Abstract
Natural resource management has traditionally been conceptualized in rural contexts, yet as processes of urbanization accelerate, it is increasingly important to understand the effects of environmental management efforts underway in urban centers. This chapter examines “participatory” and “community-based” approaches to natural resource management in an urban context. It explores the effects of Durban’s Warwick Junction Urban Renewal Project from a feminist political ecology perspective, based on ethnographic research with street traders carried out in South Africa between 2004 and 2007. The end of apartheid resulted in the decentralization of responsibility for the management of the urban environment and informal economy. Warwick Junction was a pilot project for a new participatory, area-based approach to urban development in the eThekwini (Durban) Municipality and has won international acclaim for engaging community participation and for improving human wellbeing, security, and livelihoods. Ten years later, however, research in Warwick Junction has revealed that multiple forms of control, authority, inclusion, and exclusion exist within the street trading “community”, some preexisting the urban renewal effort, rooted in gender, age, and traditional hierarchies with linkages to rural areas, and others emerging as new forms of power and legitimacy connected to the urban management process itself. This chapter illustrates how differential access to resources (in this case, access to trading space, infrastructure, and services) manifest as a series of political, economic, social, and ideological struggles. The Warwick Junction case study demonstrates how even the most “successful” of community-based urban management efforts can result in an uneven distribution of benefits. The chapter calls for a more nuanced understanding of the heterogeneity of “communities” and a closer examination of how power operates in “participatory” development projects.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This research was carried out in partnership with the Heath Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban. It was funded by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Ecohealth Training Awards and the Social Science and Humanities Council of Canada.
- 2.
Ecosystems frameworks have been applied to urban contexts by a number of international organizations, including: (1) Canada’s International Development Research Centre’s ‘Ecosystem Approaches to Human Health’, which adopt a multi-dimensional definition of human health and by aims to identify ecosystem management options that simultaneously maximize human health and encourage sustainable development. From this perspective, well being depends on the dynamic interactions between all living (including humans) and non-living things. This approach also promotes transdisciplinary, participatory and equity-oriented research methods; (2) The United Nations University’s ‘Urban Ecosystem Analysis’, which considers the scales of urban activities (both how processes at multiple scales affect urban environments and how urban activities can have impacts outside of where they take place), as well as interrelationships between social and biophysical factors within urban environments; and (3) The World Health Organization’s ‘Healthy Cities Programme’, which attempts to address a broad range of urban health stresses relating to infectious diseases, air pollution, drug abuse, and violence within cities. This approach places emphasis on participatory approaches to municipal planning.
- 3.
For example, an old abandoned highway overpass was cleaned up and stairs built to access it. This was then turned into a trading market for hebalists and traditional healers, providing them with trading spaces, livelihood opportunities, and the legitimacy to be in the market (under apartheid, it was considered illegal not only to engage in informal trading, but also to openly sell traditional medicines). This is clearly an instance of integrated and linked physical, social, and cultural intervention.
- 4.
Note that “old” and “young” classifications here are not based on an age threshold, but rather on life stage and “generation”. Older traders are those who have grown children and grandchildren, while “younger” traders tended to either not yet have children or have pre- or school-age children. This was the classification that emerged naturally in the study largely due to the way these life stages affect traders’ family positions and responsibilities.
References
Blaikie, P., & Brookfield, H. C. (Eds.). (1987). Land degradation and society. London: Methuen.
Braun, B., & Castree, N. (Eds.). (1998). Remaking reality. London: Routledge.
Campbell, C. (2003). Letting them die: How HIV prevention programmes often fail. South Africa: Double Storey Books.
Charmes, J. (2003). Street traders and their associations in South Africa. Geneva: International Labour Office.
Chazan, M. (2008). Seven deadly assumptions: Unpacking the implications of HIV/AIDS among grandmothers in South Africa and beyond. Ageing and Society, 28, 935–958.
Chazan, M., & Whiteside, A. (2007). The making of vulnerabilities: Understanding the differentiated effects of HIV and AIDS among street traders in Warwick Junction, Durban, South Africa. African Journal of AIDS Research, 6(2), 162–175.
Cooke, B., & Kothari, U. (2001). Participation: The new tyranny? London: Zed Books.
Davis, M. (2004). Planet of slums: Urban involution and the informal proletariat. New Left Review, 26, 5–34.
Dlamini, E. (2004). Personal communication. Warwick Junction Urban Renewal Project Office, Durban, 23 Sept 2004
Dobson, R. (2004). Personal communication. Warwick Junction Urban Renewal Project Office, Durban, 29 Sept 2004.
Forget, G., & Lebel, J. (2001). An ecosystem approach to human health. International Journal of Occupational Environmental Health, 7(2), S1–S38.
Grest, J. (2000). Urban citizenship and legitimate governance: The case of the Greater Warwick Avenue and Grey Street Urban Renewal Project, Durban. Presented to South African Planning History Study Group Millenium Conference on Planning for Reconstruction and Transformation. Durban, 29–30 May 2000.
Grest, J. (2004). Personal communication. Department of Political Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 06 Oct 2004.
Guijt, I., & Shah, M. (1989). The myth of community: Gender issues in participatory development. London: IT.
Heyned, N. (2006). Green urban political ecologies: Toward a better understanding of inner-city environmental change. Environment and Planning A, 38(3), 499–516.
Hickey, S., & Mohan, G. (Eds.). (2004). Participation: From tyranny to transformation? London: Zed Books.
Lee, S. (2004). Assessing the vulnerability of women street traders to HIV/AIDS: a comparative analysis of Uganda and South Africa. Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division. Internet source: www.nu.ac.za/heard/papers.
Lund, F. (2002). Social security and the changing labour market: Access for non-standard and informal workers in South Africa. Social Dynamics, 28(2), 177–206.
Marcotullio, P. and G. Boyle (2003). Defining and ecosystem approach to urban management and policy development. UNU/IAS Report.
Martens, P., McMichael, A. J., & Patz, J. A. (2000). Globalisation, environmental change and health. Global Change and Human Health, 1(1), 4–8.
Mcnube, P. (2004). Personal communication. Warwick Junction Urban Renewal Project Office. Durban, 01 Dec 2004.
Mustafa, D. (2005). The production of an urban hazardscape in Pakistan: Modernity, vulnerability and the range of choice. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95(3), 566–586.
Nesvag, S. (2002). The development of mass street trading in Durban: The case of muthi trading. In B. Freund & V. Padayachee (Eds.), (D)urban vortex. South Africa: University of Natal Press.
Piracha, A., & Marcutullio, P. (2003). Urban Ecosystem Analysis: Identifying Tools and Methods, UNU/IAS Report.
Skinner, C. (2004). Personal communication, Durban. School of Development Studies, University of KwaZulu-Natal. Durban, 12 Nov 2004.
Watts, M. (1983). Silent violence: Food, famine and peasantry in Northern Nigeria. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Watts, M. (2004). Antinomies of community: some thoughts on geography, resources and empire. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 29, 195–216.
Acknowledgements
I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all those in Warwick Junction and in Durban who participated in this research, especially S’bo Radebe, Ntombu Thula, Sihle Sithole, and Phumzile Cele for their assistance with the fieldwork. I would also like to acknowledge Caroline Skinner, Jeremy Grest, Tim Quinlan, Nina Veenstra, Alan Whiteside, Fiona Mackenzie, Mike Brklacich, Ben Hodson, and Beverly Kraft, for their personal and professional support. This research was supported and funded by the International Development Research Center, the Social Science and Humanities Council, and the Health Economics and HIV/AIDS Research Division.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Chazan, M. (2010). Natural Resource Management in an Urban Context: Rethinking the Concepts of “Community” and “Participation” with Street Traders in Durban, South Africa. In: German, L., Ramisch, J., Verma, R. (eds) Beyond the Biophysical. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8826-0_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8826-0_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-8825-3
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-8826-0
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)