SOUTH AFRICA’s Metropolitan Municipalities Readiness FOR URBAN GREEN DEAL

The complexity and the dynamism that has been brought by the 21st century has compelled all cities to take a forefront in tackling global urban issues. At the centre of global key development interventions that has brought urban planning to a global stage is the issue of Climate Change and the need to respond rapidly to minimize bad effects of climate change on cities holistically. The need and speed at tackling climate change calls for a greater good to save mankind from years of environmental degradation activities that have affected our cities and lifestyles drastically. The call for climate change interventions depends on urban planning practitioners to effectively shape the future of urban planning practices in response to climate change. One of the key issues of interest in the South African context, is the readiness of Metropolitan municipalities to drive the needed urban intervention of a post Oil City which embraces the NEW GREEN DEAL. The narrow focus of the selected municipalities serves as a starting point to analyse the effectiveness of policy in larger urban settings that have the most implications when it comes to climate change and responding to the global call. This paper explores South Africa’s Metropolitan Municipalities readiness in responding to policy directives that embrace the global call for Urban Green Deals and looks at the way urban planners shape cities overall determination factor in the overall manifestation of the kind of humanity our cities can bare for the 21st century urban landscapes. In the South African context, spatial urban setting consist of eight metropolitan municipalities, namely: • Buffalo City (East London) • City of Cape Town (Western Cape) • Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (East Rand) • City of eThekwini (Durban) • City of Johannesburg (Johannesburg) • Mangaung Municipality (Bloemfontein) • Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Municipality (Port Elizabeth) • City of Tshwane (Pretoria). The Municipal Structures Act in South Africa outlines municipality’s responsibilities whose tasks, among other things, are to: • prepare, implement and review Integrated Development Plans (IDPs) • establish, implement and review municipalities’ performance-management systems • Monitor and review municipalities’ perform.• prepare municipalities’ budgets • participate in decisions about the provision of municipal services • Communicate and disseminate information on governance matters. The rise of energy supply in response to the demand of electricity has become one of the corner stone in tackling urbanization and rural migration within the urban development paradigm. For ease of this paper and research methodology applied in the sampling method; these municipalities serve as reference key Metropolitan Cities: • Buffalo Metropolitan Municipality and EThekwini Metropolitan Municipality, based on their favorable location to embrace Renewable Energy as an alternative source of energy post the OIL City. South Africa has been for the past years being faced with energy challenges caused by the energy sector's mismanagement and coal prohibitions from environmental institution. For years the call has been the need to complement current supply with additional electricity could present an opportunity for cities to turn towards a green energy agenda in order to secure the needed levels of energy. The paper concludes with a brief summary of the overall analysis of how these two metropolitan cities have adopted and responded to the GREEN NEW DEAL in the context of South African cities by unpacking the Integrated Development Plans (IDP’s) with reference to the National Development Plans (NDP); with reference to the needed remedial actions needed to respond to the global call of tackling climate change and securing energy needs of SA's metropolitan Cities.