Teaching and Learning Guide for: Sustainable Development and Environmental Justice in African Cities
Authors: Myers Garth 
Published: September 2009

Introduction

This piece aims at analyzing reasons why the study of Africa’s cities and the practice of urban planning on the continent are so full of ‘sustainable development’ rhetoric and comparatively silent on questions of social and environmental justice. I use case studies from two countries with significant bibliographies of urban geographical research, South Africa and Tanzania, to examine this puzzle. A related absence to that of environmental justice analysis is that of the literature of urban political ecology, which often incorporates critical analysis of environmental justice. To date, with some exceptions – most being in South Africa – few scholars have used an urban political ecology approach in African cities. South Africa also represents virtually the only country on the continent with an extensive movement for and literature about specifically urban environmental justice. Tanzania, like almost every other African country, places major rhetorical emphasis on sustainable urban development in planning, and most scholarship has followed suit, absent discussion about urban social or environmental justice. I trace the path by which sustainable urban development (SUD) came to predominate, as it does even in South Africa. I highlight the major roles of the World Bank, the United Nations, and Western donors in setting the urban agenda in Africa as the principal reason for the neoliberal SUD approach’s domination. South Africa’s rights‐based development agenda, compared with the long history of state control over civil society in Tanzania, are central to the contrasting outcomes in the case studies. This topic is important to the field because the time is ripe for urban political ecology research on urban environmental justice in sub‐Saharan African cities outside of South Africa to contribute to urban geography. It is also a valuable article for its encouragement of cross‐fertilization and comparative research between and among different African countries on urban geography.

Glossary of Terms

Collaborative visioning: a contemporary strategy or method for urban planning that engages the general public as ‘stakeholders’ (see below) to work with urban decision‐makers in forums designed to create a vision for a city’s future growth and goals.

Privatization: the process by which the provision of urban services, meaning such things as water supply, sewerage, solid waste collection and deposition, and road management, is transferred from government institutions to private companies.

Stakeholder democracy: refers to circumstances of governance in which those deemed to be central to urban issues as important leaders from among the citizenry, civil society, community and neighborhood associations, private sector companies and government organizations (i.e. the stakeholders) collaborate to form collectively derived plans for urban management and growth, all the while responsive to the voting public.

Sustainable urban development: an agenda for bringing the loosely understood balance between environmental management and economic growth (i.e. sustainable development) to the fore in urban planning.

Urban environmental justice: the cause of reducing the politically (and often racially) charged social inequalities in distribution of the negative environmental externalities (e.g. pollution, toxic wastes, erosion, flooding, etc.) from urban development.

Urban political ecology: an emerging school of though seeking to see urban environmental degradation in terms of political, economic, cultural, or historical dimensions and not simply ecological ones.

Key Readings

Kombe, W. (2005). Land use dynamics in peri‐urban areas and their implications on the urban growth and form: the case of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Habitat International 29, pp. 113–135. A detailed empirical analysis of urban land development failings in Tanzania.

McDonald, D. (2002). What is environmental justice? In: McDonald, D. (ed.) Environmental justice in South Africa. Cape Town, South Africa: UCT Press, pp. 1–48. A useful introduction to environmental justice research and activism as applied to South Africa.

The Municipal Services Project website, at http://www.queensu.ca/msp/. The MSP has focused a critical eye on sustainable urban development planning and the privatization of urban services in South Africa, with more recent working expanding the analysis across Sub‐Saharan Africa and into other regions of the developing world.

Njeru, J. (2006). The urban political ecology of plastic bag waste problem in Nairobi, Kenya. Geoforum 37, pp. 1046–1058. A rare example of urban political ecology analysis in Africa outside South Africa.

Patel, Z. (2006). Of questionable value: the role of practitioners in building sustainable cities. Geoforum 37, pp. 682–694. A very well reasoned critique of SUD in South Africa.

Visser, G. (2004). Social justice, integrated development planning and post‐apartheid urban reconstruction. Urban Studies 38, pp. 1673–1699. A valuable theoretical analysis of the meaning of justice and implications of defining it for urban planning policy.

SCP Documentation Series n. 3: The Sustainable Dar es Salaam Project 1992–2003. UN‐Habitat’s assessment of the pilot city’s results, available for downloading at: http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/getPage.asp?page=bookView&book=1809

The Sustainable Cities Programme in Zambia (1994–2007), Addressing the challenges of rapid urbanization. UN‐Habitat’s excellent analysis of its own program’s strengths and weaknesses in its second country of operation. Available for downloading at: http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/getPage.asp?page=bookView&book=2646

Focus Questions

 Are collaborative visioning, stakeholder democracy and privatization approaches capable of producing effective planning results in African cities?

 What other impediments might exist to the expansion of urban environmental justice advocacy, activism or research in Africa, thinking about other African countries beyond South Africa and Tanzania?

 To what extent are there correlations between racial justice, social justice and environmental justice in your community?

What roles should donors have in urban environmental planning in Africa?

 Discuss Crespin’s argument in the quotation: ‘poverty cannot be tackled without addressing problems of power relations and the cultural and social interests that sustain unequal access to economic opportunity and social resources’. Do you agree or disagree with her? Why or why not?

Bulleted Outline

Sustainable development as a key theme, applied to urban areas of the developing world.

The roles of the World Bank, United Nations and Western donors in setting development agendas.

Neoliberal development and neoliberal good governance rhetoric in African development.

Urban environmental justice and sustainable urban development in South Africa as a case study.

Tanzania as a case study of sustainable urban development.

Comparative urban development and urban environmental planning in Africa.