Analysis of policies and initiatives for climate change mitigation in South Africa

Abstract

Climate change requires the urgent and effective implementation of climate change mitigation measures. These provide the potential to reduce global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and to limit global warming to 2°C or less above pre-industrial levels. South Africa has robust climate change legislation. Nevertheless, national GHG emissions have continued to drastically rise. Therefore, this study analyses climate change mitigation policies and initiatives and their potential to reduce GHG emissions in South Africa. Statistical analysis, which encompasses descriptive statistics, trend determination using the Mann-Kendall trend test and Sen’s slope estimator, and forecasting using the double exponential smoothing function, was performed on GHG emissions data. Findings indicate that GHG emissions from the energy sector have continued to increase from 2000 to 2017 due to increased energy demand. Trends in CO2 and N2O demonstrate upward increasing emissions, while CH4 emissions have decreased during the same period. The trend in total GHG emissions during the last decade demonstrates a decrease in GHG emissions. This unexpected finding could be the result of climate change mitigation measures implemented for the energy sector. The results are further used to make future projections on GHG emissions, which also follow the same trend as that of the last decade in our data series. Furthermore, Atlas.ti software was used for content document analysis on sampled climate change mitigation response documents. These include the LTMS Technical Report, the REIPPPP Review, the Carbon Tax Act, and the 2016 South African NDC. The potential effectiveness is based on themes comprising the availability of institutional capacity, selected priority responses, technology deployment and training, decarbonization and renewable energy, legislation support, and private sector engagement. The REIPPPP had the full potential to reduce GHG emissions, followed by LTMS with about 75%, the Carbon Tax Act at 58%, and the NDC at 42%. Future research could incorporate national GHGs and mitigation measures from other sectors. Additionally, different indicators could be explored to determine the potential effectiveness of measures.