Natural resource governance in Africa is characterised by increased commercialisation of natural resources, the promotion of community-based natural resource management, and a re-appropriation of traditional authorities and customary law as evidenced by their inclusion in statutory frameworks. Yet, knowledge of the interaction and effect of these multiple governance arrangements on local communities is limited. Using the lens of devil’s claw (Harpagophytum spp.), a commercial non-timber forest product, this research examines the interface between statutory, traditional and comanagement governance systems; the broader historical and political-economic contexts that shape governance systems; livelihood and sustainability outcomes at the local level; and the role of power in determining environmental, social and economic outcomes. The research adopted a case study method with three study sites selected in the Zambezi Region, Namibia – Balyerwa Conservancy, Lubuta Community Forest and Sachinga. All rural communal areas, selection was based on their distinct governance arrangements, including a range of traditional and co-management institutions, development interventions and statutory regulation. Qualitative methods were used and included questionnaires, focus group discussions, interviews, participant observation and documentary evidence. An institutional mode of analysis and a political ecology approach were applied. Theoretical perspectives to inform the research were drawn from discourses on governance, institutions, political ecology, power and access. The novelty in using a political ecology approach to develop adaptive governance theory was to move beyond understandings of the conscious mechanisms of institutions embodied in their structure, to a more nuanced understanding of socially-embedded institutions and the unconscious mechanisms that also determine social and environmental outcomes. The empirical knowledge gained from this research shows that both structural and socially-embedded institutional constraints are hindering the objectives of non-timber forest product governance. The results of this research affirm that governance is hybridising and that dichotomised descriptions of governance as customary or statutory, self-organising or hierarchical, do not capture the complexity of these evolving fusions of governance at the local level. Where a multiplicity of institutions existed at the local level, the role of the State was diminished and where co-management was in place, communities benefited from non-governmental organisation support which enabled greater benefits for harvesters and more sustainable practices. However, power was not restructured under such arrangements and differentials in access, knowledge, decision-making and benefits remained. Where co-management was not in place, harvesters were not supported in their harvesting activities and were most vulnerable to exploitation by traditional leaders and buyers. This exacerbated competition over the resource and unsustainable harvesting was more prevalent. Devil’s claw was used as a traditional medicine by some members of these communities but did not hold significant socio-cultural value. Customary systems of management for devil’s claw were therefore weak or absent and oversight of the resource was perceived to be the jurisdiction of the State. Statutory regulation of devil’s claw was however found to be ineffective; when in place, the State perceived the co-management institutions to be responsible for monitoring and evaluation. The implementation of quotas, traceability and better pricing from exporters exerted a greater influence than regulation in promoting sustainability. In the absence of non-governmental support and exporters adhering to quotas, unsustainable harvesting prevailed. A central finding is that alteration, the bending or breaking of rules by local communities, is a strategy to cope with economic precariousness that is inflicted by broader political-economic conditions. This affirms the need for an alternative economic logic to be examined that incorporates non-timber forest products into diverse agroforestry production systems that stimulate markets within rather than external to localities and draws on existing cultural practices and preferences to shape landscapes and economies in more holistic, equitable ways. The research concludes that benefits for harvesters and the sustainability of devil’s claw are currently hindered by institutional complexity, overlapping mandates, insufficient value of the resource at the local level and a failure to instil harvester autonomy. To address these structural and sociallyembedded institutional constraints severalrecommendations are made. First, to shift co-management from decentralisation to bottom-up democratisation by devolving authority, not just responsibility, to the resource users themselves. By enabling the freedom to experiment, socially-embedded institutional constraints such as dominant narratives of ‘traditional’ and ‘uneducated’ that perpetuate unproductivity and disincentivise learning can be reframed. Second, to remove unnecessary and inefficient bureaucratic layers through re-evaluating the social scale at which natural resource management would work best and scale-up in responsibility as required to match ecological and functional scale. This would diffuse the decision-making power of the traditional authorities and the ineffectiveness of the State in communal areas whilst maintaining a role for these institutions. Lastly, to enhance market transparency to promote the mutually beneficial and regulating role between harvesters and exporters, and to emphasise the commercialisation of non-timber forest products with socio-cultural value, robust customary systems of management and local markets. The objective is not to eliminate statutory governance in favour of customary governance, nor to denounce traditional authorities in favour of co-management institutions, but to democratise power in brokering new invited spaces of modern rural governance. This study contributes to governance theory by conceptualising a framework that addresses the structural and socially-embedded institutional constraints hindering adaptive governance of NTFPs and which offers an operational solution to balance power in a bottom-up process of democratisation where legal pluralism is prevalent.

Includes bibliographical references / The tension between power and democracy is crucial for understanding the nature and Outcomes of marine and coastal fisheries governance processes. However, this thesis Argues that prominent contemporary approaches to fisheries theory tend to promote a neoliberal vision of 'politics without politics', in which emphasis is placed on inclusive, de-centred and collaborative interaction between multiple and divergent state and non-state actors. By doing so, this perspective is likely to predispose the observer to underestimate the primacy of power as a factor determining the engagement between multiple actors in fisheries governance processes. This thesis seeks to address this apparent oversight by exploring some of the crucial power dynamics that are understated or overlooked by contemporary approaches to fisheries governance theory. It presents an ethnographic study of power and micro-politics in public participation and community based representation among small-scale fishing communities on South Africa's Cape Peninsula. The study is filtered through the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu and other critical scholars, so as to reveal the material and symbolic forms of power and strategic practices that manifested through processes of representation and participation. This thesis demonstrates that community-based representation and public participation can serve as mechanisms for dominant actors to exercise and increase their power, while undermining rather than supporting the democratic interests and efforts of small-scale fishers. Drawing on this research on the Cape Peninsula, and on the theorising of Bourdieu and other critical scholars, this thesis concludes by suggesting how power can be brought into the analysis and theorisation of fisheries governance. In particular, this thesis proposes a real politik perspective as a means to understand how structural and micro-political power dynamics constrain the possibilities for democratic small-scale fisher representation and participation in fisheries governance processes.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / Despite significant advances in palaeoenvironmental research in southern Africa, the late Quaternary palaeoenvironmental history of the region remains incomplete as palaeoclimatic proxy records are temporally and spatially discontinuous. The southern Cape is a key focus area within this region as it encompasses the Fynbos Biome, a global biodiversity hotspot, as well as rare Afrotemperate forest patches and is therefore of great botanical importance. As this area includes the transition from southern Africa’s winter rainfall zone to the year-round rainfall zone, it is also important from a climatic perspective.

Tourism development theory and practical implementation has evolved over time. In an attempt to find approaches that can minimise the negative impacts of tourism, research has been emphasising efforts to reduce the tensions created by the interaction between the tourism industry, tourists, the environment and host communities. Furthermore, the sustainability debate has framed these discussions on meeting the triple bottom line in adherence to the goals of sustainable development. Much of this research draws on constructivist and realist theories that advocate for tourism as a tool for development. Though this study appreciates the various methodologies recommended for sustainable tourism development, such methodologies lack a holistic approach that can concurrently address a destination's economic, environmental and socio-cultural challenges. This research therefore focuses on integrating approaches to the tourism development process and the implications of such an approach for the triple bottom line. The Mount Elgon region of Kenya comprise two protected areas and one national park, and serves as a case study to better understand the application of an integrated approach. The research is informed by conceptual insights into sustainable tourism that underpin planning. Planning is central to outlining methodologies that can foster tourism in underdeveloped regions. The conceptual framework used in this study proposes the application of three approaches, namely ecosystem management, multistakeholder engagement and geospatial analysis of the tourism resource base. Each of these approaches is aligned to a key positive output of tourism development in protected areas. These outputs, as identified in literature, are biodiversity conservation, socio-cultural enhancement and economic growth. They are central to understanding the significance of the three pillars of sustainability. The research utilised a mixed-method approach that included qualitative analysis by means of policy document review, in-depth and semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, participant observation and participatory rural appraisals. These different data sources were employed to develop an integrative framework for tourism development in the protected areas within the Mount Elgon region. Content analysis was used to study the open-ended data, all the while considering the economic, environmental, and socio-cultural dimensions. The analysis of these three dimensions in relation to the study area revealed many of the challenges that stakeholders in tourism development in the Mount Elgon region face. By exploring these methodological avenues, the research identifies the linkages and overlaps that can be united in an integrative framework. Initial outputs consist of an analysis of the implications of creating integrated approaches and synergising it into an integrative framework for the purpose of developing tourism in protected areas. The findings indicate that integrated approaches can be applied to understand the roles of the primary stakeholders in building or enhancing tourist destinations, local participation, environmental preservation and conservation and market sustainability of tourism enterprise development. The intention is to create a mechanism that will go beyond providing recommendations for Mount Elgon region stakeholders to embrace responsible nature-based tourism, and that allows researchers to adopt this methodology in similar environments and destinations.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 191-222). / Within the context of demographic growth, rapid urbanization and rising urban poverty which characterizes much of Sub-Saharan Africa in the 21st Century, this thesis examines the urban poor's vulnerability to food insecurity and analyses the strategies that households adopt to enhance their resilience in this challenging environment. Harare is the study site, providing an acute example of a city (and country) 'in crisis', and a context in which formal food markets have failed to meet the needs of the urban poor, within a generalized collapse of the economy. The central question, then, is how do the urban poor meet their food needs under such conditions of extreme material deprivation?

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 247-269). / The extent and consequences of problems related to analysis of spatial information at secondary school in South Africa, arising from historic inadequacies of human and material resources, are investigated. The post-apartheid education policy revision provides for improved spatial competence but a search for practical teaching guidelines in the outcomes-based education curriculum documents was unsuccessful. Theories of spatial cognition, cartographic communication and 'real world' comprehension are related to the development of spatial competence. The potential for geographic information systems (GIS) to enhance spatial concept development through visualisation of spatial data is identified. A postal opinion survey confirmed that a self-instruction programme for map reading (MapTrix, Innes, 2001) is effective. Using the test-intervention-test method, the importance of mathematics instruction for improving map analysis is recognised.

Bibliography: p. 293-304. / The study examines the response of an atmospheric general circulation model (OCM) to a reduction in Antarctic sea-ice extent during summer and winter, with emphasis on non-polar and southern African climates. Following an evaluation of the OCM, the control and perturbation simulations are analysed. The controls are forced by prescribed, observed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) and sea-ice extents, while in the perturbation simulations sea-ice is reduced and replaced with SSTs. The introduced anomalies are derived from an algorithm based on observed ice variability. The simulations are restarts of an AMIP (Atmospheric Model Intercomparison Project) configured simulation, and two summers (1979/80 and 1984185) and two winters (1980 and 1985) have been selected for the study. Three replicates have been performed for each time period for both the control and perturbation conditions.

Includes bibliographical references. / This study contributes to a broader effort of institutions toward improving seasonal forecasts over southern Africa. The primary objective is to understand where global models show shortcomings in their simulations, and how this impacts on their seasonal forecast skill. It is proposed that the skill of a model in simulating natural climate variability is an appropriate metric for a model's potential skill in seasonal forecasting. Thus the study investigates the performance of two global models in simulating the regional processes in relation to the processes variability, and how this is related to their forecast skill.

Includes bibliographical references. / The Swartland is a region of sparse natural vegetation, consisting of primarily dry-land crop farming. The area is particualarly sensitive to the changing Meditterranean-type climatic conditions and is characterised by undulating terrain and a history of land degradation and soil erosion. This thesis therefore considers how future climate change may impact on soil loss in such a climatically sensitive region of central economic significance for southern Africa.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 195-219). / The regional climate model RegCM3 is used to investigate the direct and semi-direct aerosol effects on the southern African climate during the austral winter season (June-September). The sensitivity of simulated aerosol-climate effects to different biomass burning inventories, boundary conditions and sea surface temperature (SST) feedbacks is tested to assess the range of uncertainty associated with these parameters.