Johannesburg is the second best city in Asia, the Middle East and Africa in dealing with urbanisation and environmental challenges, a report showed on Wednesday.
The MasterCard Worldwide Insight Report on urbanisation and environmental challenges ranked Johannesburg second after Melbourne.
Author of the report Dr Yuwa Hedrick-Wong said: ”The overall picture for Johannesburg is that by and large the city has done exceptionally well in creating a high quality environment within its urban setting, managing increasing population growth and a degree of unpredictable environmental impact to ensure a good quality of life for residents.”
The report reviewed the relative vulnerability and degrees of protection from key environmental challenges such as air pollution, infectious disease and natural disasters of major cities in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
Johannesburg’s high ranking reflected the city’s favourable geographic location, protected from most adverse environmental factors that are either outside of government’s control or highly unpredictable, said Hedrick-Wong.
The only notable factor from which Johannesburg was not protected was drought.
When ranked solely by environmental factors that were within policy control, Johannesburg ranked at a sixth place, after Dubai.
This was due to low levels of incidences of infectious diseases and air pollution.
Last year’s MasterCard Worldwide Centres of Commerce Index ranked Johannesburg as the only city in Africa to feature in the world’s top 50 cities that were classified as ”the hubs of the new world economy”.
Johannesburg ranked 47th. — Sapa