GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY CENTERS ANNOUNCED

Gregory Dolgos - Oct 28, 2008
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Cape Town has added another award to its collection. It has been chosen as one of the 10 cities that are most likely to become a global sustainability centre by 2020. Cape Town along with Toronto, Hyderabad, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, New York, London, Frankfurt, Curitiba and Melbourne are, according to the New York based think tank Ethisphere Institute, on the best way to become such centers.

 

According to Ethisphere Institute executive director Alex Brigham, there are cities in the world that do not take lightly challenges like population growth or the depletion of natural resources. These cities do have long term plans how to deal with the problems. Their aim is to implement various sustainable practices. Cities that qualified had to be economically important, large (population over 600,000) and cosmopolitan.

 

The researchers looked into areas of health and recreation, economic and business environment as well as into transportation and housing and so on. Naturally the cities needed to have a long term plans to become environmentally sustainable by 2020 so that they could be seen as sustainability role models.

 

Cape Town met the requirement to possibly become a global sustainability centre by 2020 and the South African Tourism CEO Moeketsi Mosola gladly announced that sustainability was the way of the future, and that Cape Town was proudly leading that way.

 

The city has introduced its sustainable development programmed back in 2004. They want 10 % of the city’s houses to use solar power. Also ten per cent of the city"s energy consumption should be coming from renewable sources by 2020. Cape Town has a promising future because its tourism industry is booming. It, nevertheless, needs to face some challenges, for example tackle the poverty in some parts of the city.

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