Title: Empowering the voiceless: Securing the participation of the marginalized groups in climate change governance in South Africa

Abstract

For many of the world’s poor people, adaptation to climate change is not a choice, but a reality. Existing evidence suggests that the poor, particularly those in the developing world are the most vulnerable to any changes in climate variability and change. They lack any form of resources to effectively build their adaptive capacity and resilience to both internal and external stressors. Despite this situation, the poor expend tremendous energy and vitality aimed at changing their miserable situation. On the contrary, national governments and local authorities have constantly failed to articulate new visions or provide necessary services and policy frameworks to enable the poor to adapt to the impacts of climate change. At the core of these failures is poor climate change governance, which is marred with high levels of corruption, incompetence, and bureaucratic red-tape which combine to harm the development of pro-poor adaptation policies and strategies. Using research methods inspired by the tradition of participatory research, we explore and discuss community perception on climate change adaptation governance in South Africa. We examine the myriad ways in which climate change adaptation policies and strategies are developed and systematically discuss the factors which either facilitate or hamper the involvement of all stakeholders in the development of these intervention measures. Of particular interest in this paper is to establish whose voices matter in the development of climate change adaptation policies and strategies in South Africa. These themes have been analysed and discussed within the broader framework of the sustainable development goals, particularly goals number 13, 16, and 17.

Biography

Prof. Mulala Simatele is based at the Global Change Institute (GCI) at the University of the Witwatersrand. He is an Environmental Scientist by training and specialized in Geographies of the Environment and Sustainability. He holds a DPhil in Environmental Management and Sustainable Development from the University of Sussex in the UK. Prior to joining the University of the Witwatersrand, Prof. Simatele worked for the University of St. Andrews in Scotland where he was part of the team which established the St Andrews Sustainability Institute. His main areas of research interest revolve around community-based natural resource management, education for sustainability, water and sustainability, climate change adaptation, environmental justice and environmental impact assessments.