Climate change will have ‘cascading effect’ on life in SA, says UCT report
Extreme weather events linked to climate change, such as prolonged heat waves and floods, can also worsen existing vulnerabilities in SA such as genderbased violence.
It is known that temperature rise, droughts and flooding — which will become more severe as global temperatures rise — will have a direct effect on agriculture and biodiversity.
But a new paper by researchers at UCT exposes the social ills that could be adversely affected by climate-change related economic stress.
The climate change impact synthesis report titled “Climate change impacts in SA: what climate change means for a country and its people”, highlights the results of climate change on SA and the “cascading effect” these changes could have on people’s lives.
“SA is a well resourced country, with a strong agricultural and biodiversity heritage. Climate change and socioeconomic risks threaten to bring about a huge change to this status. How SA copes with these changes will depend on the response of all its people, but especially policymakers and planners,” said Dr Peter Johnston of the UCT Climate System Analysis Group, one of the authors of the report.
Climate effects, says the report, are already clear in SA, and will worsen as global temperatures rise.
Even in low-emission, optimistic scenarios where global warming is limited to 2°C, heat waves are projected to become more severe and frequent, raising the risk of deadly heat stress. Similarly, severe droughts will occur more frequently.
In SA this will manifest as warmer, drier conditions across the country. At the same time, in eastern SA, including parts of KwaZulu-Natal, heavy rainfall is projected to increase, making the area more flood prone.
These extreme weather events are likely to damage crops and infrastructure, while threatening the plants and animals central to tourism. Climate change is likely to affect livelihoods, food and water security and, ultimately, increase the cost of living.
How people will be affected by this depends on their ability to afford adaptation. Those who are already vulnerable, will be affected more acutely, and existing inequality will be amplified.
About 20% of SA already suffers from food insecurity. One third of the working-age population is unemployed.
“During the Cape Town drought from 2015 to 2017, for example, informal settlements were hit harder, with fewer adaptation initiatives (such as water tanks and groundwater extraction) in these areas than in formal suburbs,” the report said.
The indirect effects of climate change that could be amplified include gender inequality, giving rise to a higher incidence of gender-based violence; a greater likelihood of poverty among women — who are more likely to hold less skilled and lowerpaying jobs and experience gender-based occupational exclusion; and a greater burden of unpaid care work among women — who often look after children, older adults and the ill in households and communities.
This, said the report, was especially true for womenheaded households in agricultural districts.
The report referred to a research study by the University of Mississippi Medical Centre in the US after Hurricane Katrina, which resulted in 1,800 deaths.
It found that, for women living in some of the worst affected areas, intimate partner violence rose 4%-8% in the six months after Hurricane Katrina. The paper suggested that intimate partner violence may be an often overlooked health concern after big natural disasters.
For outdoor workers such as farm labourers, frequent, intense heatwaves would make their jobs difficult and dangerous.
The report highlighted that, in addition to existing pressures on public services and infrastructure, climate change threatened livelihoods due to its effects on agriculture, nature, and nature tourism.
“Extreme weather threatens the plants and animals that attract tourists ... and directly damages infrastructure at nature reserves, adventure destinations and parks. Temperature rise by 2050 is projected to decrease visitors to SA’s national parks by 4%, with the Kruger National Park most affected.”