Durban — The eThekwini Municipality’s climate change department is calling for proposals from non-profit companies to partner with the municipality to implement the Transformative River Management Programme (TRMP) in the Palmiet catchment area.
The TRMP Palmiet project will be the continuation of the work which was done in this catchment through the Infrastructure Investment Programme of South Africa (IIPSA) Ecological Infrastructure project. The duration of the project will be 36 months (three years).
The project is primarily focused on conservation, rehabilitation and restoration of natural systems within the Palmiet Catchment to improve community resilience. This is in line with the TRMP, which the municipality is proposing in managing its riverine ecosystems and climate change adaptation responses.
This project recognises the interdependence of the social, economic, built and natural environments in providing for the wealth and well-being of citizens, stimulating the local economy, creating jobs, and building a compact, sustainable and liveable city.
The project will focus on transformative management of urban riverine green spaces; community-based adaptation responses, especially within vulnerable communities; stream cleaning and alien species removal; nature-based solutions in responding to climate change impacts and environmental education and awareness. The municipality was also concerned about pipe leakages and overflowing sewers.
Palmiet River Watch’s Lee D’Eathe said that the eThekwini Municipality’s latest initiative, the TRMP, is a brazen attempt to deceive the public.
“These discredited ‘River Movement’ approaches have been repeatedly debunked as unsustainable and have left areas where they were applied worse than before they started, and yet they’re proposing to apply a river approach a second time within the Palmiet Catchment.
“This flawed plan will take decades to address the already tabled critical problems and is deliberately diverting attention from their constitutional failures,” D’Eathe said.
He added that as a concerned citizen and representative of the Palmiet River Watch and Palmiet River Valley Conservancy, they demand transparency and accountability.
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Daily News