Conundrums in implementing a green economy in the Gauteng City-Region

•The Gauteng City-Region faces severe environmental challenges.•Implementation of recent green economy strategies has been weak.•We review how the strategy process generated a hierarchy of green economy meanings.•A number of conundrums have been faced in implementation.•These conundrums have led to a narrowing of approach to the green economy.

The Gauteng City-Region (GCR) is the economic heartland of South Africa, anchored on Johannesburg and the national capital Pretoria. The region's growth path has historically been tied to exploitative and resource-intensive mining and industrial activities. It faces a mounting sustainability challenge, evidenced by high energy intensity, sprawling urban-forms, increasing air and water pollution, growing water-supply insecurity, and unique phenomena such as acid-mine drainage — perhaps the most visceral symptom of past tendencies to externalise environmental costs to future generations. Recent strategies, a Developmental Green Economy Strategy (2010) and its successor the Green Strategic Programme (2011), seemingly promised a more sustainable future. However, progress on their implementation has been weak, suggesting that, on a continuum of interpretations of what it means to build the green economy, government finds it easier to emphasise limited industrial-policy style interventions rather than a vision of a fully regenerative economy. This paper analyses how these green economy strategies have faced conundrums that narrow the thinking on future growth paths, in turn threatening to reproduce a profoundly unsustainable regional economy.