Globally, agriculture is one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change. Despite the high coping capacity of large-scale commercial agri-firms in South Africa, they are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, particularly due to the semi-arid nature of the country and the frequency of droughts. Vulnerability at the farm-level has major implications for overall agri-supply chain resilience as the impact at the farm level is transmitted up and down the chain. Whilst large-scale commercial agrifirms are adapting autonomously some authors suggest that it won't be enough for them to manage the risks and impacts brought about by the expected rate of climate change. Enhancing the agri-firms' adaptive capacity to adapt proactively – in anticipation of climate change – could be essential to increase supply chain resilience and thus maintain economic development and safeguard employment in the agriculture sector in South Africa. The sustainable supply chain literature indicates that more powerful stakeholders, such as the retailers, have a bigger role to play up and down the chain. The retailer is in a strategic position to influence both supply and demand and thus have a powerful effect on the capacity of the agri-supply chain to proactively adapt to climate change. This study therefore aimed to look at the role of the retailer as an enabler to proactive adaptation at the farm-level for large-scale commercial agri-firms' in South Africa. The study used a qualitative research approach and looked at six agri-firms to gain a deeper understanding of the agri-firms perceptions of the retailer as an enabler and answered three objectives, i) to identify how the agri-firms were responding to climate risks, ii) to identify what barriers constrain proactive adaptation and iii) to explore what role the retailer could play in overcoming those specific barriers to proactive adaptation. The results of the study showed that the agri-firms' relatively high capacity to cope with climate variability, translated into incremental and system adaptation measures and included technological, land use management and financial insurance measures. These responses were, however, often reactive with few agri-firms regarding climate change as a high risk. Their key barriers to more proactive adaptation were: financial (e.g. cost-benefit), information (e.g. uncertainty around climate change impacts and projections), technological (e.g. inadequate research and development), organisational (shareholders only interested in short-term return on investments) and included constraints within the agri-supply chain (e.g. consumer demands for the perfect fruit). To overcome these barriers the respondents suggested a variety of measures that the retailer could do to enhance the adaptive capacity of agri-firms both directly (e.g. research at farm level, funding sustainability programs) and indirectly (e.g. influencing consumers, supporting technological development, supporting large scale research and influencing government policy). Further research on how the retailer perceives itself as an enabler (and whether its perceptions align with the agri-firms) would be necessary to ensure that shared value is created in response to shared risk.

"Zero emissions, zero poverty" has become an ambitious target to fight climate change and reduce poverty at the same time. In Kenya, eradication of extreme poverty through economic growth is one of the aims to be achieved by the Government of Kenya by 2030. Historically, economic growth has been directly linked to increased emissions. Poverty eradication through economic growth is proving to be challenging due to the fact that both developed and developing countries are expected to mitigate climate change through emissions reduction. Despite the challenge, Kenya has prioritised low carbon development as a means to eradicate poverty and mitigate climate change. "Clean coal" is one of the low carbon developments that the country has proposed. This study investigates how "clean coal" can assist Kenya to remain low carbon and develop properly. The analysis of the literature and qualitative data consists of three parts: the first analysis establishes the relationship between emissions and poverty in Kenya. The second part of the analysis assesses the literature on cost, environmental, social and economic consequences of clean coal as a low carbon development. The third component analyses the discourse of the actors involved in the decision-making process to understand the controversy for and against clean coal in Kenya. The study finds that there is possibly a link between poverty and emissions in Kenya and that improved socio-economic development results in increased emissions. The study also suggested that efforts to develop may be hindered by the increasing rate of inequality. The discourse analysis highlighted that Lamu Coal Power Plant may lead to economic development through employment and economic growth.; which comes at a high cost on environmental degradation (increased emissions and pollution) and increased deprivations (negatively impacted livelihood, health deterioration and displacement) that are likely to result in increasing poverty.

Sustainable tourism requires accommodation businesses to balance economic, environmental and social issues, taking into account the needs of current and future generations. However, despite the ever E increasing attention on sustainable tourism and the acknowledgement of the impacts of tourism on the environment, this form of tourism only represents a minor share of all tourism. Ecotourism forms part of sustainable tourism and is one of the most common forms of commercially focused wildlife management on privately owned land. Luxury safari lodges are expected to provide a high level of hospitality , luxurious facilities and exquisite cui sine . Consequently, these lodges consume large quantities of resources and are reliant on the adequate supply of water and energy. Safari lodges are also reliant on the natural environment to attract guests. Therefore it is prudent of these businesses to conserve and protect water, energy and ecological resources to ensure the perpetuity of the lodge. Furthermore, both the environment and society benefit from the conservation of these resources. This study investigates the awareness of sustainable tourism and environmental practices in luxury safari lodges. Twenty-five luxury safari lodges in Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces of South Africa were approached and a total of six safari lodges participated in an email E based questionnaire and one took part in semi -structured interviews. The research reveals that luxury safari lodges are aware of sustainable tourism and its importance. In addition, they involved in a number of environmental activities in order to achieve sustainability. The environment is emphasized as central to sustainable tourism, stemming from the fact that these lodges rely on the natural environment to attract guests. Balancing financial commitments to sustainability was found to have an impact on certain aspects of the luxury safari lodges attitudes and actions. The research indicated two key directions to pursue to sustain environmental activities in the luxury safari lodge industry. Firstly, education and awareness of staff and guests is acknowledged as central to supporting and achieving sustainability in luxury safari lodges. Secondly, lodges affiliated with voluntary initiatives such as FTT and Greenleaf are audited regularly to ensure a specific standard has been achieved, thus maintaining sustainable best practices in the lodges. The research concluded that the motivation for achieving sustainable tourism within luxury safari lodges can be seen as driven by: the need to preserve the natural environment, the opportunity to reduce operating costs (increase profitability) and the growing demand for environmentally friendly safari lodges.

As greenhouse gas emissions drive anthropogenic climate change, flooding and flood related risk are likely to increase in frequency and intensity. The burden of these risks are expected to be concentrated in urban areas, particularly affecting highly vulnerable informal settlements. Adapting to these risks will largely fall under the responsibility of local governments. However local governments, in particular those in developing countries, often lack the capacity to implement effective adaptation strategies for long-term resilience. Drawing on social network analysis this research examines the role of social ties and social capital in facilitating knowledge sharing to improve the capacities of local governments to deal with flood-related risks. Using the case studies of Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality and Mossel Bay Local Municipality in South Africa, this research found that patterns of social interactions in the two local governments were largely a result of the size of structures of governance. The larger Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality network consisted of poorly connected sub-groups with poor knowledge dispersal. This led to poor adaptive and inclusive governance because poor levels of collaboration and social learning inhibited effective flood management. The smaller Mossel Bay Local Municipality network consisted of a bonded network with high knowledge transfers. These characteristics contributed to improved adaptive and inclusive governance because strong collaboration enabled informed and flexible flood management. The poor collaboration in NMBMM is likely to negatively affect the municipality's capacity to build resilience for informal settlements by negatively affecting coping, adaptive and transformative capacity. The strong collaboration in MBLM can foster coping and adaptive capacities, but may be hampering the transformative capacity of the municipality. Thus social networks have a considerable role to play in the governance of flooding, thereby influencing the ability of the two local governments to build resilience in informal settlements.

Recent trends in sustainability research have particularly propagated transdisciplinary approaches in knowledge production. These new modes of knowledge production seek to deconstruct universalist principles and epistemic authorities from positivist research approaches. The potential of replicating existing power dynamics into these transdisciplinary spaces has, however, not sufficiently been critically questioned yet. This study proposes that transformative change in development of African cities requires a deconstruction of these power dynamics, that current transdisciplinary sustainability research is not yet sufficiently engaging in. To examine the power dynamics, the study applied a decolonial lens in its analysis. In a novel approach to contesting climate knowledge, the study sought to deconstruct the foundational concepts that are operationalised in the transdisciplinary knowledge generation. The analysis focused on tracing assumptions to identify imaginaries, that construct the geopolitical space and condition knowledge politics within a transdisciplinary research programme in Windhoek, Namibia. It further sought to reveal the mechanisms in the programmatic research design that condition epistemic authorities and subjectivities in the collaborative processes. Power dynamics were traceable through imaginaries as well as the evidencing of epistemic authority. Two overarching imaginaries could be traced, which are based in the construction and engagement of the geopolitical space in Windhoek: the imaginary of the social impact and desirable future and the imaginary of the sciencepolicy interface. Both imaginaries were underpinned by the vision of transformation, whose operationalisation revealed to be instrumental in determining the actual transformational potential in contrast to the envisioned one. The analysis indicated the concept of transformation to be an inhibiting factor due to uncontested power dynamics that were replicated in the transdisciplinary space. Epistemic authority was especially evident in connection with the climate information that was generated to inform the knowledge co-production. A contestation of authoritative knowledge was evident with regards to contextualising the information for present and future climates in Windhoek. However, the scientific climate information itself was not questioned for its authority. The conceptual design of the stakeholder engagement revealed to be the main mechanism that created subjectivity. The study concluded with an exploratory section, an ‘epistemic disobedience’, which engages the principle of Walking With that is used by the indigenous activist movement of the Zapatistas in Mexico to create a vision of a new world. Walking With is used to reconstruct a vision of a decolonial approach to generating climate knowledge in an African urban space. This exploration further exemplifies a dimension of decolonial criticism, which is the importance of going beyond deconstruction towards fostering decolonial thinking.

Includes bibliographical references / Climate change poses a major threat to living organisms, with maximum temperatures expected to continue to rise over the next few decades. Hot desert environments are particularly at risk because they experience high environmental temperatures, scarce vegetation, low productivity and unpredictable water sources. Endotherms such as birds face the challenge of maintaining a stable body temperature while avoiding dehydration. This study was carried out in the southern Kalahari, in South Africa's Northern Cape, where about 50% of bird species (36 species) depend on free-standing drinking water. Livestock farms within this area provide artificial water points, which benefit birds as well as livestock. This study determined the role of shade and cover in the use of these artificial water points by birds. An experiment was conducted at six waterholes using the Before-After, Control-Impact (BACI) design. After an initial baseline was established, three waterholes were shaded while the other three were left unshaded. Camera traps were used to record the pattern and intensity of water use by bird species at different times of the day and at varying air temperatures. A total of 36 bird species drank at the water holes, but data analysis was confined to the ten most abundant species. Of the ten, six species responded to the presence of shade/cover, with four species reacting positively (Cape Glossy Starling Lamprotornis nitens , Red - headed Finch Amadina erythrocephala , Black - throated Canary Serinus atrogularis , and Laughing Dove Spilopelia senegalensis ), four showing no significant change in drinking patterns, and two showing a decrease in visitor numbers when the site was shaded (Cape Turtle - Dove Streptopelia capicola, Namaqua Dove Oena capensis). This suggests that providing shade at waterholes is not a universal solution to the problem of increasing heat stress experienced by birds coming to drink. Certain species such as the Laughing Doves and Cape Turtle-Doves avoided waterholes during the warmest time of the day while the Namaqua Doves were frequent visitors at this time. However, the Laughing Dove took advantage of the shade provided at midday (warmest temperatures) as their numbers increased. The Red-headed Finch and Black-throated Canary also increased at water holes with temperature irrespective of the time of day. These patterns imply that the provision of shade modifies the behavior of some bird species in response to predation risk or heat stress. These species utilized shade at different times of day and with varying intensities as temperatures rose.

Worldwide urbanization and climate change are influential in changing precipitation patterns and hydrological flow resulting in event driven urban flooding. The approach to flood protection has recently shifted from engineered and technical solutions to more sustainable and integrated solutions, by considering social, ecological and physical implications and exploring sustainable urban drainage options. Attenuation of peak stormwater flow using natural wetlands is one of many sustainable urban drainage methods used to reduce flooding and is an approach of interest for this research. The study site is located within the small, urbanized river system of the Liesbeek River in Cape Town, South Africa, which is prone to localized flooding during annual winter rainfall events. The study measures the attenuation capacity of a small-scale wetland adjacent to an urban river using a 2D PCSWMM hydrodynamic model. Research is focused on illustrating the attenuation capacity of this wetland. The model ran historic flow data to determine the attenuation capacity and to measure peak flow reduction. While the reduction is not sufficient to reduce damaging floods, the findings provide new knowledge and understanding of the attenuation capacity of this wetland and motivation for expanding sustainable urban drainage within the catchment. The study aims to build a baseline dataset for the research site with the data available at present. Peak flow of the Liesbeek River was reduced in scenarios with the Valkenberg Wetland present to accept on a portion of this flow. Attenuation was most effective for rainfall events with sudden spikes in peak flow, where a 42 per cent reduction of peak flow was observed. For a scenario with lower flow rates yet a prolonged peak flow rate, the wetland was less effective, with a 20 per cent reduction observed. This wetland was found to have the potential to provide valuable ecosystem services to the area by attenuating peak flow and thus reducing the occurrence of property damaging flooding downstream.

Climate change is one of the most challenging problems of the 21st century. Its effects have already been experienced in the different parts of the world. Farmers face particularly high risks considering that their occupation is climate dependent. Therefore farmers have been implementing different adaptation activities in an effort to reduce the impacts of climate change on their livelihoods. Weather index insurance (WII) has been recommended as one potential climate change adaptation strategy. In Malawi WII was introduced and piloted in 2005 to help farmers get access to loans. In this study the implementation of WII in Malawi is assessed to examine whether it has any role to play in climate change adaptation. Focus group discussions involving 15 farmers, and individual interviews involving two state and five non-state actors who were involved in implementing WII, were conducted. Perceptions and understandings of weather index insurance as a climate change adaptation strategy were examined, and the roles of state and non-state actors were established. The potential for weather index insurance as a means for securing finance for investment into climate resilient crops was also investigated. The study reveals that the design of WII affects how farmers perceive and understand it. In general, farmers see WII as a means for securing loans and not a potential climate change adaptation tool. The study also found that most implementing organisations did not take up the role of promoting awareness about WII and this may have affected the uptake of WII by farmers and organisations that are implementing climate change adaptation projects. The study finds that farmers do not get cash payments when there is a loss event and farmers are not able to choose how the payout must be used. Furthermore, most of the study participants did not have knowledge about climate finance despite its increasing attention at the international level. This study can inform the design of WII so that it can be better implemented as a climate change adaptation tool in Malawi.

Seasonal climate forecasts (SCF) can play a crucial role in reducing vulnerability to climate variability, particularly for rural populations reliant on agriculture for their livelihood. The use of disseminated SCF by farmers in decision-making could reduce losses and maximise benefits in agriculture. Despite the potential usefulness of SCF, incorporating them into farming decisions is a complex process that navigates through several barriers which constrain their effective use. The first two barriers, namely credibility (trust on SCF) and scale (relevance of SCF in geographical space and time), originate from the limitations of SCF associated with the form in which they are produced. In this study, credibility and scale are investigated as limitations of SCF, which potentially bar the uptake and use of SCF in Bobirwa sub-district. The second group of barriers are beyond the SCF themselves but limit their effective use and emanate from biophysical, socio-cultural and economic factors. This study examines whether credibility and scale are barriers to the use of SCF in Bobirwa farmers' decision-making, investigates how SCF are used in decision-making, and seeks to find out how the barriers are overcome. To make these investigations, qualitative data was collected from subsistence agro-pastoral farmers in eight villages in Bobirwa sub-district of Botswana using semi-structured interviews. Data was collected considering gender to allow for gendered analysis. Themes related to the main study questions were identified from the data and analysed for the number of people who mentioned the themes. It was found that all 47 farmers interviewed coincidentally had access to SCF and the majority used SCF in their decision-making, while only a handful of farmers were non-users of SCF. The results show that scale (both temporal and spatial) is a barrier for users of SCF, whereas credibility is a major constraint for non-users of SCF in Bobirwa. To cope with the barriers, farmers mainly use local knowledge to complement SCF. Additionally, farmers apply advice from Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) and use economic information in their decisions to deal with the barriers. Despite the barriers, some farmers indicated that using SCF was beneficial in increasing harvests, providing warnings and minimising losses of crops and livestock. However, disadvantages of using SCF were also highlighted, including lost crops, seeds and harvest, and missed opportunities to plant because of lack of temporal and geographical detail in the forecasts. The barrier of credibility has contributed to a few non-users resorting to using traditional planting, possibly making them vulnerable to the impacts of climate variability. A gendered analysis shows that almost equal proportions of both males and females use SCF. Moreover, women use SCF for crop farming while men use it for livestock management, which is aligned to traditional roles in Botswana. It is also revealed that, unlike women who only use local knowledge and MoA advice to overcome SCF limitations, a few men also use economic ventures, which could make men less vulnerable than women farmers. Strong networks between scientists and farmers can reduce the perceived credibility barrier, and innovative ways of reducing the scale barrier can be devised. Therefore, recommendations from the study include continuous engagement with farmers to understand their decisionmaking context in order to tailor the information to their local context as much as science permits. Government programmes should be designed to integrate SCF to build farmers' resilience to climate variabilities. The impacts on livestock farming, which is dominated by men, need to be given as much prominence in SCF information as arable farming. Forecasters should continue to improve credibility and scale without compromising either factor to avoid chances of contributing to the vulnerability of farmers particularly women, who mostly rely on SCF for crop production.

The scarcity of water and especially the lack of safe drinking water have been accepted as amongst the most serious challenges facing the twenty-first century. The lack of access to water is a global problem that faces between 460 million to more than 1 billion people as a result of an increasing demand for water as well as a diminishing supply of water resources. The lack of access to potable water poses a great constraint on the societal and individual well-being for the inhabitants of the semi-arid regions of southern Africa and the key area needed to improve the sustainable development of water resources and services has been identified as water governance. The aim of this research is, therefore, to understand how access to potable water affects the well-being of communities living in the Cuvelai-Etosha basin in Namibia and to understand how these communities participate in water governance. The Okalonga B and Onandjandja villages were used as case studies.The objectives of this study are to examine how water is accessed and determine what the barriers are in accessing potable water, to examine how the well-being of the communities in the two villages is affected by water access and to explore how communities are engaged in water governance. The overall methodology of the study was based on a qualitative approach to case study research. Interviews were conducted at the household level, the constituency and regional levels using semi-structured interview guides. The study found that the communities of Okalonga B and Onandjandja access water through hand-dug wells, private and communal taps, Etaka dam and Oshana, and boreholes. A total of 6 barriers to accessing potable water were identified. These included distance to communal taps, amount of water one can carry, administration of water infrastructure, maintenance of water infrastructure, ability to pay the set water fees and specific times allocated for collecting water. The barriers to accessing potable water negatively affect the well-being of communities. Communities felt that they would have better economic opportunities if they had access to potable water which would in turn improve their well-being and livelihood opportunities. Furthermore, the study found that community participation in water governance was poor.