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Post on 04-Jul-2020
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Climate Change – Impacts,
Adaptation and Vulnerability
in South Africa(and response)
Cross sectoral key impacts – ‘the big
picture” from the Second National Communication
on Climate Change
• Increased temperature & evaporation
• Water impacts
• Winter rainfall region changes
• Other? – impacts on emerging agriculture, land reform beneficiaries, small planter outgrower schemes
Example - Water
Water• South Africa is a water-scarce country likely to become more
so in coming decades, primarily due to growing water demand.
• Strong evidence of decreased flows & water quality (result of human water and land use)
• Increased temperature offsets much of rainfall increase (where this is predicted to occur)
• Likely trend to higher-intensity rainfall events may influence the return period of floods argument for increased storage capacity as an adaptation strategy
• Predicted higher temperatures and lower flows, in (conjunction with the aforementioned contaminant loading & more intensive water use) likely result in widespread decreases in water quality (confounding effects – agriculture & health)
How South Africa & SADC are tackling climate change
• Beyond communication & dissemination of climate risk science to real sectoral & multi-sectoral impact
– Second National Communication on Climate Change
– Global Change Grand Challenge; including Global Change Bureau, ACCESS, COE on Sustainability and Global Change, SAEON, Risk & Vulnerability Atlas
– Adaptation and other climate change units at Dept Water & Environment – Climate Change cluster
– Units at Dept Water & Environment – key focus on concrete strategies across departments, including water, health, disaster management, agriculture (planning commission in Office of the Presidency)
Work in SADC – coupling climate change capacity building to existing SADC early warning and disaster management processes
Objective:
Facilitate the science-policy link
Provide decision makers at national,
provincial and local levels in South Africa
with information to make timely and
informed decisions that will minimize
sensitivity to global change risks and
improve the chances of adaptation.
South Africa – excellent scientific outputs – this process synthesizes and
communicates to users
Vision:South African Risk & Vulnerability Atlas
• A ‘one-stop-shop’ for relevant global & climate change findings– Especially tax-funded research
– Outreach, communication and technology transfer platform for the decade-long Global Change ‘Grand Challenge’
• Open and easy access– Via the internet
– Hard-copy Atlas
• Based on an interactive electronic spatial database– Non-spatial studies will be accessible as well
What sort of information?
• Best available projections of climate change, land cover change and biogeochemical change for southern Africa
• Social, demographic, economic, infrastructural, ecological and topographical data that assist in identifying vulnerable systems
• Studies that quantify and map the risks in key sectors, including (but not limited to):
– disaster management (including flooding and fire),
– water supply and quality,
– forestry and natural resources,
– agriculture and food security,
– biodiversity and
– human health
• Links to non-spatial studies
• DISTRIBUTED system
Evolving structure
place-based
vulnerability
assessments
Water
theme
Climate
maps
Ecological
maps
Infrastructure
maps
Demographic
maps
Health
theme
Agric
theme
Biodiv
theme…etc
…etc
Web-based portal and navigation tool
Issue-based
vulnerability
assessments
Literature
database
Projects
& people
database
Data
Information
A quick
demo…
Climate Change ScenariosNational Scale
Climate Change Scenarios
- provincial scale
Socio-economic information
National Level
Socio-economic information
…or at the provincial or local level
Local Scale example of a vulnerability map:
Coastal Management in eThekwini Municipality
Conclusion - SADC extension
www.rvatlas.org
Specific mandate to extend components of the Atlas to
SADC
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