A strategy to help South African municipalities reduce green-house gas emission

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A strategy to help South African municipalities reduce green-house gas emission

JG Afrika, RWA (UK) and Pegasys Capital developed a strategy to help South African municipalities reduce green-house gas emissions by diverting organic and certain packaging waste from landfills.
The project was undertaken on behalf of the South African National Department of Environmental Affairs and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit.
This collaborative co-creative and joint decision-making approach provided valuable skills transfer between municipal officials and the project team. It also ensured local applicability and community consideration.
The team built on the valuable lessons learnt and experience gained on the first phase of the project to successfully complete the second phase. It focused on upskilling and learnership of communities and municipalities.
This dynamic project involved an extraordinary amount of engagement with stakeholders. The focus was on developing an achievable and affordable strategy that is aligned with an operating and funding plan.
It entailed co-ordinating a multidisciplinary team consisting of four local sub-consultants and one international partner over seven disciplines and across five local municipalities, one metro municipality, and throughout five provinces.
Officials from the respective municipalities and members of the greater project team were directly involved in each decision-making engagement. This built on the Collaborative Co-creation theme.
The process started by gaining a thorough understanding of the municipal waste streams and characterising them at the various landfill sites in the Mogalakwena, Newcastle, Steve Tshwete, JB Marks, and King Sabata Dalindyebo local municipalities, as well as Buffalo City Metropolitan.
Projects identified by the municipalities focused on developing an enabling environment for informal recycling sectors and co-operative establishment.
Innovative tools were enhanced and developed from those conceptualised during the first phase of the project. Several entailed additional modelling and visualisation.
Public interests and benefits were challenged, and relationships fostered during a number of stakeholder engagements. The final test was the endorsement of the identified projects by the respective councils.
During the second phase, the team was challenged to find innovative ways of improving efficiencies, enhancing understanding and promoting community and stakeholder inclusion and knowledge transfer.
The successful outcome enabled South Africa to receive Green Climate Change funding for solid waste projects. This is one of the first in the world to do so.

 

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