Gender and climate change adaptation

Climate change tends to exacerbate existing gender inequalities so that women tend to face greater negative impacts than men. Policies and practices should be careful not to consolidate or extend these inequalities. This brief provides information with regards to climate change impacts linked to gender. These are areas where women take primary responsibility and experience severe negative impacts, such as decreasing availability of clean water; decreasing agricultural production; decreasing access to crop residues and biomass for energy; and increasing risk of famine

One man one megawatt : one woman one candle : women, gender and energy in South Africa, with a focus on research.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2003.No abstract available

The use of liquefied petroleum gas by South African low-income urban households: A case study

At the end of 2005 and in 2006, the Western Cape suffered extended blackouts. The cuts came as a shock and customers were loud in their criticism of Eskom and the City of Cape Town’s failure to provide a reliable electricity supply. The utility Eskom’s responses included the introduction of an aggressive Demand Side Management (DSM) programme with the goal of saving electricity and reducing the need to shed customers. In Khayelitsha, Cape Town, the DSM programme entailed an exchange and subsidy programme: households were encouraged to swop their two-plate electric stoves for Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) stoves. This intervention is the subject of this paper. The results of the study were analysed in terms of the socio-economic characteristics of the sample interviewed, multiple fuel use and transition trends in households in urban areas, changes in behaviour in electricity and LPG use, changing perceptions of LPG and the impact of the intervention. Previous studies in household energy use showed that people perceived LPG to be dangerous saying that it posed a greater danger to the household than paraffin since it might explode. Surprisingly, during the electricity power cuts in 2006, people in low-income communities, readily accepted LPG stoves in great numbers and a year later, up to 89% of the households surveyed, reported still using LPG for cooking

Community based climate change adaptation (CBA)

Community based adaptation is an approach that puts people in the centre of their own development, by facilitating a learning process that increases resilience and anticipatory capacity. Adaptation is place-based and requires specific strategies. In order to create an enabling environment for adaptation it is important to firstly create the determination to adapt, and secondly create cooperation and networks to foster adaptation processes. The Adaptation and beyond newsletter for participatory research is published by Indigo Development & Change as a contribution towards effective and participatory adaptation to climate change, providing a forum for case studies and community and researcher feedback

Monitoring consumptive resource use in South African national parks

Monitoring is an essential component of measuring the performance of protected areas. This requirement led to the development of a biodiversity monitoring system for South African National Parks (SANParks). The system comprises of ten major programmes, each focusing on a core area of conservation biodiversity monitoring, with resource use being one of the focal areas. With the growing appreciation of the importance of natural resources for the socio-economic well-being of communities and other stakeholders, sustainable resource use is an important component of the management of natural areas and national parks. To gauge sustainability, a sound monitoring and research programme that fits within the context of the SANParks’ adaptive management approach towards social-ecological system management is required. The purpose of this article was to define the context and scope in which consumptive resource use takes place within SANParks and to outline the criteria necessary for developing a sound monitoring programme to assess the sustainability of such use. The monitoring programme is structured in view of the fact that sustainable resource use is achievable only where all dimensions of sustainability (social, economic and ecological) are considered simultaneously. In terms of the social and economic dimensions of sustainability, the programme provides for assessing stakeholder needs, trends in resource use and the social and economic impacts of resource use. Monitoring that relates to the ecological dimension of sustainability of biological resource use deals with the rate of turnover and population dynamics of target species, as well as harvest impact. In terms of abiotic (non-renewable) resources, monitoring deals with sound management practices to minimise impact on the environment, and to optimise benefits through responsible use. Conservation implications: The resource use monitoring programme is intended to ensure that monitoring relating to the harvesting of natural resources from national parks is scientifically sound and conducted in a structured way, towards meeting the objective of sustainable use and compliance with national legislation. The article illustrates how SANParks meets its obligation to monitor biodiversity conservation while at the same time meeting the needs for the consumptive use of resources

Scarcity in the time of over-consumption

Scarcity in the time of over-consumption<br /

Conserved Spaces, Ancestral Places: Conservation, History and Identity among Farm Labourers in the Sundays River Valley, South Africa

No Abstrac