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Climate Change Surge: Implementing Stringent Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies in South Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2010

Kola Odeku  and
Edson Meyer
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Abstract

This article examines how the South African government, realizing the country's vulnerability to climate change, deemed it necessary to strengthen adaptation and mitigation measures and put in place legal and institutional frameworks to ensure implementation and compliance. Government must take responsibility for industry's inaction by implementing policies on climate change and, more importantly, through a visible change in government policy to hold industry accountable. The stringent policies and strategies being put in place are reducing vulnerability and also enhancing a broad spectrum of capacity in responding to environmental, climatic, resource and economic perturbations. The article further reviews state of the art methods and tools available to strengthen mitigation and adaptation strategies and measures in the areas of the existing frameworks regarding climate change. It also considers various measures by Eskom in particular, and strategies embarked upon by South Africa's national and local governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of African Law , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , October 2010 , pp. 159 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 2010

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135 Ibid.

136 Ibid.

137 Ibid.

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140 Eskom “Responding to climate change”, above at note 87.

141 Eskom “Annual report”, above at note 55.

142 Ibid.

143 Eskom “Responding to climate change”, above at note 87.

144 Eskom “Abridged annual report” (2008), available at: <http://www.eskom.co.za/annreport08/aar_2008/index.htm> (last accessed 22 June 2010).

145 Eskom “Annual report”, above at note 55.

146 Eskom “Responding to climate change”, above at note 87.

147 Ibid.

148 Ibid.

149 UNFCCC Secretariat “Climate change: Impacts, vulnerabilities and adaptation in developing countries” (2007), available at: <http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/publications/impacts.pdf> (last accessed 27 May 2010).

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152 Ibid at 9.

153 Ibid at 19.

154 Ibid.

155 The UNFCCC entered into force on 21 March 1994. The convention sets an overall framework for intergovernmental efforts to tackle the challenge posed by climate change. It recognizes that the climate system is a shared resource the stability of which can be affected by industrial and other emissions of CO2 and other GHGs. The convention enjoys near universal membership, with 192 countries having ratified it. It is available at: <http://unfccc.int/essential_background/convention/items/2627.php> (last accessed 17 October 2009).

156 The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the UNFCCC. The major feature of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European Community for reducing GHG emissions. These amount to an average of 5% against 1990 levels over the five year period 2008–12. The protocol is available at: <http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol/items/2830.php> (last accessed 17 October 2009).

157 Kyoto Protocol, art 3.

158 A Brebøl, T Capral Henriksen, E James-Smith and T Sommer Kristense “Electricity from renewable resources in the Western Cape” (dissertation, 2003) at 7, available at: <http://diggy.ruc.dk/handle/1800/167> (last accessed 17 October 2009).

159 Salgado “SA firms ‘lack grasp of climate change’”, above at note 126.

160 Meyer and Odeku “Climate change, energy, and sustainable development”, above at note 26 at 53.