Publications
Partners
Cape Town - A handful of South Africa’s municipalities are embracing Green Economy, providing Green Jobs, implementing long-term sustainability policies and strategies and working in partnership with communities to improve social and economic livelihoods.
In a bid to encourage these municipalities, and to create competition among the 'greenest' contenders in SA, the Eco-Logic Municipalities Award recognises a municipality that has achieved solutions using its risk assessment and management expertise, forming strategic partnerships to improve sustainability, as well as service delivery in municipal functions.
The contenders for this prestigious award are:
Bergrivier – Fostering LOcal Well-being (FLOW) Programme
This Municipality has trained and equipped 10 previously unemployed youth from Piketberg and Goedverwacht to map and document their towns through surveys, GIS, blogs, storytelling, video journalism and photography.
Bergrivier is the second South African Municipality to introduce the Fostering LOcal Well-being (FLOW) Programme, co-funded by the National Treasury, Bergrivier Municipality, Meshfield and the African Climate & Development Initiative (ACDI) of the University of Cape Town (UCT).
FLOW aims to build adaptive capacity in the face of climate change, resource depletion, financial shocks, growing inequality and poverty.
Selected for their leadership potential, the FLOW Ambassadors use i-phones to record social and environmental challenges. Activities aim to support communities to adopt innovative, adaptive ways to tackle issues and to catalyze new green and social entrepreneurial opportunities.
City of Tshwane
The City of Tshwane’s impressive green initiatives are moving the city closer to becoming the leading green capital in Africa. Driving sustainability is the City Sustainability Unit (CSU) – established in 2013 with a mandate to address climate change and stimulation of the green economy, which it does through policy development, research, awareness-raising and demonstration projects.
Last year, a panel of international experts selected Tshwane as South Africa’s Earth Hour Capital 2015 in recognition of the city’s greening initiatives.
The City has entrenched sustainability in its long-term development vision in keeping with South Africa’s Vision 2055.
Tshwane’s Sustainability Journey has already notched up various milestones, including:
- Gazetting South Africa’s first municipal Green Building Policy
- Launching its Strategic Framework for a Transition to a Green Economy
- Providing free wifi services in strategic place
- Establishing a multi-purpose Material Recovery Facility to be supported by a separation at source programme
- Launching the awareness-raising Tshwane Green programme
- Securing a 5 star Green Building grading status for the new City of Tshwane headquarters
- Investing in 10 electric cars for its fleet.
City of Cape Town Friends and Neighbours Programme
Cape Town’s remarkable Friends and Neighbours Programme reconnects people to nature while addressing major socio-economic challenges such as unemployment and poverty.
Activities and achievements in and around Cape Town’s False Bay Nature Reserve (FBNR) have united people from starkly different backgrounds. While exceptional conservation work within the reserve builds a thriving natural amenity with recent Ramsar accreditation, the true success of the initiative is the integrated management approach that connects surrounding communities and other stakeholders with FBNR’s natural assets. In so doing, it is improving quality of life and building opportunities for disadvantaged communities.
In areas such as the Village Heights informal settlement, Friends and Neighbours brings together civil society organisations to work with surrounding communities and the City of Cape Town on programmes which strengthen biodiversity conservation while enhancing residents’ quality of life.
WATCH: Three Cape Town suburbs beautifully brought to life
Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality – The Baakens Valley Community Partnership Programme
The Baakens River Valley is a ‘green lung’ flowing through Port Elizabeth within Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality. The valley conserves threatened plant, mammal and fish species, mitigates flood risk and hosts recreational and educational opportunities.
But urban encroachment, alien plants, dumping, poaching and criminals severely impacted the valley, making it unsafe to visit. In 2009, the Municipality partnered with WESSA to gain the community support needed to turn this situation around.
NMBM reserve managers now work hand-in-hand with local community groups to protect and sustainably utilise the Valley through the Baakens Valley Community Partnership (BVCP) Programme.
The Programme has transformed the area into a safe community resource and functional ecological corridor by:
- Strengthening community participation and volunteerism
- Creating socio-economic upliftment opportunities
- Demonstrating political relevance through job creation & protecting important recreational assets
- Increasing environmental education activities
- Improving safety and security
- Promoting public use and events
- Growing tourism opportunities
Umgungundlovu District Municipality (UMDM) Enviro-Champs programme
The innovative Enviro-Champs programme works with unemployed community members who have become the eyes and ears of the Municipality.
Living near environmental hot-spots such as surcharging sewers or fly-dumping sites, these Enviro-Champs use social media and sms to link with key support people and the authorities.
Initiated in 2011, this powerful, community driven initiative has cooperatively solved hundreds of challenges.
The Enviro-Champs have demonstrated faith in humanity to transform as a learning society, through both inclusive bottom-up and government led top-down processes. The programme successfully addresses the relationship between poverty, health and environmental issues, and how to overcome these through long-term education processes.
Enviro-Champs is a civil society partnership between UMDM and the Duzi Umngeni Conservation Trust (DUCT), with WESSA, other municipalities, the Department of Water and Sanitation and Umgeni Water. Municipalities in other Provinces have also adopted the programme to address challenges in their communities.
Get in touch. You can email us at info@traveller24.co.za or connect with us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
