Browsing by Author "Du Plessis, Jehane-Prieur"
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- ItemA critical assessment of key datasets and approaches with which to determine the resource requirements of future urbanisation(Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2016-03) Du Plessis, Jehane-Prieur; Swilling, Mark; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences. School of Public Leadership.ENGLISH SUMMARY: It is now generally agreed that in order to avoid the severe threats posed by the “global polycrisis” of climate change, ecological degradation, biodiversity loss, water scarcity, food insecurity, income inequality, poverty and over-consumption of raw materials, a pathway of sustainable development must be found in the 21st century. It is also increasingly recognised that urban areas, where the majority of the people on the planet now live, and where the vast majority of energy and materials are consumed, are not only key contributors to the global polycrisis, but also hold the key to a pathway of sustainable development. However, with around 2.5 billion people projected to be added to the global urban population by 2050, serious questions need to asked about the sustainability of such urban growth. But nearly everyone in the mainstream urbanisation literature seems to assume that urbanisation will continue unabated, and that somehow the resources will be found to make this happen. Nobody is asking, “what are the resource requirements of future urbanisation?” So, the original goal of this study was to try and find an answer to this vital question. However, in order to assess the resource requirements of global urbanisation to 2050, three key sets of figures would have to be accepted, namely: estimates and projections of urbanisation, population and urban resource consumption. And, in the analysis of the literature surrounding these data themes, fundamental problems were uncovered. So, the focus of the study was then shifted from trying to assess the resource requirements of future urbanisation, to critically analysing the way in which to do so. As a result, an extensive literature analysis was undertaken over three chapters, focussing on global urbanisation, population growth and resource consumption. The key findings of these literature analyses are that: the inaccuracies, inconsistencies and uncertainties that are imbedded within the urbanisation estimates and projections of the UN are of such a nature that their data must be considered too unrealistic and unreliable to form the basis of a comparative study on global urbanisation; in the coming decades, economic factors look set to both impede the decline of Africa’s high fertility rates and drive an increase in the fertility rates of low-fertility countries, and, if this materialises, the combined effect would be a much higher global population by 2050 than any world population perspectives currently projects; the domestic material consumption (DMC) indicator that is used in material flows analysis (MFA) studies of cities and countries, does not provide a realistic picture of a city or country’s resource consumption, because it does not account for the upstream raw materials that were required to enable the consumption at the final destination. An alternative perspective to assessing global urban resource consumption is then proposed, which re-defines “urbanisation” from a global socio-metabolic perspective, and uses the raw material consumption (RMC) indicator and a range of population projections in its method.