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