Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-87). / Three case studies were used to evaluate whether the set normative objectives were achieved in the development planning processes of these Environmental Management Frameworks (EMFs): the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Municipality’s Zone of Choice EMF, Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality’s EMF and the Tlokwe Municipality’s EMF. The objectives include the provision of a mechanism and decision support tool for the study area (identification of geographical areas) for competent authorities as well as proactive input into development proposals. EMFs functioning as a repository were found to facilitate effective and efficient decision making that is achieved through integrating all relevant and viable spatial information into a single workable platform that will provide input into local Spatial Development Frameworks (SDFs) and IDPs.

We find that ICA could make a useful contribution through the identification of the land based seasonal cycle and the ocean based seasonal cycle. These qualities mean that ICA may further prove a useful tool in the problem of identifying components of climate change signals from ensembles of multiple climate models.

Includes bibliographical references. / In Cape Town, 400 000 households are waiting for housing from the state. This thesis explores the everyday lived realities that waiting for housing entails: what waiting means to housing applicants, what living in temporary accommodation solutions for the long-term entails, and how these effects of waiting shape citizens' perceptions and encounters with the state. This research, conducted through open-ended, qualitative interviews provides a detailed and in-depth understanding of not only the everyday material and social experiences of waiting for housing and life in temporary accommodation, but also the types of encounters that citizens have with the state in relation to housing given the circumstances in which they wait. These narratives of waiting provide a detailed and nuanced understanding of the 'permanent temporariness' (Yiftachel, 2009a; 2009b) that waiting entails given the often difficult circumstances in which people live while waiting for housing, in overcrowded council houses, backyard shacks and informal settlements. Situated in the 'gray spaces' (Yiftachel, 2009a; 2009b) that exist between legal and illegal and formal and informal, housing applicants live in a state of 'betweenness' (Perramond, 2001) materially, socially, emotionally and politically. This 'betweenness', the core of the relationship between citizens and the state, produces a particular encounter with the state in relation to housing. This 'gray' encounter encompasses the varied ways housing applicants choose to interact with, and against, the state to access housing.

Bibliography: leaves 105-121. / This thesis is comprised of sedimentological and geochemical studies of seven 7m core sediments retrieved from the Namaqualand Mudbelt, South Africa. The purpose of this research is to contribute to the evidence for environmental change during the late Quaternary in the southern Africa from the analyses of continental shelf sediments and more specifically, to examine feasibility of using Namaqualand mudbelts as a key to understanding late environmental dynamics of both terrestrial and marine environment. Namaqualand mudbelts seem to have been deposited during the last 10 000 years. Chrono- and lithostratigraphy, coarse-fraction and geochemical analyses suggest the following sedimentary development on the Namaqualand offshore. An early period of deposition dominated by marine conditions off the coast, but with significant input in the north (Orange Delta) and south (off KIeinsee). There is a fining upcore sequence from the Orange Prodelta southward to the inner shelf (off Kleinsee). This fining-upward sequence is generally indicative of shoreward transgression of the sea (rising sea-level). As sea-level rises (shoreward transgression), finer-grained deeper water deposits migrate landward and are deposited over shallower water deposits. While the Orange River might be a major source of sediments on the Orange River Delta, marine contribution is increasingly important far south of the Orange Delta (off KIeinsee). ln addition, berg winds and local ephemeral Namaqualand rivers are also increasingly important.

In light of the current literature on green grabbing, this study is motivated by the need to understand whether TFCAs are characterized by green grabbing and what form they take if indeed they are unfolding there. It investigated the modes of land control and transfer - within the Lesotho component of the Maloti Drakensberg Transfrontier Conservation Area and South Africa's Greater Mapungubwe Transfrontier Conservation Area - in order to explore the politics of land in TFCAs through the green grabbing lens. Global environmental organizations are increasingly calling for more terrestrial and marine resources to be protected from the looming global environmental crisis. The knowledge production about environmental problems, threats and solutions are often articulated at the global level through reports and conventions and are expected to be adopted at the local level. One such solution to loss of biodiversity that has enjoyed increasing support in southern Africa is the concept of the Peace Parks in the form of Transfrontier Conservation Areas. With the land question an ever brooding cloud over southern Africa, this study finds itself interrogating TFCAs and the land questions they raise. Taking into consideration the current land claims in South Africa, the contested issue of traditional authorities and the problems associated with communal land tenure. The study used hegemony as a lens through which to understand how conservation initiatives at the local level are an amalgamation of how the global environmental bloc has conceptualized conservation both as a practice and an idea. One such idea that has been widely popularised is the need for more land for conservation purposes. This approach allowed the identification of environmental international conventions and protocols as a first step in a series of prongs that legitimizes green grabbing. Furthermore, it used property rights to explore how legal green grabbing occur, that is, how property rights are used by private land owners as well as the state to appropriate more land, and in some instances how property rights were used to resist the encroachment of conservation in the frontier.

Bibliography: leaves 115-117. / Environmental regulation and environmental pressures from various interest groups have been steadily increasing in recent years. Poor environmental performance by business may be costly and may lead, for example, to increased environmental taxes, financial liabilities resulting from lawsuits related to environmental incidents, or damage to public image as a results of pressure group campaigns. The environment has become a significant cost factor for business. Lack of environmental cost information However, many companies do not know how what the magnitude and extent of their environmental costs are. Financial accounting and reporting systems are not designed to extract environmental cost information from general financial information. Financial accounting systems do not reveal how high environmental costs and liabilities are, nor what the sources of environmental costs are. Environmental management systems on the other hand, produce environmental data, but this data is not monetized and therefore does not reveal much about environmental costs either. Why financial accounting systems fail to reveal accurate environmental cost information Accounting systems typically pool environmental costs into overhead accounts. The result is that both the sources of the environmental costs and its nature as environmental costs are obscured by the financial reporting system. This becomes a problem when the environmental costs assigned to overhead accounts are significantly high, or when different products, materials or processes contribute to environmental costs unequally. How environmental accounting generates environmental cost information Environmental accounting generates environmental cost information by identifying the significant environmental costs of a company. This is done by identifying the processes, materials, wastes or products of a company that create significant environmental impacts. Environmental accounting then investigates the financial reporting system and identifies all the costs that are associated with these processes, materials, wastes or products and that may potentially be hidden in overhead accounts. Once the environmental costs have been identified in overhead accounts, the costs can be allocated to its sources. Thus environmental cost information is generated that reveals the true extent and the sources of environmental costs. This information can then be used to inform a company's business decisions. The process described above illustrates how environmental accounting combines the disciplines of environmental and financial management. Environmental data from the environmental management discipline is used to focus attention on the processes, materials, wastes or products of a company that create significant environmental impacts. The skills of the financial management discipline is then used to link the processes, materials, wastes or products with significant environmental impacts to the costs created by them. These costs would typically have been obscured or hidden in overhead accounts. Through providing more accurate environmental cost information, environmental accounting can reveal opportunities to management for the reduction of environmental costs and the improvement of environmental performance. The purpose of this thesis is to develop an Environmental Accounting Review Model that presents guidelines against which the adequacy of an environmental accounting project can be assessed. What follows is a brief description of the main elements of the Environmental Accounting Review Model, which outlines the basic elements of the process of environmental accounting.

Includes bibliographical references. / Changes to global climate patterns, as predicted by many climatologists, will impact on ecosystems in numerous ways. The nutrient-rich waters of marine upwelling environments enable prolific plankton growth, which in turn supports vast shoals of pelagic fish. The nutrient supply is dependent on the strength and direction of winds, which govern the upwelling process as well as turbulence. A change in climate may thus affect the food supply and feeding conditions required by pelagic fish populations. This thesis investigates predicted changes in wind patterns in the southern Benguela system and assesses how these changes may impact on the recruitment of the Cape anchovy, Engraulis capensis. A general circulation model (NCAR Climate System Model) is used to compare a future simulation under double C02 conditions with a simulation of the present day wind regime. Climate change effects on anchovy in the other main upwelling systems, off the coasts of California, Peru and Morocco are also examined. Wind speeds and turbulence off the Agulhas Bank in the southern Benguela system are expected to remain suitable and potentially become even more conducive to spawning in the future. The results show similar mean wind speeds to present day values, a decrease in mean turbulence, a decrease in the frequency of extreme wind speeds and a decrease in the frequency of extreme turbulence during the anchovy spawning season (i.e. September-February). An increase in Lasker events is expected at the Eastern Bank Grid Cell, which suggests that this area may become the preferred spawning habitat in the future. The Cape Town Grid Cell also shows suitable conditions in the future simulation for anchovy spawning and may thus become an alternative spawning location. The West Coast shows an increase in alongshore wind stress and thus an increase in upwelling in the future simulation from November - February. This is likely to increase planktonic food availability and ultimately anchovy recruitment. Future simulations from the Climate System Model show that the upwelling systems off the coasts of California, Peru and Morocco are likely to continue supporting anchovy spawning and may become even more suitable in terms of wind and turbulence regimes.

Includes bibliographical references. / Fieldwork conducted around The Locomotive Hotel, a drinking establishment in Salt River, took place across a two year period involving building relations with a diverse range of local or regular patrons. During this period there was a lack of reflexive capacity and insight in the researcher to contextualise and theorise the experiences of encountering these patrons in the hotel. Through prolonged, intense and tension filled fieldwork - that was seemingly unrelated to the dissertation - experience was gained that, on reflection, was fundamentally informed and in a recursive virtual dialogue with past research experiences. It was recognised that this dialogue establishes a metanarrative in relation to the fieldwork conducted in The Locomotive Hotel with a narrative traced of how insight through embodied and experienced notions of becoming through encountering difference became essential to retrospectively understanding the interactions with and between patrons in the hotel. These encounters and interactions between patrons form complex systems of relation building; systems that are established through patterns of encountering difference. Self in the hotel is generally reconstituted through dialectical relationships with difference from past to present through notions of place, memory and community. In this unfolding of past and present, a single social norm and practice in the hotel is identified, presented and discussed: the drinking of a brown bottle quart explores the relations of sociability between patrons. The common consumption of a beer can act as a pretext to pull otherwise very different patrons and their varied imaginings and senses of places into sustained and repeated encounters. Implicit within these relations are patterns of exclusion. Escalating tensions between self and difference can lead to irreconcilable differences emerging; differences that may be too great to be openly encountered. Such challenging differences can lead to notions of self, others, community and place being reshaped in potentially linear and closed off ways. These arguments presented in this dissertation in the context of the hotel conceptualise research as a process rather than a theoretical output. They are arguments that demonstrate the fallacy of a researcher as able to neatly and rationally describe their positional situated-ness as distinctly and demonstrably being on the outside of a group or crowd in one moment and inside the next. It is an argument for a form of ethnography and engaging with positionality that demonstrates the researcher as human, as unsure and fallible in their attempts to understand their place and relation to new contexts. It is ethnographic work that has an ethical and political commitment beyond ticking methodological checkboxes.

Bibliography: pages 120-128. / The study is primarily concerned with the identification of topographical dunes and their classification as either sand ramps or climbing dunes. Topographical dunes in two semi-arid regions, namely the southern Kalahari (a summer rainfall region) and the Breede River Valley (a winter rainfall region), were investigated. The study also evaluates the palaeoenvironmental significance of the topographical dunes and attempts a palaeoenvironmental reconstruction within the study regions. The two different rainfall regimes facilitated regional comparisons with respect to environmental change, most particularly during the Quaternary. The methodology comprises a review of current literature on topographical dunes, an examination of aerial photography to identify topographical dunes in South Africa and field work to ground truth the dunes. Field sampling, laboratory work (granular composition analysis, pH, conductivity and scanning electron microscopy) as well as statistical analyses (principal component and cluster analyses) were employed to assist in the palaeoenvironmental reconstruction. The results of the laboratory and statistical analyses do not reveal any obvious differences with respect to structure, particle size, pH, conductivity, chemical composition and the surface texture of the grains between, the different topographical dunes. The dunes comprise homogeneous quartz sand that was emplaced against topographical barriers as a result of aeolian processes. They are therefore classified as climbing dunes rather than sand ramps. Three optically stimulated luminescence dates were determined for a topographical dune from each study region. Samples from the Prynnsberg 2 dune in the southern Kalahari are dated to 100 years, and it is suggested that this is due to current reworking of the Kalahari sands from the extensive linear dune field and from the Orange River. It is proposed that the southern Kalahari topographical dunes are currently episodically active. From the Sandput dune in the Breede River Valley, three probable humid phases are identified: 762 kyr, 28.2 kyr and 9.9 kyr. These humid periods may be coupled with episodes of cooling, which supports results from previous studies. This finding has important implications for future climatic changes in the winter rainfall region of South Africa, implying that warming in the Western Cape may be associated with a decrease in precipitation. Lastly, a short historic overview of aerial photographs shows that topographical dunes are susceptible to human impacts in the form of agriculture, overgrazing, sand quarrying and through the construction of dams and weirs on rivers.

The Transvaal Highveld has one of the largest potentials for air pollution in South Africa. The area around Witbank and Middleburg in the eastern Transvaal Highveld, is highly industrialized with several coal-fired power stations, burning coal dumps and heavy industries. The pollution levels in this area have been the centre of much dispute in recent years, and yet little emphasis has been placed on the severity of atmospheric deposition despite the fact that acid deposition is a major world-wide environmental concern. This study focusses on the chemistry and severity of atmospheric depositions to the south and south-east of the Witbank-Middleburg Power and Industrial Complex. Bulk depositions were sampled at seven sites during the year August 1982 to August 1983 and rain samples covered five sites for four of the six months of the 1983/84 rainy season.