NEWS
South Africa ’ s ‘ common vision ’ to survive in a hotter world
Ethan van Diemen
Climate change mitigation is defined as “ a human intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases ”.
While much of the world understandably devotes considerable attention to mitigation efforts and strategies , even in the most optimistic scenarios and projections the planet is hurtling toward and beyond the thresholds that define “
dangerous climate change ”.
What then is to be done when the global average temperature is
increasingly likely to eclipse the 1.5 ° C of global warming that scientists have concluded will set off various irreversible climatic phenomena that will affect the next generations ?
How does South Africa prepare for a future where surface water resources are ever more scarce , with increasingly frequent multiyear
droughts , extended
heatwaves and
unpredictable rainfall patterns ? How do coastal regions prepare for the increased coastal storms and inevitable sea-level rise that threaten coastal and low-lying communities ? How does South Africa prepare for a future where staple crops and the livestock industry are
threatened by soaring temperatures , opening the door to starvation and civil unrest ?
In a word : adaptation .
Professor Coleen Vogel , a climatologist and adaptation and sustainability specialist at the Global Change Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand , told Daily Maverick that adaptation is “ what people are trying to do to enable society and the environment to better respond when a major climate risk occurs ”.
South Africa ’ s most recent
draft Climate Change Bill defines adaptive capacity as the “ ability of systems , institutions , humans and other organisms to adjust to potential damage , to take advantage of opportunities , or to respond to consequences ”.
Vogel explained that the essence of an adaptation strategy is to increase this adaptive capacity . “ We ’ ve got to try to build that capacity as soon as possible .”
We have to understand that South Africa ’ s adaptation plans operate on a number of different scales , from the international and institutional to the local and individual . “ Adaptation is very contextrelevant ,” she said . For example , tsunamis and other ocean-borne threats are not expected in Johannesburg .
“ So each plan is adapted to its people and to its environment . The thing that we can say about South Africa is that we need to really be clipping our development strategy much , much more closely to our adaptation strategy .”
Vogel explained : “ If we ’ re building new houses we should be building with an eye to the future in terms of climate change . If we are designing new settlements , we should be designing those with an eye to climate change , not develop them in riverbank areas or in wetland areas .”
“ So I think we ’ ve done quite well as a South African community . In fact , internationally our adaptation work is exemplary … we have some of the best adaptation planning , and I emphasise the word ‘ planning ’. So we ’ ve got a lot of ideas , but putting them into practice is another story .”
South Africa ’ s
National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy ( NCCAS ) is one such plan . It is an attempt to provide a “ common vision ” for climate change adaptation and climate resilience and outlines priority areas for achieving this . It is intended to be the “ cornerstone ” of climate change adaptation in the country , reflecting a “ unified , coherent , cross-sectoral , economy-wide approach to climate change adaptation ”.
It defines adaptation as “ the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate and its effects . In human systems , adaptation seeks to moderate or avoid harm or exploit beneficial opportunities . In some natural systems , human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate and its effects .” It is important to note that , because the NCCAS is a national strategy it does not prescribe in detail how adaptation will or should take place in the many sectors affected by climate change .
While the country ’ s
National Climate Change Response Policy ( NCCRP ) lists water , agriculture , health , human settlements ( rural , urban , coastal ), biodiversity and ecosystems and disaster risk reduction as priority adaptation-related sectors , the NCCAS goes even further and adds transportation and infrastructure , energy , mining , oceans and coast .
The NCCAS has four strategic objectives :
1 . Build climate resilience and adaptive capacity to respond to climate change risk and vulnerability ;
2 . Promote integration of the climate change adaptation response with development objectives , policy , planning and implementation ;
3 . Improve understanding of climate change impacts and the capacity to respond to them ; and
4 . Ensure resources and systems are in place to enable implementation of climate change responses .
It also has nine strategic interventions :
1 . Reduce human , economic , environmental , physical and ecological infrastructure vulnerability and build adaptive capacity ;
2 . Develop a coordinated Climate Services system that provides climate products and services for key climate-vulnerable sectors and geographic areas ;
3 . Develop a vulnerability and resil-
25 Grassroots Vol 22 No 1 March 2022