Long Term Mitigation Scenarios: Strategic Options for South Africa

The focus of this document is mitigation: if South Africa takes the decision to mitigate, then this document addresses how to determine the options, the emissions reductions achieved by these options, and the attendant costs of each option. How, then, is South Africa to grow and develop in order to reduce poverty, while at the same time retooling its economy in order to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions

Spatial variability in sustainable development trajectories in South Africa:provincial level safe and just operating spaces

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represents the first globally agreed framework to address human development and environmental stewardship in an integrated way. One approach to summarising national SDG status is our “barometer for inclusive sustainable development in South Africa”. The barometer downscales global social and planetary boundaries to provide status and trends for 20 critical indicators of environmental stress and social deprivation. In this paper, we explore the sub-national heterogeneity in sustainable development indicators by creating barometers defining the ‘safe and just operating space’ for South Africa’s nine provinces. Our results show that environmental stress varies significantly and provinces need to focus on quite different issues. Although generally environmental stress is increasing, there are areas where it is decreasing, most notably, marine harvesting. Social deprivation results show more of a pattern with high levels of deprivation in employment, income and safety across the provinces, and historically disadvantaged provinces showing the most deprivation overall. Although deprivation is generally decreasing, there are notable exceptions such as food security in six provinces. Our provincial barometers and trend plots are novel in that they present comparable environmental and social data on key indicators over time for all South Africa’s provinces. They are visual tools that communicate the range of key challenges and risks that provincial governments face, and are non-specialist and accessible to a range of audiences. In addition, the paper provides a critical case study of spatial disaggregation of national data that is required for the SDGs implementation

Chapter 7. Energy Policy, Air Quality, and Climate Mitigation in South Africa: The Case for Integrated Assessment

Background and significance: South Africa reports approximately 20,000 premature deaths due to air pollution annually. Policy in South Africa has typically addressed greenhouse gas emissions, energy supply, and air quality separately. Integrated assessment provides a framework in which policies related to these topics can be evaluated simultaneously. Methodology: The present study provides an overview of legal and policy documents and reviews available literature concerning existing energy, climate, and air quality policies in South Africa to highlight inconsistencies of different policy approaches and identify possible co-benefits. Previous applications of integrated assessment in South Africa are discussed as approaches to provide evidence-based decision support. Application/relevance to systems analysis: The analysis and results demonstrate that a complete analysis of the energy and industry sectors can identify inefficiencies and opportunities. The system was analysed through both a policy lens and a technical application of an integrated assessment model. Policy and/or practice implications: Multiple potential policy options have been identified for South Africa to meet future energy demand and reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Combining GHG mitigation policies with subsidies to encourage the use of electricity or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) for cooking is most promising to avoid trade-offs. Discussion and conclusion: The goal of this work is to provide an argument for assessing energy, air quality, and climate change policies in an integrated assessment framework. Examples of current policy inconsistencies have been presented and published work detailing policy options to attain defined climate-related goals discussed. Integrated assessment can help to identify co-benefits and is a useful tool to improve decisions in complex policy environments. It is therefore recommended that integrated assessment tools be used to gain useful information for decision-making concerning climate change and air quality policies

Climate change impacts and adaptation in South Africa

In this paper we review current approaches and recent advances in research on climate impacts and adaptation in South Africa. South Africa has a well-developed earth system science research program that underpins the climate change scenarios developed for the southern African region. Established research on the biophysical impacts of climate change on key sectors (water, agriculture, and biodiversity) integrates the climate change scenarios but further research is needed in a number of areas, such as the climate impacts on cities and the built environment. National government has developed a National Climate Change Response White Paper, but this has yet to translate into policy that mainstreams adaptation in everyday practice and longer-term planning in all spheres and levels of government. A national process to scope long-term adaptation scenarios is underway, focusing on cross-sectoral linkages in adaptation responses at a national level. Adaptation responses are emerging in certain sectors. Some notable city-scale and project-based adaptation responses have been implemented, but institutional challenges persist. In addition, a number of knowledge gaps remain in relation to the biophysical and socio-economic impacts of climate change. A particular need is to develop South Africa's capacity to undertake integrated assessments of climate change that can support climate-resilient development planning. (C) 2014 The Authors. WIREs Climate Change published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd