PIER WORKSHOP8 FEBRUARY 2015

Gauteng City Region

Importance of PIER: Ensuring Safety of Communities

Presented: RG Hendricks – Director: Fire & Rescue Services

Presentation outline

1. Introduction

2. Problem statement

3. Risk environment in SA

4. Towards developing a GCR Risk Reduction/Prevention Strategy

5. Population growth

6. Key challenges to PIER

7. Strategic importance of PIER

8. GCR Agenda - Risk Reduction and prevention strategies

Introduction• In 2008, for the first time in history, more of the world’s

inhabitants lived in cities than in rural areas.• The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) predicts that the

number of people currently living in cities will rise from 3.6 billion in 2011 to five billion in 2030.

• Reasons for rapid growth:• large cities offer a variety of economic benefits;• they present cultural and social connectivity to their

inhabitants; • they centralize services and increase accessibility to these

services;• they create places of high dynamism and constant change;

Introduction (continued)• 23,72% of South Africa’s population live in Gauteng. (That is just

more than 12,7 million people, or nearly equal to the entire population living in Zimbabwe).

• 4,5 million people live in Johannesburg, 3,1 million in Ekurhuleni and 2,9 million in Tshwane, resulting in 85,90% of all the people in Gauteng living in the three Metro’s.

• To provide a perspective of the size of our Metro’s, Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni together housed the same number of people as the populations of Lesotho (2.1m), Swaziland (1.1m), Botswana (2m) and Namibia (2.28) put together.

Introduction (continued)• Gauteng is the economic/business hub of South Africa and the Province

contributes 35,21% to the Country’s economy.

• A staggering 75% of all corporate head offices in South Africa are based in Johannesburg.

• That is why more and more people migrate to Gauteng to seek jobs and look for a better quality of life.

• Normal population growth together with urbanisation (people moving to Gauteng) results in approximately 350,000 more people living in Gauteng each year.

Introduction (continued)• Gauteng is the engine of the regional economy and a gateway to the

rest of the continent.

• The province mainly depends on the tertiary sector, finance and business services, including government since Gauteng is the administrative seat of government.

• The unemployment rate for Gauteng in 2012 is estimated at 26%.

• Planned government infrastructure development of over R800 billion in the next three years will assist in creating an enabling environment for domestic growth and job creation.

Population growth

Tshwane’s population

> twice NMB

Clear break between top 5 and

other cities

Source: Calculations by Lynelle John, based on population data fr IHS Global Insight and area sizes fr the Municipal Demarcation Board (2010)

Source: Calculations by Lynelle John, based on population data fr IHS Global Insight and area sizes fr the Municipal Demarcation Board (2010)

People per km2

More densely populated

than at least 3 metros

Ranked 18th on this

list Less than 10 people per km2

Over 2 200 people per

km2

The problem statement

• The majority of the globe’s inhabitants live in urban areas, and according to all prognoses, cities will continue to grow in the coming decades;

• In the context of urban safety management: global cities can be both the most secure and the most dangerous places to be when disaster strikes.

• Developing appropriate mechanisms to prepare for and cope with complex crises in cities will, in the future, be a key aspect of security policy-making.

• Cities must improve the capacity to predict new or unforeseen risk by

diversifying capabilities for risk assessment and improving inter-agency collaborations.

• In addition cities must adopt new approaches to disaster management that are sufficiently flexible to adapt to a changing risk environment and to safeguard urban security.

The Risk Environment in South Africa

• Urban populations experience many chronic, extensive risks associated with marginal living conditions and poor service delivery, from poor sanitation and disease to dwelling fires, seasonal flooding and crime and violence .

• Urban populations will increasingly face a range of emerging risks including communal violence and unrest, water scarcity, acid mine drainage and food insecurity, with inevitable GEC likely to drive and exacerbate many problems.

• Given the prospect of increasing risk, there is an urgent need to reduce the vulnerability and increase the resilience of South African towns and cities. It is not enough simply to respond to and manage disasters, South Africa must proactively seek to address risk

• This requires the integration of risk reduction into planning processes, including land-use planning and management, water resource management, infrastructural developments and building design and construction.

The importance of prevention and risk reduction on the GCR agenda

• Disasters are costly, both economically and in terms of human losses

• Looking just at economic costs, analysis of just eight severe weather events in one province alone between 2003 and 2008 resulted in losses to government and the private sector of R 2.5 billion

• Risk reduction may be expensive in the short-term, but the benefits substantially outweigh these costs in the long-term.

The cost of International Disasters

Country No. of people affected (millions)

No. of disasters

Economic costs (US$bn)

China 1321.4 311 205 654 128

India 602.9 204 25 88 285

Bangladesh 73.2 90 5 884 000

Philippines 52.9 160 2 543 118

Thailand 43.6 57 2 433 613

Pakistan 32.8 74 17 134 648

Ethiopia 29.2 48 9 400

Vietnam 21.8 89 5 759 905

United States 20.7 257 353 414 290

South Africa 15.3 42 866 305

Financial costs of disasters (top 10 countries affected by disasters, 2000-2010)

Towards developing a GCR Risk Reduction/Prevention Strategy

• It is essential to de-silo risk reduction and fire prevention strategies

• Addressing risk within GCR context requires a stronger emphasis on prevention.

• Urban risk concerns must be incorporated into short, medium and long-term planning across sectors.

• It is vital to draw and promote the linkages between risk reduction and sectoral concerns.

HOUSEHOLDS LIVING IN SHACKS IN GAUTENG BY DISTRICT MUNICIPALITY

Municipality Shack not in a backyard Shack in a backyard

Number of HH Number of HH

Ekurhuleni 138 099 80 160

City of Johannesburg 125 748 124 075

City of Tshwane 112 167 51 847

West Rand 38 629 29 108

Sedibeng 19 431 20 494

Gauteng 434 075 305 683

Context: Gauteng City Region

• Gauteng City Region (GCR), with over 12 million people, is the largest and richest region in the country, contributing 34,5% of the national Domestic Product (GDP) (Stats SA, 2011).

• Despite its weight, the Gauteng city-region’s economy presents many challenges. – very high unemployment levels; – unbalanced growth, in the sense that jobs that are being

created are often not matched to the skills that workers currently possess;

– unequal spatial access to economic opportunities; – a weak ‘culture of entrepreneurship’; and – the need to ensure that future growth is ‘green growth’ to

ensure the region’s long-term sustainability.15

Context: Gauteng City Region

• Rapid population growth due to in-migration, concentrated in a few locations, has resulted in strong spatial polarisation, urban sprawl and tracts of under-utilised land between main urban centres. This pattern of development not only reinforces existing inequalities but generates high economic and environmental costs.

• GCR places greater emphasis on joint planning, coordination, and collaboration across municipal borders to realise efficiency gains and improve the performance of Gauteng’s economy.

• This therefore calls for a need to strengthen interdepartmental and inter-sphere cooperation to realise a GCR vision of seamless development.

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Principles of the GCR

– Be defined independently of formal administrative boundaries;

– Be constituted of a concentrated urban population, with significant size and agglomeration effects that attract greater volumes of people through in-migration;

– Be spread across a vast, geographical area that is contiguous in nature;

– Include at least one large metropolitan area; and

– Incorporate a functional economy within the geography, which is able to compete in the global market

Strategic role of the PIER

• Provide leadership within the Gauteng Province to contribute towards influencing the safety of the communities.

• Establishing PIER as the nodal point for specialized advice and recommendations aimed at initiating and driving new policy and legislation impacting on safety of communities.

• To take a strong leadership role in garnishing support, implementation of initiatives and to assist with forming provincial and national policy across the GCR by working with all major stakeholders and partners.

Key Challenges for PIER

• To continue to remain influential amongst our stakeholders at a time when there is a shift in the political agenda at a national and provincial level.

 • Maintaining political commitment towards support for safety and

resilience of communities at a time when other priorities have also been placed on the services delivery agenda such as delivery of houses, infrastructure, education and health care to communities.

• To make sure that the Disaster Management and Fire & Rescue Services receives the necessary recognition for the work that it is doing in particular in the area of community safety awareness.

 

In conclusion

– With globalization has come an increase in the consequences of fires and disasters in cities;

– There is a strong need for a more sustainable and inclusive conception of mitigation of fire risks that links risk reduction with social resilience and places prevention in a much larger context.

– Addressing risk within GCR context requires a stronger emphasis on prevention.; which requires for PIER to play a more prominent role.

THANK YOU