribution Programme (GEAR) financed and sponsored by the Finance Ministry and the Ministry of Trade and Industry. Democratic empowerment is the brainchild of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) of the governing African National Congress. This seeks to empower a civil society across South Africa, over constitutional rights, land rights and political rights, though in the process, there are also constitutional safeguards to an ‘environment that is not harmful to environmental health and well-being’. The RDP was originally a social-economic programme. Now GEAR has taken over the economic element, and the political component of empowerment has run into some difficulty with no obvious championing ministry. The arrangements for sustainability in its broadest interpretation in South Africa are outlined in Box 3. If there is any promoting ministry for the transition to sustainability in South Africa, it is the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT). This is responsible for promoting a consultative and participatory effort called CONNEPP. This is an acronym for the Consultative National Environmental Policy Process, aimed at creating a sustainable development strategy along the lines of promoting environmental protection and inclusive public participation. In practice, CONNEPP failed to attract a wide cross-section of the many desperate poorer communities in South Africa. This was partly due to its style of approach, that welcomed
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Sustainability for survival in South Africa: T O+Riordan Box 2 The triple helix Econoimic growth and redistribution RDP; GEAR; IDP; SDI
Democratic empowerment
$&&& CONNEPP &&&"
Environmental policy and protection
Local governance civilsociety
Environmental assessment participatory consultation
Souh African Constitution
A citizen’s right f To an environment that is not harmful to health and well-being (S.24a) f To ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development (s.24b). f To information from public and private bodies (s.32). f To access to the courts for redress of grievances (s.34). f Plus intergovernmental dispute resolution procedures (S.146 for provinces; S.152 for municipalities). RDP "Reconstruction and Development Programme GEAR "Growth, Equity and Redistribution Programme IDP "Integrated Development Programme SDI "Spatial Development Initiative (for targeted economic investment) CONNEPP "Consultative National Environmental Policy Process
the articulate and motivated, but tended to alienate those not used to public meetings to reading printed words. Because CONNEPP pushed the case for the environmental cause apparently at the expense of the economy and social uplift, it also managed to disenfranchise both industry and a number of valuable elements of the emerging civil society. However, South Africa does have an active environmental consultancy sector, as well as a strong and vociferous environmental justice movement, (in the form of the Environmental Justice Networking Forum), so the consultative process was more successful than perhaps it might have been as a result of their involvement. Nevertheless CONNEPP and the more inclusive notion of sustainability that is emerging in South Africa have not yet gelled. All this suggests that the interactive and supportive qualities of the triple helix in South Africa are not being promoted in a manner that might well lead to a very distinctive interpretation of sustainability for South Africa. There appears to be five main reasons for this current failure to grasp the potential on offer. 1. ¹he governing institutions of economy, society and environment are not properly connected at any level of governance (national, provincial, local). It is frankly too early in the reconstruction process for this to occur, despite constitutional arrangements for intergovernmental dispute resolution procedures, and despite various attempts at integrated development planning notably at the municipal level, aimed to do just this. In practice, there are too few really motivated people with the support staff and the bureaucratic opportunities to promote change. The organizational scope for integration depends on people as much as administrative structures and cash, and
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6
Integrated Development Programes aim to empower citizens group, strengthen the policy machinery of local government, link informal and formal patterns of governance at the local and provincial levels, and build in ecological safeguards. The best examples are found in Durban. See Nene (1997).
all are in short supply in modern South Africa, even though some extraordinarily gifted people are in place. 2. In the CONNEPP experience created an unfortunate image that sustainability is geared to environmental protection, to viable game reserves, to safeguarding indigenous plants and animals and to reduction of protection and waste. The socio-economic values of natural and social capital are not given the attention they so properly deserve in the South African context. Nor is the link to public health and environmental quality made as clear as many community leaders in the townships would like to see it promoted. South Africa is a living example of the essential character of mutual support between environmental and social well-being. Sadly, that combination is not yet too evident as a policy initiative yet for most politicians, bureaucrats and citizens. So the opportunity for true sustainability languishes in the down play of intergovernmental disputes bureaucratic infighting, and a fixation over macro-economic strategy. But in essence, South Africa has the administrative wherewithal for the sustainability transition as suggested in Box 3, but no effective organizational focus. 3. ¹he economic drive for more jobs, for both training, for more management and ownership of companies by blacks, and for greater regional investment, notably by overseas money, distort the meaning of sustainability more towards reliable growth than sound management of natural and social capital. The push for a successful GEAR is tempered by the regular visitation of the global economy which is cutting the price of gold, reducing its throughput for primary materials, and hauling in its investment capital. All of these global pressures strike against the conventional growth patterns of South Africa. Almost as many jobs in the mining and related industries are lost because of these pressures as are increased by GEAR investment and training programmes. This is all very disheartening for those who would like to see the triple helix actually create the Agenda 21 for South Africa, when the process is being driven in a lopsided manner towards jobs and competitiveness. Economic investment through GEAR and the Integrated Development Programmes6 clash with an emerging interest in full blooded environmental assessment. Up until now EIA has always been a bit of a Cinderella exercise is South Africa, usually aimed at facilitating a controversial decision and primarily in the hands of consultants who recognize that both the planning system and investment pressures are accommodative to development rather than to environmental well-being. There is no definable link between social and environmental assessments in EIA in South Africa. The environmental justice movement continually seeks to push the case for better integration, but the EIA regulations provide too much discretion to authorizing ministers to ensure that such calls are systematically ignored. The result is a failure to integrate any code of practice for civil society empowerment into the current EIA procedures. The enduring paradox is that any meaningful transition to sustainability in South Africa requires concerted action and many social, political and environmental fronts, but not necessarily in the name of sustainable development. This is one dilemma. Another is the failure to create a cohesive relationship between all these initiatives that might link sustainability to survival for the most vulnerable in South African society. So the paradox is the scope for success for loosely connected initiatives that enable all kinds of stakeholders to get constructively involved, but the lack of vision for a sustainable future that results from this disparate set of programmes.
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Sustainability for survival in South Africa: T O+Riordan Box 3
Institutions Promoting the Transition to Sustainability in South Africa President The Judiciary
Parliament
Governmental departments
The south Aftrican Constitution
Finance
Trade and industry
National Council of provinces
Environmental affairs & tourism
Water affairs and forestry
Mineral and energy affairs
Agriculture and land affairs
Housing Welfare and population
economic development strategies Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) Growth, Equity and Redistribution Programme (GEAR) Integrated Development Programme (IDP) Spatial Development Programmes SDZ — Spatial development zones SDI — Spatial development initiatives
Environmental Policy Process (CONNEPP) Regulation of use of renewable and non renewable resources Water management initiatives Coastal management strategies Nature conservation
Development Facilitation Public Enterprises Land tenure reform Promoting energy provision Extending welfare provision and eliminating fraud
Provincial affairs and constitutional affairs Provincial Government Municipal Government Local Government traditional councils — local, rural, representational NB: This is schematic, designed to reveal broad patterns. Much depends on the particular programmes and their policy settings. An arena of potential interest is the intergovernmental arrangements for coordination in the bottom box. The governing institution in South Africa are being shaped for a particular form of sustainable development in a surprising way. This chart shows the major departmental players and their resource-environmental-social responsibilities. The growth element is promoted by the economic departments (on the left hand column), the resource-environment issues by the two coupled ministries of environmental affairs and water, and the land development issues by the smaller and less politically connected department of agriculture and land affairs. Meanwhile one must bear in mind the three tiers of government, for the main responsibilities for environmental and land management lie with the provinces of which there are nine, while local government is now alive and in dramatic early transition, with the emergence of a link between Local Agenda 21 and community empowerment.
Empowerment, sustainability indicators, and LA21 in South Africa
7
For a valuable introduction to the relevant theory, see Renn et al. (1994).
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There is a way forward from the current state of affairs, so full of potential, but sadly still lacking in delivery. One is the whole push via RDP and local government generally towards giving all groups in society a real stake in managing their affairs. Box 4 summarizes the pattern of these relationships from a broad theoretical point of view7 Until now, the economic drivers have largely been legitimisation processes where power is coercive and environmental considerations are given lip service, despite much civil protest. Where investment in tourism schemes on the coast or in or near the key national parks are at stake, ‘fast track’ legitimizing consultative procedures are usually followed, much to the disenchantment of local community and environmental groups. The social drivers in schemes aimed at redistributing resources such as agricultural land ownership, water, re-allocation, soil management and waste recovery, have led to a more facilitation-focused EIA procedure, where power is manipulated in the interests of those who enter precisely to gain. The new breed of more mediation-oriented efforts at building community power through training
Sustainability for survival in South Africa: T O+Riordan Box 4 Consultative National Environmental Policy Process and Citizens’ Empowerment Legitimation (SDI procedures, and IDP processes) f Predetermined outcomes f Post-decision EIAs f Selective consultation f Coercive power Consultation (national parks planning; land allocation; water rights) f Regulatory requirement for due process f Pragmatic inclusion of stakeholders f Use of facilitation via EIAs f Manipulative power Building participatory institutions (Local Agenda 21; IDP in modernised form; water for work programme) f Proactive community training through RDP and empowerment programmes f Active search for disempowered interests f Use of mediation and arbitration f Shared power Community action (housing; biodiversity enhancement; waste to energy schemes) f Rise of self help CBOs f Direct aid investment for disempowered community groups f Links to health, education, informal governance f Devolved power NB: This is a sequence of increasing legitimacy and empowerment. The trend is towards the building of participatory institutions, notably through the new-look integrated development programmes (IDP) and for the imaginative use of unemployed labour to remove exotic and excessively demanding trees for much more water-frugal indigenous species-hence ‘water for work’. The establishment of waste to energy schemes promotes public health, provides jobs, and generates alternatives to coal-based energy.
programmes, charitable investments and specific political efforts and local self-help schemes has begun to emerge in the more advanced integrated development programmes. Some of the most encouraging examples can be found in the Durban Metropolitan area. But one should beware the scope for real integration of social, economic and environmental uplift in the heart of the South African city. Tony Christopher (Christopher, 1997) soberly reminds us that the legacy of forced separation of races and economic activity is reinforced in the allocation of local government boundaries. In one sense, therefore, the pattern of segregation and differential opportunity remains entrenched. In another sense, however, the overlap of formal elected local government with informal, RDP-based, community networks is creating racial alliances across the old boundaries. So the picture is not all bleak, even though the racially segregated legacy is largely still in place. So it is a matter of tantalizing possibility, that the deliberate build up of community empowerment at the local level is geared to making the triple helix become more of a reality for the disadvantaged. Such a programme would need to be very tied to locality and community, for the micro-scale
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is tremendously relevant for community building in South Africa. That in turn requires a series of internationally financed capacity-building programmes specifically aimed at community building through self help schemes, extensions of LA21 programmes, community-led sustainability indicator workshops geared to future integrated development projects, and to educational efforts that ensure that constructive civic involvement is an accepted part of the curriculum. All this sounds like a wish list, the prerogative of any visiting academic, but which carries no clout. Not necessarily so. The next step in the sustainability transition could be well just this combination of economic uplift, community coordination, and environmental well-being that is on offer through LA21, integrated development programmes, and community-driven sustainability indicators that drive the future path of land use planning and investment. ¸ocal Agenda 21 is just about alive in South Africa. It is most active in Durban, it is emerging as a creative force in the new metro-lead government of Cape Town, and it has a precarious toe-hold in Johannesburg and Pretoria (Patel and Hindson, in press: Hindson et al., 1996) When LA21 is most successful is where it has f abandoned the Northern prescriptions suggested by the International Council for Local Environment Initiatives based in Toronto and Freiburg, in favour of a more home-grown variety; f formed its own coordinating office connected to the planners, the senior executives, and to the interpreted (strategic) development analysts. This is particularly successful in Durban; f promoted a social agenda more than an environmental agenda, geared to community empowerment, through which health issues, environmental quality considerations, and the protection of indigenous vegetation play their part, but always in the context of new jobs and better social service provision; f recognized that RDP based community forums can best be built upon through new local governance structures and informal community networks. It is this creative combination of three social and political forces, namely the deliberate empowerment of the most vulnerable (via RDP), the new-look local democratic structures (via local government elections) and the fusion of existing community power networks (a matter of necessity in the pre-independence days) that is beginning to connect in the most effective LA21 programmes. This experience suggests that it is still wise to roll with the evolutionary punch, than to place all the potential goodies into a sustainability basket. So the most successful local initiatives in South Africa will let LA21 lie quiet for the moment and build up the lower stages of empowerment as depicted in Box 4. Sustainability indicators are one way through which this lateral transition to sustainability might be promoted in South Africa. There is a huge industry around sustainability indicators these days. The truth remains that this is a process rather than a product. The process is driven by community empowerment and coordination of signals of well-being, rather than handed out by scientists, official and planners. The most heartening experience for South Africa is the scope for linkage between empowerment efforts (to mobilize local networks of trust and civic responsiveness), health programmes (to show that environmental care improves overall health, especially for the most vulnerable), strategic environmental
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planning (to ensure that water resources and biodiversity are mapped and safeguarded for future generations to enjoy), and quality investment (recognizing that environmental and physical security is the essential prerequisite for footloose investment and economic uplift). All of this can be accommodated in a series of sustainability indicators, community led, but co-ordinated with planning, educational and investment effort, which clear the course for improvement via a series of targets and definable programmes of coordinated effort that translate to community-led change, monitored by the very groups where futures are the focus of the coordinated exercise. For this to occur, there will need to be a clearer definition of just responsibility between national programmes, provincial responsibilities and local involvement. That is turn means both recognition of strategic information collection (via GIS schemes and other organized data displays), as well as a device for ensuring that every relevant community organization is effectively incorporated into the process. It is in this arena that overseas, aiddriven, sustainability investment would be most beneficial for South Africa.
Agenda 21 by another name Agenda 21 has no political or social recognition in South Africa, beyond some important and well meaning elements of the CONNEP process. Yet there are many aspects of both formal governance and informal civil order that are moving towards the aims of A21 by a variety of means that have nothing to do with the label of sustainability. This is the dilemma, namely whether to push for coordination under the A21 label, or to allow fruitful innovations to flourish and gently corral them towards a more sustainable development vision. Right now, in South Africa, the second approach offers the better bet. There is genuine scope for real innovation in its transition to sustainability. This could be community led, location specific, but properly connected to higher levels of governance and to the global spending patterns. But to advance this will require social stability, honest administration, meaningful participation, and coordinated investment. In the last case, local pools of money and training capital should be responsibly run by local sustainability charities accountable to civic boards, but quasi-autonomous so as specifically arrived at local well-being. This in turn require some form of developmental levy set against the use of land and water and biodiversity (subject to strategic safeguards) that provide the basis for communityled uplift in the name of the triple helix. Here we return to the all important notion of ensuring the natural and social fabric of ecological support and purposeful civil order remain intact. South Africa stands poised on the threshold of ensuring that these two vital maintenance systems are mutually supportive. This is the survival element. To be effective and enduring, this effort really should be channelled through a sustainability drive, or in whatever name it is appropriately termed. Right now the combination of survival and security is tantalizingly on offer, but not yet in place. If the international community really want to assist South Africa in its vital transition to sustainability, this is the focal point for its attention over the next decade.
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