Durban is an African city located on the east coast of South Africa in KwaZulu-Natal along the Indian Ocean. It embraces the full range of global sustainable development challenges and its landscape ranges from the rural to the urbanised and is a multicultural society which faces a complex mix of social, economic, environmental and governance challenges.

eThekwini Municpality is the local government body responsible for governing and managing Durban and serves an area of 2300 square kilometers. The eThekwini Metro Area (EMA) is an amalgamation of racial and cultural diversity, with African, Indian and European influences creating a vibrant cosmopolitan society. According to the last official statistics, the Statistics South Africa Community Survey 2007, the EMA currently has an estimated population of just over 3.46 million. There are no official population statistics for the years 2008 and 2009.

The Black African community makes up the largest sector (68%) of the population followed by the Indian community (20%), White community (9%) and Coloured community (3%).

Broad Economic Sectors

Constant 2000 prices (R 1000)

2007

2008

Employment and Job Creation

According to Global Insight, unemployment presently stands at 241,746 in 2008 dropping by 0.64% over the previous year. The unemployment rate during 2008 was 19.1% decreasing by 1.1 percentage points over 2007.

According to Statistics South Africa there were job losses recorded during the first half of 2009 and total employment is expected to show a decrease over 2008 (information for 2009 not available).

Employment is expected to recover during 2010 from the anticipated spin-offs from governments infrastructure spending and related benefits from the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The downside, however, is the expected negative impacts from the tariff hikes in electricity over the next three years. This may lead to further unemployment as companies try to reduce staff or face closure in order to keep up with these high costs.

 
Number of Unemployed People, Official Definition

Unemployment Rate, Official Definition (%)

Environment

South Africa is the third most diverse country in the world and Durban contains:

• Four of the country’s eight bionomes;
• Seven broad vegetation types;
• Over 200 plant species;
• 97 kilometres of coastline;
• 18 catchments, 13 estuaries;
• 4000 kilometres of rivers.

Durban’s natural environment plays a key role in providing essential goods and services to the residents of Durban. These include the formation of soil, erosion control, water supply and regulation, climate regulation, cultural and recreational opportunities, raw materials for craft and building, food production, pollination, nutrient cycling and waste treatment. These ecosystem goods and services help meet our basic needs and enhance our quality of life.

In order to protect the natural resources of the city and to secure the delivery of these services, eThekwini Municipality has defined a system of open spaces known as D’MOSS (Durban Metropolitan Open Space System). D’MOSS is a system of open spaces, some 74 000 ha of land and water, that incorporates areas of high biodiversity value linked together in a viable network. It is this biodiversity that supplies ecosystem goods and services. The protection of D’MOSS is therefore essential if sustainability is to be ensured.

From a natural resource perspective, D’MOSS includes approximately 2 000 ha of dams; 2 400 ha of estuarine environment, including sand and mudbanks, mangrove and swamp forests; 11 000 ha of forests including dune, coastal and scarp forests; 7 500 ha of wetlands including floodplains, swamp forest and reedbeds; 6 700 ha of grassland including the threatened Ngongoni and Sandstone Sourveld grasslands; 15 500 ha of dry valley thicket; and 17 700 ha of woodland, including wooded grasslands.

The ecosystem goods and services provided free of charge by the ecosystems included in D’MOSS were conservatively valued in 2003 to be in the order of R 3.1 billion per annum, excluding the value that open space contributes to tourism. Without these free services, the municipality would require an unaffordable increase to its budget to provide these services, especially in the rural areas, where communities rely heavily on the natural environment for daily needs.