City-Level Decoupling-Case Studies

CITY-LEVEL DECOUPLING: URBAN RESOURCE FLOWS AND THE GOVERNANCE OF INFRASTRUCTURE TRANSITIONS

coalitions for rural OST have gained increasing visibility, and many of the companies that were set up to serve the residential market have diversified to serve rural and industrial markets. Instead of being led by regulations, the actors in Beijing’s OST market have sought new market niches in China and their water-saving technologies and knowledge has spread. This case study shows how city regulations can stimulate the development of resource-saving infrastructure industries and sustainability oriented innovation, and how collaborations between businesses and academia help to anchor new infrastructure concepts like water recycling in contexts that are relatively unencumbered by outdated infrastructure approaches and their associated interest groups. Beijing was able to attract foreign knowledge, transfer it through entrepreneurial experimentation and retain the learning and built up capacity in support of a new industry. While some of the foreign companies who brought knowledge and expertise to the Beijing market may have been disadvantaged by operating in an environment where their intellectual property was not secure, the loose regulatory environment acted in favour of local entrepreneurs who were able to experiment with and adapt these technologies to the local context. The expertise that has been retained and built upon can now be sold to other areas that wish to invest in decentralised water treatment technologies, creating a new green economic sector for the city. About 450 t of waste arrives daily at the Mariannhill Landfill Site, located 20 km from Durban. Far from an ecological hazard, this clean development mechanism project sets new standards for sustainable urban infrastructure by combining natural, robust and low-cost technologies. When the Mariannhill community heard that the city wished to establish a landfill in their area, they set up a monitoring committee to ensure that it did not conflict with their interests. 55 By persistently raising their concerns about the ecological impact of the landfill, they applied pressure on the engineers at Durban Solid Waste and the environmental department at the eThekwini Municipality to pursue a more sustainable design than would normally have been the case. 56 The engineers acknowledged the problems associated with conventional landfills, and were open to trying new methods to prevent environmental degradation at the Mariannhill site. 57 The project began with an Environmental Impact Assessment, making Mariannhill the first landfill in South Africa to undergo such a study. 58 It found a need to restore local ecosystem functioning, minimise the loss of biodiversity, and connect the site to other nature reserves in order to support natural migration patterns. 59 The Mariannhill landfill had to be designed to prevent environmental contamination, and to restore damaged areas. 60 The key aims of the project were to collect and treat harmful landfill emissions using natural, robust and low-cost methods, and to rescue soil and indigenous vegetation removed during construction and store it in a nursery on site. 61 Other objectives were to help mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and to 10. Durban’s closed-loop landfill site at Mariannhill, South Africa By Natalie Mayer

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