Evaluating the effectiveness of South Africa’s air quality legislation as a climate change mitigation tool

Abstract

The global community is still grappling with the climate change crisis. Due to the intrinsic relationship between climate change and air quality, South Africa is addressing climate change through its air quality laws. This report demonstrates how these laws have been incorporated in a climate change context. It also evaluates whether the air quality laws have been robust enough to combat climate change. The report further argues that in practice, South Africa has fallen short, mainly due to a badly designed legal framework that has many loopholes, which has led to insufficient implementation. It goes on to make five recommendations on strengthening the legal framework to make it more effective. This report recommends that specific climate change legislation should be enacted; that South Africa should revisit and reform its current air quality laws; that the national government should strengthen the local government’s capacity to improve air quality; that there should be more cooperation between government departments; and that priority area management plans should contain penalties