Rethinking Harbours, Beaches and Urban Estuaries Waste Management Under Climate-Induced Floods in South Africa

Abstract

Globally there has been increased concerns over the state of ocean pollution which often become evident after extreme hydro-meteorological events such as floods. Chief among the concerns is the deposition of solid waste into harbours, beaches and estuaries by floods. A thought on harbours and beaches takes one to the blue (ocean) economy space, a subject that is embedded in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14. The Durban Harbour is one of Africa’s most prominent and busiest ports handling cargo for South Africa and several southern African countries. In addition, its beaches rank among the world’s best. Using events study, document analysis, secondary data and in-depth interviews, the chapter aims to determine how the April 2019 floods revealed the challenges in the waste management systems in Durban, South Africa, and how the concerned stakeholders, among them government, the private sector and non-governmental organisations, responded to the challenge. The results showed that extreme floods caused a significant challenge at the Durban Harbour, along beaches and estuaries as plastic waste mainly comprising shopping bags heavily polluted these places. Heavy plastic pollution is a clear symptom of poor waste management in the upper catchment areas. In as much as various stakeholders have put forward some innovative solutions to the problem, these are largely inadequate because of the complexity of the problem. There is a need for the municipality and stakeholders to increase their efforts towards implementing environmental law enforcement to ensure the protection of the oceans and blue ocean economy. The problem requires a multi-dimension approach such as mass education, environmental law enforcement and capital resource investment into coastal cleaning among other such initiatives.