*Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs)
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Browsing *Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) by SDG "SDG-12: Responsible consumption and production"
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Item Adopting the theory of degrowth as a means to achieve sustainability in South African law(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Ramsay, Madison; Bapela, MphoCapitalism’s mandate of infinite, exponential growth on a planet with finite, non-renewable resources has resulted in global environmental crisis. Contextualized by South Africa’s industrial Minerals-Energy Complex, this paper submits that the growth imperative of neoliberal fossil capitalism is resulting in unsustainability in South African environmental management. Decision-making is skewed in favour of economic growth at the expense of sustainability. Degrowth is a movement that rejects the growth imperative as compulsory; it is a call not only to do less, but to do differently, a counterhegemonic alternative to capitalism that seeks environmental justice, decolonization of the North-South divide, and alternatives to growth and development. This paper posits that rejecting capitalism’s growth imperative and approaching environmental management from a degrowth perspective can inform sustainability in South African environmental law. It posits that degrowth can find applicability in South African environmental law through its compatibility with ubuntu, which in the context of this study is accepted as a similar counterhegemonic alternative to capitalism. This paper emphasizes ubuntu degrowth as a framework to conceptualize South African environmental management, insofar as it offers a transformative alternative to growth, and to capitalism itselfItem An analysis of the impact of the respective environmental, social and governance performances on firm value in South Africa(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-03) Rewachanda, Saihil; Sebastian, AvaniBackground: There is increasing pressure on South African firms to invest in sustainable initiatives. As a result, the impact of environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance on firm value has become a significant area for research. Notwithstanding the growing importance of ESG performance, the majority of prior research has focused largely on ESG disclosure. From an integrated thinking perspective, firms are required to consider their impact on each of the E, S and G aspects of sustainable value creation. However, prior research has concentrated on combined ESG ratings, rather than disaggregating the ratings to analyse the impact of the respective environmental, social and governance pillars on firm value. Purpose: The aim of this research report is to examine the relationship between firm value and respective environmental (E), social (S) and governance (G) performance ratings in South Africa. Method: The study utilises ESG performance ratings from rating agencies, FTSE and Bloomberg, as well as internal and external perspectives of firm value. Data was analysed using descriptive statistics and regression analysis over the five-year period from 2018 to 2022. Results: No relationship between E, S or G performance and firm value was statistically significant, irrespective of the measure of firm value used or the ESG rating used. Implications: The results indicate that investors might not incorporate E, S and G performance ratings in their investment decisions. From an internal firm perspective, the results indicate that management might not incorporate E, S and G performances in their value creation decisions. Significance: Due to the findings of the non-significant relationships between E, S and G performances and firm value, this study contributes to existing academic research as it foregrounds the need for further investigation into the value relevance of ESG performance ratings on firm valueItem Innovation policy change and inclusive agricultural innovation in South Africa(2022) Ndzotoyi, Phatheka TaniaAgricultural innovation by both commercial and smallholder farmers is useful to economic growth and sustainability. In South Africa and many other developing countries, smallholder farmers make up the majority of farmers. The smallholder farmers face different challenges such as water scarcity and climate change. For this reason, farmers engage in different forms of innovation activities at a small scale. This study applied a combination of inclusive growth and inclusive innovation concepts as a lens to explore innovation policy and ways to promote inclusive agricultural innovation in small scale agriculture. This study adopts a qualitative method to analyse data. The study used primary data and also policy documents analysis. Primary data was gathered through semistructured interviews which were conducted with smallholder farmers, who serve as the primary participants and key informants for the study. A randomised selection was done to recruit thirty study participants from Limpopo and Mpumalanga. Data analysis made use of a cross-case analysis from the two areas in order to understand the constraints of innovation in the small-scale agricultural sector. The key findings for the study reveal that small-scale innovators in the agricultural sector are hindered by lack of resources, funding, and access to innovative technologies. These challenges negatively affect up-scaling of innovations and participation in valuable markets. The implications of the findings suggest that smallholder farmers must be supported in order to successfully execute innovative activities. The support includes having strategies and programs to provide the required resources to improve innovative capabilities of farmers. Policymakers need to revise and redesign policies that enable smallholder farmers to operate. Stakeholders in the NSI should provide interventions that support the specific needs of smallholder farmers to be functional and profitable. The study aspires to contribute to understanding innovation among smallholder farmers in South Africa through investigating the manner in which changes to the innovation policy in South Africa could promote smallholder farmer agricultural innovations that contribute to food security, job creation, and the burden of diseases in the agriculture sector.Item Rail infrastructure developments and their productivity impact with special reference to institutions in five Southern African development community countries(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Dzawanda, Bernard; Ferddeke, Johanes W.; Mahonye, NyashaThis thesis investigates the determinants of rail infrastructure investment and its impact on productivity growth in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe for the period 1960 to 2018. The descriptive analysis of rail infrastructure data covers the period from 1939 to 2018. With the exception of South Africa, data availability limited the study analytics to start from 1960. The five Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries share a common history in terms of development, and their rail networks are interconnected. The focus of the study is on the quantity of rail infrastructure. Based on the augmented Bond, Mairesse, and Mulkay (1997) investment model, we apply the Pooled Mean Group estimator of Pesaran, Shin and Smith (1999) on novel datasets of rail infrastructure measures to estimate the drivers of rail infrastructure investment and efficiency in Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Estimation results suggest that economic, geostrategic and institutional factors drive rail infrastructure investment, efficiency and productivity growth in the four countries. GDP is found to have an insignificant impact on rail infrastructure investment. South Africa being distinctly different from the other four countries provides a different contextual setting to investigate the determinants of rail infrastructure investment and efficiency, and its impact on productivity growth. We separately apply time series analysis in the case of South Africa using the Bounds Test technique of Pesaran, Shin and Smith (2001). Estimation results suggest that GDP has a significant negative impact on rail infrastructure investment in South Africa. Government investment has a significant negative impact on rail infrastructure investment. Research results suggest that geostrategic factors have a significant positive impact on rail infrastructure investment in the four countries, and insignificant on rail infrastructure efficiency except in the case of passenger rail infrastructure investment where the impact is negative. In contrast, geostrategic factors have an insignificant impact on rail infrastructure investment in South Africa except for mixed rail infrastructure investment where the impact is negative. The impact of geostrategic factors on rail infrastructure efficiency in South Africa is found to be positive.Item The role of institutional arrangement in the development of the agro-processing sector (2011-2015)(2020) Moyo, CynthiaThe study unpacks institutional arrangements which were available when developing the agro-processing manufacturing sector with the milling industry as a case study in the period 2011-2015. In-depth interviews were conducted with the respondents from five institutions (DTI, DAFF, IDC, NAMC and GDARD), FABCOS and Old Mutual Masisizane Fund respondents did not owner the interview invitation which led to the study relying more on secondary data. The key findings revealed that there are common factors that have been contributing to the inefficiencies in policy implementation which includes territorial disputes and policy inconsistency. The study also learnt that there were no concrete institutional arrangements on the ground, thus the network was weak or non-existent. Issues of coordination, information sharing, business practices and moral hazard among the few factors contributed to little or no current visible successes to date which led to policy and network failure. Therefore, industrial policy durations must be introduced to the project at planning phase to avoid lack of participation at implementation phase. Involved institutions need to understand and play their roles rather than focus on how well institutional arrangement is integrated to avoid weak network systems (Provan & Milward, 1995). The institutional arrangements between government and private sector need to be strengthened to avoid or minimize poor business practices on entrepreneurs once they have received funding. Thus, within network systems, mentoring institution need to be included to ensure that businesses are run effectively. Moreover, government need to work together with DFIs for funding purposes as this will ensure that their priority areas are also considered by DFIs when identifying their strategic areas. Agricultural policies must be drafted together with industrial policies because both policies strive to contribute to the national long-term vision such as job creation, poverty alleviation and reduction in inequality (Briones & Felipe, 2013)Item Social capital in community food gardens in Alexandra Johannesburg(2020) Bhayla, Schlain AndreaSocial capital is a common outcome in community food gardens, yet detailed measurement of the concept is often unclear. Little is known about social capital in Johannesburg gardens and how it is mobilised. This research used both qualitative and quantitative methods to understand how gardeners mobilised social capital, and how Nan Lin’s weak-tie position emerged in Greater Alexandra Greening Route gardens. Further, it sought to understand what the theoretical and policy implications of measuring social capital were. Lin’s conceptualization of social capital, resources embedded in a network, was used. The Resource Generator, a social capital measurement tool, was adapted using findings from focus groups and used to measure access to social capital. Semi-structured interviews were used to understand the mobilisation of social capital. Findings suggest social capital is present in GAGR gardens and mobilised to achieve gardeners’ aims. Gardeners may also benefit from expanding gardens to serve a community purposeItem Social reproduction, labour markets, and economic change in South Africa(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) Francis, David Campbell; Valodia, ImraanThe South African rural economy, and its relationship to the industrial economic heartlands, has been the focus of study for many decades. In the 1970s, Harold Wolpe provided an incisive materialist analysis of apartheid. He argued that the rural economy served as a site of the reproduction of labour for capitalism in urban South Africa, thus ensuring a supply of cheap labour. His cheap labour thesis has formed the backbone of political economy analysis in South Africa ever since. But Wolpe, and other such as Mike Morris, who studied the relationship between the rural economy and the development of capitalism in South Africa, were largely unconcerned with the highly gendered nature of cheap labour, despite the fact that women were actively excluded from mining and the industrial economy by law, and played a critical role in the reproduction of life and labour in the Bantustans. Following the end of apartheid, the legal barriers preventing women from working in the main economy were dismantled, and women’s labour force participation rose rapidly. But this legal equality has not translated into substantive equality: women in rural areas continue to be significantly worse off economically than men. Unemployment rates are significantly higher for women, and they earn lower wages than men, even where they do the same work. Women continue to undertake far more unpaid work than men, and girl and women-headed households are more likely to live in poverty. Furthermore, despite well-developed literature on South Africa’s political economy, we know little about the productive and reproductive lives of rural women in contemporary South Africa. This thesis critically re-examines Wolpe for the 21st century by providing a materialist, gendered analysis of the economy of Agincourt, Mpumalanga, an area which remains on South Africa’s geographic and economic periphery. It shows how households in this part of rural South Africa are responding to the ways in which capitalism in South Africa has changed in the post-apartheid period. This thesis illuminates the important links between labour force participation, paid work, unpaid work, and livelihood strategies among households in the Agincourt area. It argues that focusing on the role of South Africa’s rural areas as sites of the reproduction of labour, as per the cheap labour thesis, ignores the highly gendered nature of social reproduction and its contribution to the reproduction of both labour and life. This thesis further contends that the role of South Africa’s rural areas cannot be investigated or theorised without a specifically gendered approach which includes women’s work in the analysis. It adds to our knowledge about an area of South Africa which is important in its own right. And Agincourt is also emblematic of the conceptual and methodological challenges of studying rural areas and their relationship with the economic 8 heartlands of urban South Africa in a way that does not marginalise the economic lives of women. It further contributes methodologically and epistemologically to studying the intersection of paid and unpaid work. It draws on a mixed-methods approach – a household survey of 600 households and 24 in-depth interviews – to investigate women’s economic lives in this marginalised place, and to re-examine the relationship between South Africa’s economic core and its periphery from an explicitly gendered perspectiv