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Track: Environmental Management
Mike Webster
CSIR
P.O.Box 17001
Congella
Durban ,
SOUTH AFRICA
Telephone:
Fax:
GIS and Sustainable Development
At the United Nations Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, a mandate was issued to cities around the world. By 1996, most local authorities in each country should have undertaken a consultative process with their populations and achieved a consensus on a local Agenda 21 (ie a sustainable environment and development programme) for the community . Taking its lead from the Local Agenda 21 mandate and the Reconstruction and Development Programme of the South African government, the City of Durban is currently working towards the preparation of an environment and development strategy and action plan for the Greater Durban Metropolitan Area. The first step in the process was the documentation of the biophysical and socio-economic resources, needs and problems that exist in the metropolitan area. This study was undertaken as a research partnership between the City of Durban, the Institute for Social and Economic Research (University of Durban-Westville) and the CSIR. One of the CSIR s tasks was the
establishment of a Geographic Information System (GIS) for the Metropolitan Area to hold all the spatially referenced information. The data was held by individual organisations in various forms, such as CAD, relational databases and hardcopy maps. The vital role of the CSIR s GIS is to act as a repository for all information relevant to the Durban Local Agenda 21 programme. This study highlighted the deficiencies and gaps in the data-sets. The overall aim of this State of Environment Report is to strive towards environmentally sustainable development for the region, bringing together human, economic and biophysical issues. In the short term the GIS will be used to assess Durban s current sustainability status and in the longer term to monitor how the region is moving towards this goal using appropriate indicators.
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