Alternative Financing Structure for Greening South African Cities

The National Development Plan compels all cities to create sustainable environments for their communities (RSA, 2012: 37-38). However, the challenge throughout South African cities is the lack of finances needed to provide the green infrastructure required to drive the sustainable cities agenda, while cleaning up the environment (SANC, 2016: 198-199). Therefore, this paper follows a qualitative, literature-based approach to discuss alternative financing models which include private investors as well. Obviously, as per literature a self-funding municipality could result in cost savings and/or the attraction of outside investment which might be a good idea for South Africa considering its current economic status. However, it seems that in the current situation South African municipalities do not have the finance to kick-start such a process. Therefore, based on satisfactory results from a collaboration between Singapore and China on the transition of greening its cities since 2009, an alternative financing structure for greening South African cities is proposed. This may serve as a guiding tool for policy makers on greening South African cities.