2. Academic Wits University Research Outputs (All submissions)

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3

Renewable energy, the just transition and inequality: insights from South Africa’s renewables procurement
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-06-21) Cassim, Aalia; Taylor, Julia; Crompton, Roderick; Valodia, Imraan
Low- and middle-income countries across the world are facing the dilemma of needing to decarbonise and industrialise in the context of an electricity supply crisis. The transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy is one of the first steps taken in any process of decarbonisation to address climate change. The energy transition is complex and holds significant economic risk. It requires strong governance and a capable state as well as coordination across government, community organisations and the private sector. This mammoth task requires the State to adopt policies that balance social, economic and climate objectives while reviewing past policies that may no longer be appropriate. This paper discusses the de-risking approach and the investment-centred approach to an energy transition, and using the case study of South Africa, argues for the necessity of an investment-centred approach to achieve a transition which supports local development and energy security. In analysing the example of South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement Programme (REI4P), we highlight important learnings for the energy transition, which provide a useful window into the wider carbon transition.
Biological and geophysical feedbacks with fire in the Earth system
(Environmental Research Letters, 2018-03-06) Archibald, S.; Lehmann, C.E.R.; Belcher, C.M.; Bond, W.J.; Bradstock, R.A.
Roughly 3% of the Earth's land surface burns annually, representing a critical exchange of energy and matter between the land and atmosphere via combustion. Fires range from slow smouldering peat fires, to low-intensity surface fires, to intense crown fires, depending on vegetation structure, fuel moisture, prevailing climate, and weather conditions. While the links between biogeochemistry, climate and fire are widely studied within Earth system science, these relationships are also mediated by fuels-namely plants and their litter-that are the product of evolutionary and ecological processes. Fire is a powerful selective force and, over their evolutionary history, plants have evolved traits that both tolerate and promote fire numerous times and across diverse clades. Here we outline a conceptual framework of how plant traits determine the flammability of ecosystems and interact with climate and weather to influence fire regimes. We explore how these evolutionary and ecological processes scale to impact biogeochemical and Earth system processes. Finally, we outline several research challenges that, when resolved, will improve our understanding of the role of plant evolution in mediating the fire feedbacks driving Earth system processes. Understanding current patterns of fire and vegetation, as well as patterns of fire over geological time, requires research that incorporates evolutionary biology, ecology, biogeography, and the biogeosciences.
Variation by Geographic Scale in the Migration-Environment Association: Evidence from Rural South Africa
(Federal Institute for Population Research, 2017) Hunter, L.M.; Leyk, S.; Maclaurin, G.J.; Nawrotzki, R.; Twine, W.; Erasmus, B.F.N.; Collinson, M.
Scholarly understanding of human migration’s environmental dimensions has greatly advanced in the past several years, motivated in large part by public and policy dialogue around “climate migrants”. The research presented here advances current demographic scholarship both through its substantive interpretations and conclusions, as well as its methodological approach. We examine temporary rural South African outmigration as related to household-level availability of proximate natural resources. Such “natural capital” is central to livelihoods in the region, both for sustenance and as materials for market-bound products. The results demonstrate that the association between local environmental resource availability and outmigration is, in general, positive: households with higher levels of proximate natural capital are more likely to engage in temporary migration. In this way, the general findings support the “environmental surplus” hypothesis that resource security provides a foundation from which households can invest in migration as a livelihood strategy. Such insight stands in contrast to popular dialogue, which tends to view migration as a last resort undertaken only by the most vulnerable households. As another important insight, our findings demonstrate important spatial variation, complicating attempts to generalize migration-environment findings across spatial scales. In our rural South African study site, the positive association between migration and proximate resources is actually highly localized, varying from strongly positive in some villages to strongly negative in others. We explore the socio-demographic factors underlying this “operational scale sensitivity”. The cross-scale methodologies applied here offer nuance unavailable within more commonly used global regression models, although also introducing complexity that complicates story-telling and inhibits generalizability.

2. Academic Wits University Research Outputs (All submissions)

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