| Summary: | South Africa is a signatory to the Rio Earth Summit Agenda 21 and the World Summit on
Sustainable Development's, Johannesburg Plan of lmplernentation. These documents are the
definitive guidelines towards sustainable development. As a local authority within South Africa,
Ekurhuleni is therefore obliged to implement these sustainability principles as highlighted in
Chapter 28 of Agenda 21, namely Local Agenda 21.
Various tools are available to implement the Local Agenda 21 principles. The Municipal Systems
Act, 32 of 2000, prescribes the compilation of an lntegrated Development Plan for all local
authorities, part of this is a Performance Management System that measure performance in terms
of specified indicators. Another management tool is the State of the Environment Report, which in
turn identifies indicators in terms of which environmentally sustainable development can be
measured.
The Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality's lntegrated Development Plan have been compared with
the objectives set out in Agenda 21 and the Johannesburg Plan of lmplementation, to assess
whether this document can be used as the Ekurhuleni Local Agenda 21 Strategy. It was found that
the requirements for an lntegrated Development Plan are very similar to the requirements for a
Local Agenda 21. The Ekurhuleni lntegrated Development Plan to a great extent complies with the
Agenda 21 and Johannesburg Plan of lmplementation. In terms of sustainable development, the
economic and social aspects, receive substantial attention, however the biophysical environmental
aspect of sustainable development is not sufficiently integrated into all aspects of the lntegrated
Development Plan. Neither are the target dates as specified in the Johannesburg Plan of
Implementation highlighted in the lntegrated Development Plan.
By integrating the biophysical environmental aspects into the Ekurhuleni lntegrated Development
Plan and setting target dates in line with the Johannesburg Plan of lmplernentation great strides will
be made towards achieving sustainable development. If the further step is taken to combine the
sustainability indictors as identified in the state of the Environment Report with the Performance
Management System, the Ekurhuleni lntegrated Development Plan with its Performance
Management System, can be accepted as the Ekurhuleni Local Agenda 21 Strategy. === Thesis (M. Omgewingsbestuur)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2004
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