The
outgoing mayor of Cape Town, known for averting a near
catastrophic water shortage, said she hopes to leave office on
the heels of another victory in the fight against climate change
- slashing greenhouse emissions from transportation.
Patricia de Lille said South Africa's second-largest city
could reduce its greenhouse gas footprint by building homes for
low-income residents on land left undeveloped as a legacy from
apartheid.
It is a unique solution tied to the country's cruel history.
The parcels of land were used to buffet the white-minority
from members of the majority black population who were oppressed
and segregated under the system of apartheid, which was imposed
by white-governments from 1948 until the early 1990s.
"It's valuable land, close to transport," she told the
Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of a climate change
summit in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Under her plan, de Lille said, erecting low-cost housing on
five city-owned plots will allow people to live closer to their
jobs in the city center, thereby cutting car transportation and
reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
"We're using those pieces of land that belong to the city to
bring about transport-oriented development," she said, adding
that transportation accounts for about 30 percent of carbon
emissions in Cape Town.
"To reduce carbon emissions, you have to deal with the
spatial planning of your city," said de Lille.
Her plan was adopted by Cape Town's government in 2016, but
has not yet been put into action.
De Lille, a former anti-apartheid militant who quit as mayor
of Cape Town last month after a bitter dispute within her
political party, said it "must be implemented."
"If it does not happen, I will be the first person to
protest and I will mobilize the masses," she said.
"This is an opportunity for me to drive integration of the
city, by bringing people of color closer to the city."
De Lille, whose resignation is effective Oct. 31, has been a
mayor of Cape Town since 2011, and has a large support base
among her fellow mixed-race residents of the city.
Under her tenure, the port city, a tourist hub with a
population of about 4 million, avoided a feared "Day Zero" when
its taps would have run dry due to severe drought after three
years of low rainfall.
De Lille was speaking at the Global Climate Action Summit, a
three day event that has drawn about 4,500 delegates from city
and regional governments from around the world.
Thomson Reuters Foundation