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South Africa, Our Burning Planet

‘Never fear failure’ says Green Cities veteran Debra Roberts, clocking out after 40-year dream job

‘Never fear failure’ says Green Cities veteran Debra Roberts, clocking out after 40-year dream job
Tourists and visitors enjoy the calm and scenic splendour of the Mhlanga Lagoon nature reserve. From a climate change adaptation perspective, natural areas within the D’MOSS network also play an important role in buffering the city from the impacts of sea level rise or severe flooding. (Photo: Tony Carnie)
Tony Carnie
By Tony Carnie
5 Feb 2024
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Prof Debra Roberts has been a pioneer in many ways in her long career as a scientist, climate negotiator and municipal servant. She set up Durban’s first environmental and climate change departments and was the first woman from Africa to put her hand up to lead a top climate advisory group. Despite a rough ride, it was also her ‘dream job’.

Prof Debra Roberts pretty much had no idea what she was doing, she recalls candidly, during her first day as an international climate change negotiator for the South African government.

After a long flight from her home city of Durban, Roberts found herself in a conference centre in Panama City in 2011 at another of those never-ending meetings to “tackle” the global climate change crisis. 

“I can remember walking into my first meeting… and sitting down amongst a group of battle-hardened and steely-eyed international climate change negotiators and thinking: ‘I have no idea what to say or do’.

green cities debra roberts Prof Debra Roberts in an emerald green suit, with Sbu Ndebele, acting head of development planning in the Ethekwini municipality (left) and Chumisa Tengwa, outgoing deputy head of the city’s biodiversity management unit at a climate change meeting in Durban last year. (Photo: Supplied)



“But I toughed it out, made many mistakes and learnt rapidly.”

Two years later she was providing scientific support to national Environment Minister Edna Molewa in negotiations in Warsaw, and four years later she was part of the South African delegation negotiating sections of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

Last year – more than a decade after that bewildering meeting in Panama City – Roberts was endorsed by President Cyril Ramaphosa to stand for election for the top leadership spot of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a global group of science experts that advises governments on how to respond to a changing climate.

As it turned out, Roberts failed in her bid to chair the IPCC, but she nevertheless raised the flag for fellow female scientists and believes she cut a pathway for other women to “get over the wall” not too far down the line.

“So, the message is: Don’t fear what you don’t know and don’t fear mistakes – bounce back quickly after being knocked down. That is one of the most important skills for success because none of us will ever achieve anything if we don’t keep trying when we fail.

“If you are not failing some of the time, you are not risking enough or learning enough,” she told staff and colleagues at a farewell reception on 30 January to mark her retirement from the eThekwini Municipality after a 30-year stint in local government.

Hybrid career


Roberts’ career has been something of a hybrid affair.

After studying chemistry and biology at the then-University of Natal, she completed her doctoral thesis on urban geography in 1991 and joined the Durban municipality in 1994 at a time when town planners had recently approved the first version of the so-called Durban Metropolitan Open Space System (D’MOSS).

This was an ambitious plan to demarcate and protect some of the remaining natural spaces of the city for future generations.

Once again, Roberts found herself in unfamiliar territory.

“When I arrived on my first day, I found that they had no office for me, so I was guided to a boardroom on the 6th floor with a large table and chairs and a telephone that did not work. 

green cities durban With a coastline stretching almost 100km from the Scottburgh area in the south to the tip of Ballito in the north, Durban’s municipal boundaries also extend nearly 50km inland to Cato Ridge. This includes a wide variety of ecological habitats that encompass 16 river estuaries and the more rugged inland cliffs and plateaus around Hillcrest and Inanda. (Photo: Errol Douwes)



“I realised very rapidly from the initial meetings that no one really knew what this new Environmental Manager was meant to be doing, which suited me fine as I had arrived with a plan and simply got on with it.”

For the next two years, she spent considerable time tramping through river wetlands and traversing cliffs while exploring the natural habitats she hoped to include in an expanded version of the initial D’MOSS network.

At a council level, she soon ran into political flak.

“We were dealing with the challenges of building a new democracy and there were many demands on local government, given the huge developmental and infrastructure shortfalls. So that made local government a particularly tough place to be – especially if you were advocating on behalf of the environment and sustainability. 

“As the mayor has reminded me previously, in the late 1990s he and I were both involved in the upgrading of Bhambayi informal settlement and he intimated that I was certainly not going to win his ‘employee of the month’ award for insisting that housing should not go down to the stream edge and that corridors be left to provide opportunities for nature to survive in the area and to reduce the risk of flooding. 

“The mayor fondly recalls me championing the rights of a frog species at the time.”

Early victory


Nevertheless, she scored a significant early victory when council procedures were changed to ensure that all property development applications were routed through her office to refuse, approve or amend projects based on environmental criteria.  

Had it not been for the intervention of Roberts and other city officials, Durban’s massive Pavilion shopping mall would not have been where it is today, but rather located much closer to the city on a sensitive grassland area near the “Spaghetti Junction” interchange.

To further entrench the protection of the city’s open space network, Roberts pushed to include D’MOSS as a permanent “overlay” feature in the city’s town planning scheme. But this placed limitations on property development around sensitive natural habitats, so the city ran into significant legal pushback from developers and local landowners.

However, the city later scored a landmark major legal victory (Le Sueur vs eThekwini Municipality) with the high court ruling in favour of the city.

Today, thanks to the work of Roberts and her colleagues, the D’MOSS open space scheme now covers around 95,000 hectares – nearly one-third of the municipal boundaries.

On paper, that is a huge chunk of land (almost the same size as the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve) but in reality, less than 3% of all land across the municipality is formally managed or protected. 

tony-debraProfle D'MOSS On paper, the Durban Metropolitan Open Space System (D’MOSS) covers almost a third of the Ethekwini municipal area, but only about 3% of that area enjoys effective conservation protection. (Graphic: Ethekwini Municipality)



Roberts acknowledges that the current D’MOSS network is highly fragmented and under increasing pressure for development in a city with a burgeoning population. 

The full costs of management and protection are also not budgeted for, while there are large areas under private ownership or under the traditional administration of the Ingonyama Trust.

Climate change science


Her initial focus on green issues switched sharply during a sabbatical at Brown University in the United States in 2004. It was here that she was exposed to climate change science for the first time 

“For me, it was one of those ‘a-ha’ moments as I pored over innumerable scientific papers… and realised that we had a huge gap in the environmental work we were doing in the municipality. 

“Climate change clearly had the potential to undermine all of our developmental aspirations and negatively impact our critical environmental assets. 

“And so, when I got off the plane back in Durban, the first thing I said to the team was that we are now also going to do climate change as well as biodiversity. 

“As a result, we initiated the Municipal Climate Protection Programme. And from those small seeds 20 years ago, a climate change department has now grown, and Durban continues to be a leader in the international discussions around climate change responses in the urban environment.”

green cities With a population of roughly four million people, the demand for more land for housing and development is increasing steadily in Durban. (Photo: Errol Douwes)



At the time, the major focus was on climate mitigation (reducing greenhouse gases mainly from industrial smoke stacks) with less focus on adaptation (preparing for expected changes such as more intense and frequent floods, droughts, storms and sea level rise).

“But we felt very strongly that because of the vulnerability of Durban and other African cities and our large development needs, it was equally important for us to be investing in adaptation to protect people, infrastructure and the ecosystems on which we depend. 

“In many ways, we were seen as pariahs because we championed adaptation so strongly both nationally and internationally – but that conviction and courage meant we were one of the few local governments in the world at that time with a clear adaptation priority.” 

Criticism


This focus on adaptation drew robust criticism from several quarters, including University of Johannesburg sociology professor Patrick Bond, who argued that the city’s climate change department mostly ignored the clouds of greenhouse gases and toxic air pollution from the petroleum refineries and other heavy industries in the poorer neighbourhoods south of Durban.

When eThekwini was awarded a One Planet sustainability award in 2018 by the WWF conservation group, Bond argued that this was simply a “greenwashing” award.

“In reality, not only the political leadership in Durban but the city’s mitigation and adaptation policies have been characterised by climate injustice and incompetence,” he argued.

Former colleagues, however, have been effusive in their support for Roberts.

Ecologist Richard Boon, who worked with her for more than 20 years, said the city was fortunate that so many people devoted time to ensuring that the remnants of Durban’s spectacular natural environment were protected and used sustainably.

“In my opinion, Debra’s contribution has been the greatest of all,” he said, praising her “considerable intellect, work ethic, outstanding leadership qualities and an unshakeable commitment to her principles and value systems”.

green cities Tourists and visitors enjoy the calm and scenic splendour of the Mhlanga Lagoon nature reserve. From a climate change adaptation perspective, natural areas within the D’MOSS network also play an important role in buffering the city from the impacts of sea level rise or severe flooding. (Photo: Tony Carnie)



Former colleague Jo Douwes also paid tribute to Roberts for developing and championing the city’s open space system.

Writing in the Kloof Conservancy digital magazine, Douwes noted that urban environmentalists were often met with resistance, but continued to monitor the state of the environment and to look for new ways to embed the message of sustainable ecological development.

“We stand firm in the spaces that are uncomfortable when it would be easier to back down… when we feel overwhelmed, we remember that change does happen, even if not at the pace we might like.”

Not a pretty picture


Sadly, Douwes noted, a recent State of Biodiversity report for Durban did not reveal a pretty picture.

It showed an 18% increase in urban land use over the last 14 years, much of it in unregulated peri-urban areas under traditional authority.

Conservation targets could no longer be achieved for six of the 14 vegetation types in the eThekwini municipal area and only one of the city’s 16 river estuaries was deemed to be in a healthy ecological state.

Very high E.coli sewage bacteria counts meant that 90% of all sites sampled for water quality were above the target level for safe swimming, while 90% of the monitored rivers in Durban were in an “overly nutrient enriched state”, and clean air remained compromised in various pollution “hotspots” across the eThekwini.

Bowing out at a farewell reception last week, Roberts issued a final challenge to her colleagues and city policymakers.

“The one final piece of professional advice I want to leave you with in the field of climate change is that tough times lie ahead – there is every reason to believe, based on the available science, that the global average surface temperature will exceed the Paris Agreement’s aspiration of 1.5°C.

“If Durban wants to continue its leadership in the climate field, it needs to be brave and become the first city in the world to prepare a plan to deal with the temporary overshoot of 1.5°C of global warming… That is what I would be doing if I was coming in to work tomorrow. 

“These discussions (about climate change) are really hard. So much so that some people say, ‘It’s all just so depressing…’ 

“I don’t see this as an issue of either hope or despair, but rather about hard work. We cannot just push it away. We have to start talking about it.” DM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REeWvTRUpMk

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