Browsing by Subject "mitigation"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Financial protocol for South Africa's climate change mitigation assessment
    (1999/09/00) Clark, Alix; Spalding-Fecher, Randall
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    International Environmental Justice and the Climate Change Challenge
    (2012-12) Lawhon, Mary; Ziervogel, Gina;
    This course module is one section of a larger course called Geography, Development and Environment that runs as a first year course in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science at the University of Cape Town. The course work provided here is one of 3 modules including 1) the global economic environment, 2) regional dynamics of development, and 3) the North-South debates on environmental problems. This module falls under the theme of North-South debates on environmental problems. The courses use theories of underdevelopment and climatic change to explain global and regional inequalities and environmental problems. Key concepts in the course are: trade, foreign aid, regional integration, and climatic change. The objectives of this section of the course are to begin understanding: 1. the concepts of environmental justice and climate change, 2. the relationship between environmental change and development, and 3. the international politics of global environmental change, This topic provides the scope for debate among students because of the contentious nature of the subject, and the lack of clear answers. Importantly this course focuses on presenting multiple explanations and diverse viewpoints and is intended to provide context, history and structure for students’ thinking. Students are not provided with solutions, but instead encouraged to develop their own explanations and responses to climate change and justice. This 4 week module, supported by powerpoint slides, uses climate change to explore key environmental and geographical issues including: justice, scale, international equality, global political processes, and environmental change. We begin by examining the foundation and principles of the environmental movement, distinguishing between different types of environmentalism and articulating early environmental conflicts between the North and South (presentations 1, 2, 4). We then develop ideas of environmental justice (presentation 3) and how it applies to climate change.
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    Multi-jurisdictional analysis of integration of climate change considerations in regulations and guidelines across 16 environmental impact assessment (EIA) regimes
    (2022) Mayembe, Rose; Norton, Marieke; Simpson, Nicholas P; Rumble, Olivia
    The contribution of the human activities to climate change is well understood. Yet integration of climate change considerations in tools designed to govern activities affecting the environment, such as Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), remains underdeveloped and inconsistently applied. There is no clear direction on what measure of consideration is sufficient for environmental decision-making on potential impacts on the climate for proposed policies, programs, plans and projects. This research reviews progress across a range of 16 EIA regimes and outlines the potential for integration of climate change considerations in EIA. The research used a desk review of EIA literature to identify and assess regulations and guidelines that have been established to promote the integration of climate change in EIA. A typology of levels of integration was developed to guide analysis across multiple EIA regimes. The findings identify a global and growing normative expectation for climate change considerations to be integrated into EIA and describe the range of ways this is done across the regimes selected. Climate change integration in EIA is typically concerned with climate change mitigation, specifically greenhouse gas emissions from proposed developments. Fewer regimes are concerned with climate change adaptation, and in general, an integration deficit is identified for regimes where climate change is partially considered. Several challenges to integrating climate change in EIA are identified, including lack of practice guidelines and regulatory frameworks. Reflecting on the variety of approaches, the discussion extends typologies of integration in EIA to examine and provide a better understanding of substantive consideration of climate change in EIA. Examples of high integration indicate that EIA holds potential to play a substantive role in environmental governance at project level decision making affecting climate change. However, the range of examples also cautions that many domestic obstacles can militate against integration including political, socio-technical, and economic imperatives – particularly those affecting sectoral and scope exclusions. Nevertheless, developments across some regimes indicate leverage points for greater integration, including the role of EIA review to establish new precedents for the relevance of climate change to EIA. Potential future research and practice directions are identified, including development of regulations and practice guidelines, inclusion of climate change adaptation aspects, strengthening postdecision monitoring, application to all relevant sectors and activities, alignment with SEA, and integration across all stages of the EIA process.