Regulating carbon markets in order to fight the effects of climate change has in recent years become an integral part of many economies around the world. Ensuring that policymakers implement market-based climate change legislation according to international best practice is an essential part to guarantee that a carbon market system operates smoothly within a country’s economy. There are many opportunities that exist in South Africa towards developing a lucrative carbon market; however, the information to implement such a system is hard to come by and complex to analyse. This dissertation will aim to shed some light on this relatively new field of the law as it will provide an overview of international best practice within the carbon market sphere. Furthermore, this dissertation will examine the legal nature of a carbon credit; analyse international instruments regulating carbon markets and discuss existing South African policies and legislation related to climate change and carbon markets. This will lead to the ultimate objective of this dissertation: to propose a possible framework for the regulation of a South African carbon market based upon international best practice. This dissertation revealed the imperative need for South African policymakers to implement legislation to conform to international best practice within carbon markets. In this regard the dissertation also revealed that the infrastructure to regulate such a market already exists within South Africa. Only subtle changes to these infrastructure systems will be required in order for to accommodate a functioning carbon market. The study revealed that the only way to convince entities around the world to emit fewer emissions and to contribute towards the fight against climate change is to attach a monetary value to emissions. Associating a price to carbon is the only way to sanction entities that produce emissions and compensate entities that mitigate emissions. A carbon tax coupled with a carbon offset mechanism, as opposed to a emissions trading scheme, would be the best option with regards to establishing a South African carbon policy. This will ensure a fair playing field, as carbon tax liable entities would be held responsible to pay the same fixed price per ton of carbon that they emit. Coupling the carbon tax with a carbon offset mechanism, trading with carbon credits, will incentivise companies to invest in “greener” technologies and to emit fewer emissions. This dissertation revealed that international best practice in the carbon market sphere, still poses significant difficulties such as price volatility associated with carbon credits; validation and verification inconsistencies within the different carbon standards; and supply and demand fluctuations. These difficulties where highlighted in this dissertation and solutions relating to these difficulties were discussed. The time has come for South Africa to enter the carbon market sphere, whether it be through the introduction of a carbon tax or otherwise. This dissertation illustrates that the infrastructure and stakeholders associated to a South African carbon market needs to be developed. If, when and how the government will actually implement such a carbon market system, remains a question to be answered.

Human risk perceptions and responses to risks are driven in part by personal experiences with relevant threats. In the case of climate change, humans have been slow to take sufficient action to mitigate climate risks, but personal experiences with extreme or abnormal weather events may shape attitudes and behaviors regarding climate risk. This dissertation presents a series of five papers that examine the effects of experiences with weather events on people’s attitudes and behaviors related to climate change. Paper 1 presents a detailed review of existing recent theoretical and empirical papers on the topic. Paper 2 presents evidence that a variety of extreme weather events can increase attention to climate change. This paper quantifies attention to climate change as frequencies of social media messages about climate change paired with records of extreme weather events in the United States. Next, Paper 3 reports evidence that experiences with abnormal weather events can impact climate policy support, an essential climate mitigation behavior. Across five studies in Paper 3 including survey data, online search data, and real election outcomes paired with objective weather observations, findings indicate that experiences with abnormal temperatures can increase climate policy support. Papers 2 and 3 together provide evidence that experiences with extreme or abnormal weather can affect attention to climate change and can affect substantial real-world climate mitigation behaviors. Paper 4 sheds light on the psychological mechanisms underlying the effects of experiences with extreme weather on climate change attitudes and behaviors. We examine experienced affect about climate change as a candidate mechanism which is investigated over three studies including survey data, experimental data, and social media data. We find support for the hypothesis that weather experiences influence climate attitudes and behaviors in part through experienced affect. Papers 1-4 together provide evidence that experiences with abnormal weather events can influence climate attitudes and behaviors. It remains an important question how these effects compare to effects of other drivers of climate attitudes such as climate activist events. Paper 5 analyzes the effects of climate activist events in direct comparison with effects of abnormal weather experiences. We find that the aggregate effects of weather experiences over the course of an average year are comparable to the individual effects of the world’s largest recent climate activist events and also to the effects of intergovernmental climate summit events. In sum, this dissertation reviews and synthesizes past literature, reports new evidence that abnormal weather experiences can affect citizens’ climate attitudes and mitigation behaviors, sheds light on an underlying mechanism of this phenomenon, and demonstrates that the magnitude of the effects of personal experiences is comparable to other known drivers of climate risk perceptions and mitigation behaviors.

Thesis (M.Sc. (Interdisciplinary Global Change Studies))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Science, School of Geography, Archaeology & Environmental Studies, 2017. / The objective of the thesis was to determine the relationship between climate variability and rural livelihoods in the Vhembe District Municipality situated in the extreme north of South Africa. These relationships ranged between food and nutritional security, land tenure, financial security, domestic politics and their impacts on human well-being in terms of the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework. The thesis uses a multi-discipline approach to assess the socio-economic outcomes of poor support to rural households that are struggling to attain an acceptable standard of living in the face of increasing challenges brought about by climate change. It also looked to investigate the capacity of rural households to adapt to the challenges of living in such an area. Results were obtained through questionnaires and basic interviews conducted among the residents of three selected areas in the Vhembe District of South Africa. The results demonstrate that residents of Vhembe go through daily suffering as a result of poor support and assistance in adapting to the challenges of climate change in the area and its impact on their livelihoods. The on-going academic literature suggests that integrated livelihood resilience is essential to adaptation to climate variability and that this can reduce the vulnerability of these areas. It also calls for the development and maintenance of effective local institutions supported by public private partnerships. Gaps identified in the literature suggested that more knowledge on land use change caused by seasonal variability as a result of the El Niño Southern Oscillation was needed as well as the prevalence of indigenous knowledge systems in adapting to these changes. It was found that local knowledge and effective local institutions were not as prevalent as expected in achieving livelihood adaptation. Some key findings were that 59% of households did not have access to arable land with 49% of respondents stating that they did not plant crops in the recent season due to the poor rains experienced. Furthermore, the reliance on social grants was notably high with 32% of respondents relying on these. Some residents who cannot pay to have access to electricity are forced to collect or buy firewood for everyday use. Furthermore, only 9% of respondents stated that they had access to flush toilets. These issues are shown to have environmental and other social consequences in the target communities. The thesis concludes that management of natural resources in Vhembe needs to be improved, as these are potential safety nets for the rural poor. It also suggests that there will need to be more support by government and business to set up beneficial agricultural projects to sustainably grow inclusive prosperity for rural residents of the Vhembe District. Key Words: Climate Variability, Sustainable Livelihood Framework, Adaptive Capacity / XL2018

The work presented in this dissertation is driven by three fundamental questions in climate science: (1) What is the natural variability of our climate system? (2) What components of this variability are predictable? (3) How does climate change affect variability and predictability? Determining the variability and predictability of the chaotic and nonlinear climate system is an inherently challenging problem. Climate scientists face the additional complications from limited and error-filled observational data of the true climate system and imperfect dynamical climate models used to simulate the climate system. This dissertation contains four chapters, each of which explores at least one of the three fundamental questions by providing novel approaches to address the complications. Chapter 1 examines the uncertainty in the observational record. As surface temperature data is among the highest quality historical records of the Earth’s climate, it is a critical source of information about the natural variability and forced response of the climate system. However, there is still uncertainty in global and regional mean temperature series due to limited and inaccurate measurements. This chapter provides an assessment of the global and regional uncertainty in temperature from 1880-present in the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Surface Temperature Analysis (GISTEMP). Chapter 2 extends the work of Chapter 1 to the regional spatial scale and monthly time scale. An observational uncertainty ensemble of historical global surface temperature is provided for easy use in future studies. Two applications of this uncertainty ensemble are discussed. First, an analysis of recent global and Arctic warming shows that the Arctic is warming four times faster than the rest of the global, updating the oft-provided statistic that Arctic warming is double that of the global rate. Second, the regional uncertainty product is used to provide uncertainty on country-level temperature change estimates from 1950-present. Chapter 3 investigates the impacts of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on seasonal precipitation globally. In this study, novel methodology is developed to detect ENSO-precipitation teleconnections while accounting for missing data in the CRU TS historical precipitation dataset. In addition, the predictability of seasonal precipitation is assessed through simple empirical forecasts derived from the historical impacts. These simple forecasts provide significant skill over climatological forecasts for much of the globe, suggesting accurate predictions of ENSO immediately provide skillful forecasts of precipitation for many regions. Chapter 4 explores the role of initialization shock in long-lead ENSO forecasts. Initialized predictions from the CMIP6 decadal prediction project and uninitialized predictions using an analogue prediction method are compared to assess the role of model biases in climatology and variability on long-lead ENSO predictability. Comparable probabilistic skill is found in the first year between the model-analogs and the initialized dynamical forecasts, but the initialized dynamical forecasts generally show higher skill. The presence of skill in the initialized dynamical forecasts in spite of large initialization shocks suggest that initialization of the subsurface ocean may be a key component of multi-year ENSO skill. Chapter 5 brings together ideas from the previous chapters through an attribution of historical temperature variability to various anthropogenic and natural sources of variability. The radiative forcing due to greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to explain the observed variability in temperature nearly everywhere on the land surface. Regional fingerprints of anthropogenic aerosols are detected as well as the impact of major sources of natural variability such as ENSO and Atlantic Multidecadal Variability (AMV).

Thesis (M.Phil. (Environmental Law and Management)) -- University of Limpopo, 2009 / In recent years, a lot has been said about global warming and climate change. Governments and Institutions have been congregating more frequently all over the world. The subject of global warming and climate change is believed to be a ticking time bomb, which can have catastrophic effects on the existence of the human race and other living organisms. This led me to think and ponder about all our coastal towns in South Africa. What would happen if the melting of the glaciers continues and the sea levels rise by over two meters? This surely is a recipe for disaster and hence a look at the Western Cape Province was really necessary to find out on the province and the country‟s preparedness. Climate change has been scientifically proven to be occurring and is being aggravated by industrialisation1. With South Africa being the 19th Green House Gas (GHG) emitter in the world, the government should definitely take action by either mitigating or adapting to these effects.2 Rightly so, something is being done not only at national level, but at a regional and international level. A number of treaties, conventions and protocols to do with climate change and its related effects have been passed and ratified by most countries. The most notable international protocol is the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change‟s (UNFCCC) Kyoto protocol. At a regional level, New Partnership for Africa‟s Development (NEPAD) and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), have come in support of environmental initiatives like the Atmospheric Pollution Information Network for Africa (APINA). The Western Cape Province, in line with most of these agreements and national strategies, have come up with their own polices in trying to mitigate and/or adapt to climate change.

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published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management