Harm or damage from environmental events and disasters in Gauteng

Introduction

People all around the world are facing mounting environmental risk as climate change intensifies the frequency and severity of extreme events (Dodman et al., 2022). Africa in particular has seen average temperatures increase by 1°C over the past century, with warming accelerating in recent decades at a rate higher than the global average (Engelbrecht et al., 2015). The Gauteng City-Region in South Africa is not an exception to these trends.

The impact of intensifying risk is evident in the GCRO’s Quality of Life (QoL) 7 (2023/24) survey data. Here, 55% of respondents reported experiencing harm or damage from an environmental event or disaster in the year preceding the survey (Khanyile et al., 2024). While harm or damage is widely experienced, there are communities that are not equally impacted by disasters or equally able to mitigate against their effects due to variations in the spatial concentrations of population and household growth, differences in the quality of infrastructure, as well as the unresolved spatial legacies of apartheid-era planning (Maree et al., 2018). This Map of the Month explores this inequality of impact.

In disaster studies, the harm or damage a household experiences reflects the nature of the hazard (such as a flood or sewage burst), exposure (shaped by where a household is located and the surrounding infrastructure), and vulnerability (the limited capacity of households to protect themselves against or recover from the event) (Wisner et al., 2004; UNISDR, 2015; Dodman et al., 2022). Given the nature of the data, this Map of the Month is not able to separately analyse each of these dimensions nor objectively record whether an event occurred. Instead, it relies on survey respondents’ indication that they had experienced harm or damage resulting from a given list of environmental events or disasters. The analysis also cannot independently assess the extent of vulnerability, as the survey did not ask about households’ capacity to recover from the events experienced. In essence, the analysis groups hazard, exposure and vulnerability together, indicating where households report harm or damage when an event occurs and exceeds their capacity to protect against or recover from it.

In the GCRO’s QoL 7 (2023/24) survey, respondents were asked whether their household had experienced harm or damage from a list of 10 different environmental events or disasters. In QoL 7, the events or disasters that most frequently led to harm or damage were heat waves (27%), water and sewage pipe bursts (19%), air pollution (16%), and flooding (14%). Two composite variables were then computed, based on a grouping of the list into (1) naturally occurring environmental events or disasters, and (2) human-induced environmental events or disasters.

Natural disasters occur where meteorological and topographic conditions make them likely, regardless of who lives there (Spiridonov et al., 2025). Our first composite variable includes harm or damage from flooding, heat waves, severe wind, lightning, and hail. By contrast, human-induced disasters arise from the interaction between environmental conditions and human behaviour (Masood et al., 2014), such as ageing and inadequately maintained infrastructure, mining and industrial activity concentrated near residential areas, and weak capacity to prevent, respond to, and recover from failures. Our second composite variable includes harm or damage from air pollution, fires, sinkholes and tremors, water pollution, and water and sewage pipe bursts. Although naturally occurring dolomite provides geological conditions for sinkhole formation, sinkholes and tremors are categorised as human-induced in this analysis because they can be triggered by human activity, such as mining. Respondents were asked whether they experienced harm or damage from water and sewerage bursts, and so it is assumed that these responses indicated genuine harm or damage rather than service interruptions resulting from infrastructure failures.

Once computed for each respondent, the composite variables were spatially joined to the 2020 ward boundaries. The choropleth maps below use a graduated scale from green (low) to brown (high) to show the percentage of respondents per ward reporting that their household had experienced harm or damage. The composite variables were also analysed against various socio-demographic characteristics and compared across municipalities.

Experiences of harm or damage from environmental events or disasters

Figure 1 maps the percentage of respondents in each ward who reported experiencing harm or damage from naturally occurring environmental events or disasters, including flooding, extreme heat, severe wind, lightning and hail. The map shows a diffused spatial pattern with regard to moderate exposure. Wards in the 25-50% (yellow) and 50-75% (light brown) ranges are broadly distributed across the province. There are a few wards in which more than 75% of respondents reported harm or damage from natural disasters. These wards are scattered throughout the core and the southern parts of the province. Interestingly, only four wards - one in Rand West and three near Carletonville in Merafong City - had no respondents who reported harm or damage from naturally occurring environmental events or disasters.

Figure 1: Percentage of respondents reporting experiencing harm from naturally occurring environmental events or disasters per ward. Data source: GCRO QoL 7 (2023/24).

Figure 2 presents a different story, showing the percentage of respondents reporting harm or damage from human-induced environmental events or disasters. Compared to Figure 1, the map shows much more dark green (<1%) and light green (1-25%), indicating more wards in which fewer than 25% of respondents reported harm or damage to their households. Green areas predominate across Pretoria, Centurion, Midrand, Sandton and most of Ekurhuleni, broadly corresponding to formerly white-designated and affluent residential areas. Medium-to-high experiences of harm or damage from human-induced environmental events (50-75%) is concentrated in Soweto, the Johannesburg CBD, Vanderbijlpark and Vaal townships like Evaton and Sebokeng, Katlehong, and West Rand areas like Carletonville – areas in close proximity to mining and industrial activity. Wards where more than 75% of respondents reported experiencing harm or damage human-induced environmental events and disasters are scattered throughout the province. A number of these wards are clustered near Soweto and Evaton.

Figure 2: Percentage of respondents reporting experiencing harm or damage from human-induced environmental events or disasters per ward. Data source: GCRO QoL 7 (2023/24).

Variations across demographic and socio-economic factors

Figure 3 compares the reported experiences of harm or damage from human-induced environmental events or disasters by respondents’ demographic and socio-economic characteristics, including gender, age, race, monthly household income, and dwelling type. The data shows that slightly larger proportions of females (37%), respondents aged 25-34 (40%), Black African (37%) and Coloured (38%) respondents, as well as those living in low-income households and informal dwellings (41%), experienced harm or damage from human-induced environmental events or disasters. In some instances, the differences within demographic and socio-economic categories are relatively small. However, there are relatively large disparities across dwelling types and population groups. Some 41% of those in informal dwellings reported harm or damage compared to 34% in formal dwellings. Some 37% of Black Africans and 38% of Coloured respondents reported harm or damage, compared to just 26% of whites, an 11 and 12 percentage point difference respectively. A difference of nearly 10 percentage points was observed between low-income and high-income households who experience harm or damage, with 39% of respondents in the R3 201 to R12 800 income category affected, compared to only 29% of respondents in the highest income category, R51 201 and above.

Figure 3: Percentage of respondents whose households have been affected by human-induced environmental events or disasters by demographic and socio-economic characteristics. Data source: GCRO QoL 7 (2023/24).

Experiences of harm or damage from human-induced environmental events or disasters by municipality

Figure 4 disaggregates harm or damage from human-induced events or disasters across district municipalities in Gauteng. The results tell distinct stories about how profiles of settlement type and location, infrastructure, and industrial and mining histories shape harm or damage across the province.

Figure 4 shows how Sedibeng records the highest rate (34%) of harm or damage from water and sewage pipe bursts, nearly double the provincial average of 19%, while the West Rand and Johannesburg both sit at 23%, reflecting under-investment and a lack of maintenance of the latter’s mining-era infrastructure (Petersen et al., 2022; Culwick Fatti and Khanyile, 2023). Harm or damage from air pollution is highest in Johannesburg (19%), followed by Tshwane (17%) and the West Rand (16%), and lowest in Ekurhuleni (11%). Johannesburg also reports the highest rate of harm or damage from tremors and sinkholes (17%), followed by the West Rand (8%), consistent with their dolomitic, mining-affected ground. Tshwane's profile is distinctive, with comparatively high levels of harm or damage from air pollution (17%) but the lowest reported rates of harm or damage from water and sewage pipe bursts (10%) and tremors and sinkholes (2%), consistent with its more geographically dispersed urban form and largely non-extractive industrial base (Cameron and Krynauw, 2001). Ekurhuleni reports relatively low rates of harm or damage from human-induced environmental events or disasters overall, except for water and sewage pipe bursts (16%), which is still lower than in other municipalities.

Figure 4: Percentage of respondents who experienced harm or damage from human-induced environmental events or disasters by district municipality. Data source: GCRO QoL 7 (2023/24).

Conclusion

Reported experiences of harm or damage from human-induced environmental events or disasters show relatively little variation by gender and age, but more pronounced differences across wards and by population groups, monthly household income levels, and dwelling types. Human-induced environmental hazards affect households in wards near mining and industrial activity, such as Carletonville, Soweto, Vanderbijlpark, Johannesburg and Katlehong. These areas are also predominantly previously disadvantaged communities characterised by lower monthly household income and spatial inequality. In contrast, high-income areas, corresponding to formerly white-designated affluent residential areas such as Midrand, Sandton, and Centurion, reported fewer incidents of harm or damage from human-induced environmental events or disasters.

It is important to note that exposure alone does not determine impact on households. Even when households are exposed to the same environmental event or disaster, the resulting impacts can vary considerably due to differences in housing quality, resource availability, and recovery capacity, all of which are unevenly distributed. Lower-income households are far less likely to have insurance or savings, and more likely to live in housing that offers limited protection against extreme events or disasters. Findings from Khanyile et al. (2024) show that 70% of households affected by environmental events or disasters lacked insurance for their household assets, and only 57% reported having access to social support during emergencies. These vulnerabilities are concentrated among lower-income, Black African, Coloured, and informal-dwelling households, which report the highest levels of harm or damage from human-induced environmental events or disasters. For these households, greater exposure and limited capacity to recover compound one another, meaning that a single event, such as a water or sewage pipe burst, a heatwave, or a prolonged period of severe air pollution, can trigger a cascade of impacts that higher-income households or those living in formal dwellings are far better equipped to absorb. Even though environmental events affect everyone, disasters and their effects strike hardest where vulnerability is greatest.

Our ward-level analysis shows that the burden of risk is uneven across the province. This unevenness is not random. Naturally occurring events or disasters are widespread, reflecting their indiscriminate nature, but harm or damage from human-induced environmental events or disasters is concentrated in the southern parts of Gauteng, intersecting with areas shaped by heavy industry, mining, limited environmental regulation, and ageing and poorly maintained infrastructure (Cameron and Krynauw, 2001; Patel, 2014; Petersen et al., 2022). While apartheid-era planning determined where disadvantaged communities were located, the experiences of harm or damage from human-induced environmental events or disasters do not follow lines of racial segregation alone. Harm or damage from human-induced environmental events or disasters also follow the footprint of extractive industries and infrastructure failures (Maree et al., 2018).

The spatial and socio-demographic patterns that we showed have clear implications. If harm or damage from human-induced events or disasters follow infrastructure issues as well as climate systems, then climate adaptation frameworks alone will not address them. The communities most exposed to human-induced environmental events or disasters, such as sewage bursts, air pollution and sinkholes and tremors cannot absorb the cost of disasters and need infrastructure investment, regulatory enforcement, and accountable service delivery in addition to emergency preparedness.

In short, the geography of harm or damage from events or disasters in Gauteng, especially human-induced environmental events or disasters, is not natural; it is primarily man-made. Climate change will increase extreme events in the city-region (Engelbrecht et al., 2015; Dodman et al., 2022), but who bears the burden and the resulting harm also depends on decades of decisions about infrastructure investment and industry location. More than three decades after the democratic transition, the spatial pattern of who bears the burden, usually the most vulnerable, remains shaped by where mining, industry and infrastructure failures are concentrated, a geography that apartheid-era planning helped concretise but that persists through ongoing under-investment.

References

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Inputs, edits, and comments: Graeme Götz, Dr Laven Naidoo, Christian Hamann

Suggested citation: Khanyile, S., Singh, S. and Mtshali, K. (2026). Environmental events and disasters in Gauteng: Who experiences what, and where. GCRO Map of the Month, June 2026. Gauteng City-Region Observatory, Johannesburg. https://doi.org/10.36634/FZDN8583