118
3 eThekwini’s Green and Ecological Infrastructure Policy Landscape
Fig. 3.17 Businesses close to the River Horse wetland
civil society. John Locke emphasised the triangular role of civil society in politics, as
opposed to Hobbes’s bipolar configuration (Warner 2000a, b; Turton and Meissner
2002).
During the second transition, two elements are vital. The first is that the implementation of engineering solutions is costly, in that government and local authorities
find it increasingly difficult to finance water infrastructure programmes when no
other source of water exists.
Secondly, as social conscience surfaces in the form of environmentalism and
sustainable development, civil society becomes prominent. This psyche argues that
supply sided solutions are environmentally damaging. Within an urban context, this
awareness transcends from one where large cities with complex patterns of interaction
move from an agenda of demand-supply to ‘multi-criterion models’ that take into
consideration factors like the impacts of climate change, differing settlement patterns,
human vulnerability, as well as resource optimization, in an effort to balance the
society-ecology relationship (Ghosh and Kansal 2019: 59).
The hydrosocial contract theory postulates that if society does not handle this
transition in a sound manner, it can cause social instability, like political unrest and
varying levels of civil disobedience (Turton and Ohlsson 1999). By lobbying their
activities, interest groups become the major actors in this transition (Meissner and
Turton 2003; Meissner 2004, 2005, 2016; Warner 2012). Warner (2012) proclaimed
that, ‘Lockean liberalism stresses freedom, diversity, tolerance and interdependence… For a Lockean, the prime mover for releasing and harnessing ingenuity
is not the state, but civil society: the key social relation is horizontal, not vertical’.
Through the normative elements mentioned by Warner (2012), these actors
mobilise support for water infrastructure projects, such as large dams (Meissner
2005) (Fig. 3.23), and they demand that water resource development becomes more
3 eThekwini’s Green and Ecological Infrastructure Policy Landscape
Fig. 3.17 Businesses close to the River Horse wetland
civil society. John Locke emphasised the triangular role of civil society in politics, as
opposed to Hobbes’s bipolar configuration (Warner 2000a, b; Turton and Meissner
2002).
During the second transition, two elements are vital. The first is that the implementation of engineering solutions is costly, in that government and local authorities
find it increasingly difficult to finance water infrastructure programmes when no
other source of water exists.
Secondly, as social conscience surfaces in the form of environmentalism and
sustainable development, civil society becomes prominent. This psyche argues that
supply sided solutions are environmentally damaging. Within an urban context, this
awareness transcends from one where large cities with complex patterns of interaction
move from an agenda of demand-supply to ‘multi-criterion models’ that take into
consideration factors like the impacts of climate change, differing settlement patterns,
human vulnerability, as well as resource optimization, in an effort to balance the
society-ecology relationship (Ghosh and Kansal 2019: 59).
The hydrosocial contract theory postulates that if society does not handle this
transition in a sound manner, it can cause social instability, like political unrest and
varying levels of civil disobedience (Turton and Ohlsson 1999). By lobbying their
activities, interest groups become the major actors in this transition (Meissner and
Turton 2003; Meissner 2004, 2005, 2016; Warner 2012). Warner (2012) proclaimed
that, ‘Lockean liberalism stresses freedom, diversity, tolerance and interdependence… For a Lockean, the prime mover for releasing and harnessing ingenuity
is not the state, but civil society: the key social relation is horizontal, not vertical’.
Through the normative elements mentioned by Warner (2012), these actors
mobilise support for water infrastructure projects, such as large dams (Meissner
2005) (Fig. 3.23), and they demand that water resource development becomes more