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Despite the increasing availability of scientific information to support climate change decisionmaking for farmers' resilience to the global challenge, a persistent gap exists between knowledge development and its application in decision-making. This is exerting pressure on science to develop more actionable or decision-relevant scientific information to support planning, and climate change decision-making. In the context of communicating climate change adaptation information, this study examined the usefulness of the Credibility, Salience, and Legitimacy (CSL) framework, otherwise known as the knowledge system framework (Cash et al., 2003), in bridging the disconnect between information production and its use in decision-making by commercial farmers in South Africa's Western Cape Province. The study was underpinned by Cash et al.'s 2003 boundary work theory, which argues that there are boundaries at the science and farmer interface which can be managed by knowledge systems employing the CSL framework in knowledge production. As such, the researcher undertook and examined the Western Cape's agricultural climate change response strategy known as the "SmartAgri" Plan, wherein scientists and agricultural experts developed case studies and regional commodity briefs, a proxy of climate adaptation information, to support farmers' resilience to climate change. The research looked at how these communication outputs are actionable in connection to users' perceptions of the credibility, salience, and legitimacy of this knowledge. The research consisted of an online focus group discussion with four SmartAgri scientists and agricultural experts as the producers of the information, as well as semistructured telephone interviews with 11 Western Cape commercial farmers, as users of climate change adaptation information. Findings from the interviews suggest that while there have been efforts to produce credible knowledge for enhanced awareness of climate change and its impacts on the Western Cape province's agricultural sector, availability of salient and legitimate climate change adaptation information remains a challenge at the science-farmer interface. Factors such as, limited experiential evidence, disparities in the scale and resolution of climate projections, the absence of financial support to commercial farmers and limited involvement of farmers in the development of climate change adaptation information, continue to undermine the actionability of climate change adaptation information in the areas studied. As a result, spanning the boundary between knowledge and action has been a challenge. Nevertheless, despite these limitations, commercial farmers consider climate adaptation information potentially useful. Increased engagement with farmers, demonstrations and trials with farmers, documentation and sharing of local best practices will be some of the key steps towards developing more actionable knowledge for farmers' use in climate change decisionmaking.

South Africa is grappling with persistently high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment, while at the same time being one of the top twenty greenhouse gas emitters in the world. While calls have been made for South Africa to embark on a just transition to a lowcarbon society, a better understanding is needed of the factors that have led to the country's current unsustainability. Drawing on the concept of the minerals-energy complex, this thesis presents an historical political economy analysis of South Africa's industrialisation process in order to (1) identify the key factors that have contributed to the country's high emissions and low employment; and (2) to determine the role of industrial policy in shaping this unsustainable development pathway. The analysis shows that the capital- and energy-intensive characteristics of South Africa's industrial structure have contributed to the country's high unemployment and high emissions. While industrial policy has been instrumental in shaping this industrial structure, its role in the post-apartheid era has been complicated by the existence of a ‘hidden' industrial policy in conflict with official objectives as well as implementation challenges which together have constrained the effectiveness of policies aimed at inclusive decarbonisation. From these results, it is argued that the adoption of an integrated green industrial policy has an important role to play in enabling South Africa to embark on a just transition to an inclusive low-carbon society.

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It is widely recognised that the unfavourable impacts of climate change on agriculture production may add up significantly to the developmental challenges of ensuring food security and reducing poverty. In Zambia, climate change impact assessments on crops are mainly carried out using large spatial scale climate data, jeopardizing on local scale impacts and adaptation capability that reveal the range of agronomic conditions under which farmers in specific areas operate. Through two major maize and soybean producing provinces in Zambia, this study enhances the understanding of district production variations under location specific climate change. This study aims at providing a climate change impact assessment in the light of three Global Climate Models (GCMs), under two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), and a crop simulation model Agrometshell (AMS). This allows for an exploration of crop production choices best suited at district scale, to feed into larger provincial and national future production programs. Two future climate periods were selected to cover both near (2020 – 2039) and long-term (2050 – 2069) climate. It was shown that the impacts of climate change on crops in Central and Eastern provinces will be beyond historical natural variation and will vary across districts and crops. Maize yields in majority of the districts will be impacted negatively whilst soybean yields will moderately benefit from future climate as five out of eleven districts studied are projected to have yield increases. These results suggest that climate change will increase the risk of food insecurity in the provinces studied and the country considering that maize is a central crop in overall agricultural crop production. Soybean which may offer an opportunity to balance with some maize loss could be accounted for in policy making to achieve future food security. This study improves knowledge and understanding of the impacts of climate change on district agricultural food production systems, and the need of good location specific knowledge to better address the challenge of climate change.

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The overarching goal of this study is to investigate the nature of precipitation variability in tropical South America over interannual to orbital timescales during the last 50,000 years. In order to address high-resolution climate changes over modern and ancient timescales, this research integrates instrumental records with model simulations and proxy reconstructions from geologic archives. The specific region of focus is the central Peruvian Andes (12°S, 76°W), where recent temperature and precipitation changes are magnified and glacial retreat has accelerated. Monthly output of modern simulations from isotope-enabled global circulation models are validated using precipitation and temperature observations from the Peruvian Meteorological Service (SENAMHI). Interpretation of model results is focused on analysis of the oxygen isotopic composition of precipitation, which also can be readily measured in geologic archives. Interannual variability for the last 133 years (1870–2003) demonstrate that precipitation in central Peruvian Andes is largely influenced by upstream variability, primarily related to the intensity of the South American Summer Monsoon. Over decadal timescales, the sea surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean also affect the strength of regional summer precipitation. Speleothems (cave samples) were recently collected in the central Peruvian Andes and are used extend the climate record through Holocene and Last Glacial periods. Two stalagmite samples from Huagapo Cave demonstrate that an intensification of regional precipitation is associated with an increase in austral summer insolation over the Holocene. A significant deviation from mean-state changes is observed in the Late Holocene when monsoon intensity decreases, tropical sea surface temperatures increase, and paleoclimatic records indicate a shift to El Niño-like conditions. A stalagmite collected from Pacupahuain Cave grew over a 35,000-year interval (16,000–50,000 years ago) during the Last Glacial period. Abrupt millennial-scale events demonstrate that the SASM is sensitive to high latitude temperature changes in both hemispheres. The dating-precision of speleothem samples provides constraints on the timing of abrupt events in the high North and South Atlantic. Future work includes development of additional stalagmite samples that span distinct intervals of time over the last 275,000 years.

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