The reconstruction of environmental rights in urban South Africa

Abstract

Rapid and spatially concentrated urbanization in South Africa has brought with it significant health and safety hazards. These hazards are described and analyzed through two optics: environmental rights and community participation. The rights perspective suggests that the system of apartheid led to a collapse of rural livelihoods, driving people to the cities, while apartheid's tight control over African residential location and employment ensured that high density settlement and unemployment would follow. The resulting urban environmental degradation and health and safety hazards are a violation of the human rights of the African residents of townships and informal settlements. The community participation perspective suggests that reconstruction can be linked to development and that community-based hazard identification and mitigation can be a vehicle for kick-starting urban revitalization.