Advancing resilience in South Africa

Erik Chu and Preeti Verma at the World Resources Institute: South Africa’s winter season is turning out to be one of the stormiest and wettest on record. …This vulnerability is partly due to projected environmental changes, such as increasing severe storm events and decreasing water availability, as well as a lack of social, institutional, and governance capacities for addressing these projected changes.

South Africa is increasingly realizing the importance of pursuing a social development course that helps communities adapt to changes in their environment. This can be called “climate-resilient development.” However, integrating climate concerns with national development priorities can be difficult in practice. In South Africa, climate programs currently do not directly address basic human development needs such as AIDS prevention, employment, health care, and housing. Adaptation planning must address these social issues if it is to be successful; otherwise, adaptation efforts will be sidelined.

Many working in South Africa’s climate policy arena understand this dilemma and are taking steps to plan for a climate-resilient society. With a dedicated and resourceful core group of researchers and advocates, the country recently developed several climate policies that address development. These include the Long-Term Mitigation Scenarios (South Africa’s roadmap for reducing emissions), the National Sustainable Development Framework, and important climate response strategy documents from both the environment department and the department of science and technology….

The Cape Peninsula imaged by a NASA satellite. This Landsat and SRTM perspective view uses a 2-times vertical exaggeration to enhance topographic expression. The back edges of the data sets form a false horizon and a false sky was added. Colors of the scene were enhanced by image processing but are the natural color band combination from the Landsat satellite.