Purpose of Impact Assessments The purpose of Impact Assessments (lAs) is to reconcile society's needs for development with its need to conserve the environment. lA aims to assist planners to devise solutions that are sustainable and equitable, but still efficient. lA falls short In practice, the influence of lA on the planning process has been called into question: its recommendations are not always implemented, and some of its mitigatory measures have been narrow and naive. The gap between lA principles and lA praxis needs to be bridged by more effective procedures. Faulty problem formulation In this dissertation it is mooted that conventional lA , procedures, including the 1992 Integrated Environmental Management procedure, pay inadequate attention to the formulation of problems. There is a danger that lAs may focus on the wrong problem, or may misconstrue the right problem. Weak problem conception may then give birth to less than optimal solutions. Flawed solutions Following the lA for Contract 1000 (access roads to the Mohale Dam), only two alternative solutions were presented to the decision-maker for consideration. Of these, the LCAR is likely to be rejected because it is associated with high risks to the integrity of the biophysical environment, and because it costs M47 million (Malotis) more to construct than does the WAR. By default, the WAR is likely to become the preferred alternative; however it is unable to address some of the fundamental problems in the project area. Selection of the WAR as the access route for transporting materials to the Mohale Dam site "creates" groups of winners and losers in the affected society. In addition, failure to build the LCAR is equivalent to a lost opportunity (ie it represents an opportunity cost) for certain other groups of "losers" [see Table Sl]. The WAR, the best solution that conventional lA could generate, is manifestly a less-than-optimal solution. A problem-solving approach Analyses of the actual procedure followed during the lA for Contract 1000, and of the conventional approach to lA (according to the literature) point to the failure of lA procedures to recognise certain crucial features of environmental problems. lA procedures are not adapted to the dynamism or the complexity of environmental problems, and are not adequately designed to take into account interrrelationships (linkages) among either affected environments or among particular problems. lA is also in danger of becoming divorced from its political ("real world") context. In an attempt to address these failings of lA, a problem-solving approach to lA is developed. The new approach to lA is based on the 1992 IEM procedure, but is supplemented by elements of the natural human problem-solving process [after Miller 1985], and is also informed by Hill and Fuggle's [1990] classification of types and levels of alternatives.

This thesis examines the extent, nature and impact of flooding in informal and subsidised housing areas on the Cape Flats. Drawing on constructivist arguments regarding the subjectivity of risk as a concept, I examine how flooding and risk are conceptualised locally and internationally, and how well these framings compare with people's experiences in subsidised housing areas in Cape Town. I show that flooding remains a significant challenge in subsidised housing areas. Flood-risk has a strong built environment component; the very dwellings that should help to improve people's lives serve instead to transform and perpetuate risk, undermining the developmental objectives of the housing programme. In so doing, I interrogate assumptions about risk, hazard and vulnerability, and the lessons for theory and practice.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 211-220).

Development in urban catchments often result in rivers being converted into large stormwater canals where stormwater is removed as quickly as possible to prevent flooding. A combination of elevated peak flows, increased nutrients and contaminants and reduced biotic richness are typical features of these urban waterways. This study explored the dynamics of an urban river in Cape Town by using high-resolution monitoring sensors and loggers to analyse and model real-time discharge and water quality data during and after 14 rainfall events. Discharge and water quality data were collected from the Liesbeek River at three sites during the rainfall events. As expected, the upper most sampling site had the lowest discharge and pollution load, compared to sites in the middle and lowest reaches of the river. An analysis showed significant correlations between the discharge and electrical conductivity at all three sampling sites. Rainfall was the primary factor in altering discharge and electrical conductivity. Predictive modelling using selected rainfall designs indicated that average discharge and total volume increases with increasing rainfall. Linear regression analysis for electrical conductivity indicated a strong relationship whereby an increase in discharge resulted in a decrease in electrical conductivity. This study revealed the discharge and water quality of stormwater in the Liesbeek River during rainfall events showed the improved water quality conditions in the river during the rainfall events particularly after the peak discharge. Furthermore, the implications of this study revealed that the Liesbeek River can become a water source for recharging groundwater and aquifers.

Large-scale climate processes such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Antarctic Oscillation (AAO), and many others, play varying roles in regional climate variability across the world. While the role of singular processes have been explored in many studies, the combined influence of multiple large-scale processes has received far less attention. Key to this is the challenge of developing methodologies to support the analysis of multiple processes interacting in potentially non-linear ways (co-behaviour) in a particular region. This study details the development of such a methodology and demonstrates its utility in the analysis of the co-behaviour of largescale process interactions on regional precipitation and temperature variability over southern Africa. The study defines co-behaviour as the interaction of large-scale processes that may influence regional circulation leading to climate variability. A novel methodology which involves a combination of analysis techniques such as Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is developed to identify and quantify such co-behaviour which accommodates potentially non-linear interactions. This methodology is evaluated in the context of southern African regional climate using three key processes, namely ENSO, AAO and Inter-tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), and characterizations of regional circulation, and temperature and rainfall variability. Analysis of co-behaviour under observed conditions identifies results that concur with prior studies, in particular the dominant regional response to ENSO, but also establishes key examples of co-behaviour such as the role of the AAO in moderating and altering the regional response to ENSO which is important for understanding regional climate variability. Application of the approach to Global Climate Model (GCM) simulations of past climate reveals that while many GCMs are able to capture individual processes, in particular ENSO, they fail to adequately represent regional circulation variability and key observed co-behaviour. The study therefore clearly demonstrates the importance of co-behaviour in understanding regional climate variability as well as showing the usefulness of the new methodology in investigating co-behaviour. Finally, the new insights into evaluating model performance through the lens of core climate processes and their interaction provides a significant step forward in both model development and application for decision making.

Conventional management approaches, focused primarily on stock status and top-down driven regulatory measures, such as are employed in many commercial fisheries across the globe, have proven to be inadequate in managing small-scale fisheries and have contributed to marginalisation of this sector. In South Africa, small-scale fisheries have been increasingly recognised since the abolishment of Apartheid and the advent of democracy in 1994. Nevertheless, the management approaches implemented have been largely top-down, natural science-driven and single-species approach. South Africa's fishery sector is currently going through a historic moment where all small-scale fishers are awaiting implementation of a new Small-Scale Fisheries Policy that will see it endorsing the holistic, multi-species and people-centred approach and the recognition of local and indigenous knowledge of fisheries and addressing the complex socio-economic needs of the fishers. However, in order to implement this policy using a co-management and EAF approach, Government and fishing communities will need to set up the required information-gathering and monitoring tool that would be in line with the principles and objectives of the South African Small-Scale Fisheries Policy as careful assessment of social and economic outcomes of fisheries policies is required to support and sustain livelihoods of these fishers. A proper information management system (IMS) would further ensure that the new approaches to small-scale fisheries management are practical and effective in managing this sector. In investigating the small-scale fisheries information management system, the researcher conceptualised and designed an IMS and further conducted case studies by analysing and work-shopping results of analysed catch data recorded by an independent service provider to Doringbaai small-scale fishers, and analysed catch data of East Coast Rock Lobster in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Based on the results of the conceptualised and designed IMS and that of the analysed catch data, it is clear that there is a need for the IMS to be converted into a web-based system and further accommodate more indicators that would assist in equipping fishers and fisheries authorities with relevant decision-making. It is also clear that there is a need for an urgent overhaul in how catch data is gathered and packaged as there were numerous errors in the data that could affect how small-scale fisheries should be managed. One of the interventions urgently needed is implementation of an electronic data capturing and instant synchronisation of data into the IMS which would present live data through a web interface customised per user type. Such tool would improve the current management measures and further contribute to improving governance of small-scale fisheries when the Small-Scale Fisheries Policy is implemented.

Most contemporary urban development in cities of the global South is responding to rapid urbanisation caused by prospects of employment opportunities and improved quality of life. Research in the field of sustainability in cities of the global South mainly focuses on economic and social development goals. However, there is an emerging sense that an appreciation of ordinary, everyday practices at the level of the community is important for developing a nuanced understanding of what sustainability might be in Southern cities. There is agreement on the need to pay attention to social and cultural practices in urban sustainability literature; yet relatively little research in the field engages closely with everyday practices at the level of neighbourhoods or communities. This is particularly true in the global South, and especially in low-income urban neighbourhoods, where developmentalist agendas dominate both academic and policy-related research. My thesis addresses this gap through an exploration of a wide range of everyday practices in a lowincome, peri-urban area, which happen to have sustainable effects. Analysing ethnographic data collected over nine months in the Cape Town township of Nyanga, I find that the desire of urban residents to create spaces of home and belonging drives behaviour that in fact has positive sustainable outcomes, yet is seldom considered in literature on sustainable cities. I argue that paying attention to how ordinary citizens ‘make home', specifically by (i) drawing on memories, (ii) developing livelihoods, and (iii) building social relations can enrich understanding not only of economic and social development but also of the complex ways in which social and environmental sustainability are already intertwined in everyday practice. Facilitating sustainable spaces in cities of the global South, therefore, requires critical engagement with the practices that are already taking place in urban residents' everyday lives.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / The advent of terrestrial laser-scanners made the digital preservation of cultural heritage sites an affordable technique to produce accurate and detailed 3D-computermodel representations for any kind of 3D-objects, such as buildings, infrastructure, and even entire landscapes. However, one of the key issues with this technique is the large amount of recorded points; a problem which was even more intensified by the recent advances in laser-scanning technology, which increased the data acquisition rate from 25 thousand to 1 million points per second. The following research presents a workflow for the processing of large-volume laser-scanning data, with a special focus on the needs of the Zamani initiative. The research project, based at the University of Cape Town, spatially documents African Cultural Heritage sites and Landscapes and produces meshed 3D models, of various, historically important objects, such as fortresses, mosques, churches, castles, palaces, rock art shelters, statues, stelae and even landscapes.

This thesis provides an analysis of the discourses of nature conservation in South Africa and Driftsands provincial nature reserve from constructionist and environmental justice perspectives. At the outset I examine the theoretical framework on the social construction of nature and that of environmental justice. I then discuss the history of nature conservation in South Africa. Finally I analyse the discourse (nature conservation and local communities) surrounding the Driftsands Provincial Nature Reserve (DNR). This nature reserve is located one kilometre east of Cape Town International Airport, in the Western Cape, South Africa. My analysis of the first theoretical framework (the social construction of nature) confirms that a) the idea of nature is constructed over time; b) nature, as a concept and a phenomenon, is complex; c) nature discourses reveal, hide, and create 'truths' about nature which are accepted as being truthful yet are a question of social struggle and power politics; d) humans have amassed countless definitions of the word 'nature'. Those definitions are categorised by Castree and Braun (2001) into three groups: external, intrinsic, and universal. My analysis of the second theoretical framework (environmental justice) suggests that the idea of nature can be used constructively or negatively depending on who uses it and why. The link between both theoretical frameworks suggests that nature is bound up with agendas. Humans construct natures to pursue individual, social or political agendas. From this standpoint the focus of the thesis shifts from debating whether or not nature is socially constructed to examining what type of agendas were pursued to achieve those 'natural' constructions, and what their consequences were for local communities living in and around protected areas. In order to achieve this, I employed four interlinked analytical methods (stakeholder, discourse, critical and ideological analysis). My analysis of the case study of DNR and that of the history of nature conservation in South Africa suggests ideological similarities. First, in both cases nature conservation is inspired by external environmental views. In the colonial period of South Africa, nature conservation policies and practices were shaped by English and Afrikaner protectionist ideas and aimed also to address the demand of their naturalists, sportsmen, and explorers for hunting and exploiting wild animals. In post-apartheid South Africa, nature has been 12 constructed in protected areas according to universalised environmental views and to some extent has been proactive, meaning that it aimed to address some of the social challenges. Likewise, at DNR, nature conservation was adopted in the early 1980s by the white government to pursue political agendas. In the late 1980s nature conservation began to be influenced by universalised environmental views. Second, the ideological nexus of both discourses regarding nature and local communities suggests conformity with global environmental models. Under these models the normal course is: a) to fence local communities from protected areas or to fence protected areas from local communities, b) to maximise the boundaries of protected areas, or to minimise the settlements of local communities in protected areas, c) to regulate local communities' access to protected areas and natural resources, d) to promote persuasive concepts of ecotourism to achieve nature conservation goals through community participation, co-benefiting local communities from protected areas, co-managing protected areas with local communities, and local socio-economic development, e) to aim for the removal of the on-site communities from protected areas. The impoverishment of the DNR on-site communities has been effected by means of three ideological principles. Since 1990, DNR's on-site communities have been labouring under a state of emergency - the state of living below the flood line; the state of high level of house robbery and a worrying level of rape and child abuse. Their dispossession has led to the spaces of temporality - a state of informality and limited public services and hopelessness (there is no hope of sustaining settlements on the site). Currently, these communities are cornered between two choices. Either they voluntarily relocate their shacks into the surrounding townships or they live with the state of emergency, hopelessness and temporality. Local communities of other protected areas in South Africa have been similarly impoverished by these states of emergency, temporality and hopelessness. During the colonial period, South Africa's conservation discourses were predominantly white-based. Whites constructed the common sense among themselves that they own the land and wildlife. Constructing the idea that they are the people of the land meant also suppressing the non-white sovereignty over land and natural resources. For example, Until late in the twentieth century [South African children's literature in English] 13 usually endorsed the assumption held by whites that they had exclusive ownership of the land and wildlife' (Jenkins, 2004: 107). While whites were protecting South Africa's wildlife, they also alienated blacks from nature. It is just recently, after 1994 that, 'English-Language children's writers and translators of indigenous folktales for children have begun to explore traditional beliefs about and practices in conservation (Jenkins, 2004: 107). These statements do not state or imply that English literature on humannature discourse begun to explore the idea of harmony where indigenous people live and depend on wildlife. In South Africa, it is typical for non-white communities living in or around protected areas to be relocated voluntarily or by force from their land or their settlements, and to be denied resources they had traditionally used within protected areas. Finally, both contemporary discourses continue to be in line with various universalised conservation models. Although both discourses have evolved over time, the status quo of local communities has remained the same: impoverished by exclusion from protected areas, permitted participation in only insignificant co-management models and recipients of intangible benefits. Although the contemporary discourse on nature conservation appears to be more considerate of local communities, I suggest that it is early days for this young discourse to achieve harmony between people and nature. It is up to local and national governmental and non-governmental agencies to modify global environmental views rather than fully adopting them, in order to be more respectful and accommodating of local communities.

This multiproxy study explores the palaeoenvironmental record of two cores, H2 and H7, from the Namaqualand Mudbelt representing an arid and highly variable landscape. As bulk organic radiocarbon ages previously proved problematic, with anomalous reversals, the primary objective was to improve chronology and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions through high resolution 813C, 81SN and pollen analysis, with the aid of principal component analysis. Bulk organic radiocarbon dating of the surface sediment had previously yielded older than expected ages. New 210Pb analysis has established that these surface sediments are modem and radiocarbon ages are now recalibrated to yield an adjusted age of ±3 470 cal yr BP at the base of the more distal core, H7. Pollen spectra correlate well with stable isotopes and include recent disturbance indicators in the Succulent Karoo, Grassland, Karoo expansion, stock farming, impoundment, saltmarsh degradation and increase in domestic cereal cultivation. The proximal and distal mudbelt sites are, however, isotopically distinct, with 813C, inverse nitrogen and C/N ratios characterising H2 as more terrestrial. The excursion towards C3-rich values at around 6m depth in the proximal mudbelt suggests an increase in marine sources and C3 vegetation, while associated pollen aridity indicators implicate reduced inland flooding. This is contrasted against more humid conditions at 420 cm. Stronger upwelling occurred in near-surface distal mudbelt sediment and an influx of the Buffels River sediment flooded the region at ±3470 yr BP, indicating cooler, less arid conditions. 813C studies reveal the Lower Xobies palaeoflood deposit to be less C4-rich than expected, possibly due to sediment source, and is strikingly isotopically similar to the distal mudbelt. The palaeoenvironmental interpretation of the pollen assemblage, isotopes and chronology presents an improved understanding of the region represented in the mudbelt sediments. This corresponds well with established records of the last ±3 500 years and human induced land use change within the Orange River Catchment. Results also highlight the dynamics of the Orange River, which, combined with a highly variable climate, suggest that caution should be exercised to avoid over-interpreting the level at which environmental changes can meaningfully be reconstructed in arid landscapes, particularly those which are subject to sporadic and catastrophic flooding events.