IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i5p2991-d513826.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Landing the Climate SDG into South Africa’s Development Trajectory: Mitigation Policies, Strategies and Institutional Setup

Author

Listed:
  • Dumisani Mthembu

    (Department of Environmental Sciences, College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Science Campus, University of South Africa, 0002 Florida, South Africa)

  • Godwell Nhamo

    (Exxaro Chair in Business and Climate Change, Institute for Corporate Citizenship, Muckleneuk Campus, University of South Africa, 0002 Pretoria, South Africa)

Abstract

Landing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into national development policies and development trajectories remain one of the desired outcomes to 2030. This paper teases out how South Africa landed the climate action SDG into its development trajectory, with a focus on mitigation policies, strategies and institutional setup. The study uses an online survey, key informant interviews, as well as policy documents and critical discourse analysis. The study concludes that South Africa has landed SDG 13 into its policies designed to respond to climate mitigation. However, there were several inherent challenges in the policies and strategies resulting in implementation inefficiencies, including the fact that the policy on climate change is driven more by international pressures and expectations rather than domestic awareness and activism. There are also challenges with institutional capacity to implement the policies at sub-national levels. Furthermore, reliance on a few experts makes the system vulnerable and fragile. The study also found that not enough is being done to support sustainable consumption and production (SDG 12) as there are energy intensive industries failing to comply with mitigation policies in place. Hence the paper recommends the need to fix the disjuncture between the energy policy and climate mitigation.

Suggested Citation

  • Dumisani Mthembu & Godwell Nhamo, 2021. "Landing the Climate SDG into South Africa’s Development Trajectory: Mitigation Policies, Strategies and Institutional Setup," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-19, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:5:p:2991-:d:513826
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/5/2991/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/5/2991/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amin Karimu & Justice Tei Mensah, 2015. "Climate change and electricity consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa: assessing the dynamic responses to climate variability," OPEC Energy Review, Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, vol. 39(3), pages 322-345, September.
    2. Channing Arndt & Paul Chinowsky & Sherman Robinson & Kenneth Strzepek & Finn Tarp & James Thurlow, 2012. "Economic Development under Climate Change," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(3), pages 369-377, August.
    3. Edward B Barbier, 2014. "Climate change mitigation policies and poverty," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 5(4), pages 483-491, July.
    4. Candice Stevens, 2010. "Linking sustainable consumption and production: The government role," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 34(1), pages 16-23, February.
    5. Friederike E. L. Otto & David J. Frame & Alexander Otto & Myles R. Allen, 2015. "Embracing uncertainty in climate change policy," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(10), pages 917-920, October.
    6. Natasha Grist, 2008. "Positioning climate change in sustainable development discourse," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 20(6), pages 783-803.
    7. Naeem Akram, 2012. "Is climate change hindering economic growth of Asian economies?," Asia-Pacific Development Journal, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), vol. 19(2), pages 1-18, December.
    8. Emily Northrop, 2017. "A stable climate or economic growth?," Review of Social Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 75(4), pages 510-522, October.
    9. Ruth Fischer†Smith, 2018. "Adjusting policy implementation frameworks for non†pluralist conditions: A case study of Ukraine's single tax for small business," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 38(1), pages 26-38, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ahmad Mohd Khalid, 2023. "Creating Synergies among the Sustainable Development Goals and Climate Action: Insights from a Developing Economy," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(17), pages 1-23, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mehmet Çağlar & Cem Gürler, 2022. "Sustainable Development Goals: A cluster analysis of worldwide countries," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(6), pages 8593-8624, June.
    2. Kan, Iddo & Kimhi, Ayal & Kaminski, Jonathan, 2015. "Climate-Change Impacts on Agriculture and Food Markets: Combining a Micro-Level Structural Land-Use Model and a Market-Level Equilibrium Model," 2015 AAEA & WAEA Joint Annual Meeting, July 26-28, San Francisco, California 205128, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    3. Dambala Gelo & Steven F. Koch & Edwin Muchapondwah, 2013. "Do the Poor Benefit from Devolution Policies? Evidences from Quantile Treatment Effect Evaluation of Joint Forest Management," Working Papers 201388, University of Pretoria, Department of Economics.
    4. Yuanzhe Liu & Wei Song, 2019. "Influences of Extreme Precipitation on China’s Mining Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(23), pages 1-15, November.
    5. Siriklao Sangkhaphan & Yang Shu, 2020. "Impact of seasonal rainfall on economic growth in Thailand," Advances in Management and Applied Economics, SCIENPRESS Ltd, vol. 10(2), pages 1-2.
    6. Alessandro De Matteis, 2019. "Decomposing the anthropogenic causes of climate change," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 21(1), pages 165-179, February.
    7. Daregot Berihun & Passel Steven, 2022. "Climate variability and macroeconomic output in Ethiopia: the analysis of nexus and impact via asymmetric autoregressive distributive lag cointegration method," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(3), pages 4064-4087, March.
    8. Pretis, Felix & Roser, Max, 2017. "Carbon dioxide emission-intensity in climate projections: Comparing the observational record to socio-economic scenarios," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 718-725.
    9. Michael Berlemann & Daniela Wenzel, 2018. "Precipitation and Economic Growth," CESifo Working Paper Series 7258, CESifo.
    10. Siriklao Sangkhaphan & Yang Shu, 2019. "The Effect of Rainfall on Economic Growth in Thailand: A Blessing for Poor Provinces," Economies, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-17, December.
    11. Paolo Ceci & Lavinia Monforte & Chiara Perelli & Clara Cicatiello & Giacomo Branca & Silvio Franco & Fatoumata Binta Sombily Diallo & Emanuele Blasi & Giuseppe Scarascia Mugnozza, 2021. "Smallholder farmers’ perception of climate change and drivers of adaptation in agriculture: A case study in Guinea," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 1991-2012, November.
    12. Zolfagharinia, Hossein & Zangiabadi, Maryam & Hafezi, Maryam, 2023. "How much is enough? Government subsidies in supporting green product development," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 309(3), pages 1316-1333.
    13. Rogério Moreno Perlingeiro & Mayra Soares Pereira Lima Perlingeiro & Christine Kowal Chinelli & Elaine Garrido Vazquez & Eduardo Linhares Qualharini & Assed N. Haddad & Ahmed W. A. Hammad & Carlos Alb, 2020. "Sustainable Assessment of Public Works through a Multi-Criteria Framework," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-28, August.
    14. Yu, Yantuan & Chen, Xudong & Zhang, Ning, 2022. "Innovation and energy productivity: An empirical study of the innovative city pilot policy in China✰," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    15. Muhammad Mushafiq & Muzammil Muhammad Khan Arisar & Hanan Tariq & Stanislaw Czapp, 2023. "Energy Efficiency and Economic Policy: Comprehensive Theoretical, Empirical, and Policy Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 16(5), pages 1-22, March.
    16. Škare, Marinko & Porada-Rochoń, Małgorzata, 2023. "Are we making progress on decarbonization? A panel heterogeneous study of the long-run relationship in selected economies," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    17. Uttam Khanal & Clevo Wilson & Boon Lee & Viet-Ngu Hoang, 2018. "Do climate change adaptation practices improve technical efficiency of smallholder farmers? Evidence from Nepal," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 147(3), pages 507-521, April.
    18. B. H. Samset & C. Zhou & J. S. Fuglestvedt & M. T. Lund & J. Marotzke & M. D. Zelinka, 2022. "Earlier emergence of a temperature response to mitigation by filtering annual variability," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-9, December.
    19. Laurie Waller & Tim Rayner & Jason Chilvers & Clair Amanda Gough & Irene Lorenzoni & Andrew Jordan & Naomi Vaughan, 2020. "Contested framings of greenhouse gas removal and its feasibility: Social and political dimensions," Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(4), July.
    20. Yuan, Yongna & Duan, Hongbo & Tsvetanov, Tsvetan G., 2020. "Synergizing China's energy and carbon mitigation goals: General equilibrium modeling and policy assessment," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:5:p:2991-:d:513826. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.