Browsing by Subject "risk"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Exploring the property development risks in modern South Africa and their impact on property development projects.
    (2025) Nomlomo, Chulumanca; Viruly, Francois
    Property development in South Africa is inherently capital intensive and risky but has the potential to reward brave developers through high returns. The risks that property developers face is multi-layered and unique to each project, requiring discernment on the part of the developer. However, projects likely to yield high returns are fairly easy to identify, and mitigation strategies can be implemented to ensure that property development projects are completed within cost and time limitations, and to a high standard. The intention of this study was to identify the property development risks in modern South Africa and the impact of these risks on property development viability, and to make recommendations on how identifiable risks may be mitigated in the property development sector. Property professionals were selected as participants in this study. These included senior executives in some of South Africa's largest development companies, people in the property finance industry, and those who deal daily with property development projects. All participants were interviewed one-on-one. This strategy yielded insight into the research questions, since participants were able to draw directly from their personal experiences. Responses in the interviews answered all the research questions and thus informed the recommendations made in this study. The study revealed that the main risks to property development projects in South Africa are political and socio-economic factors, municipal inefficiencies, social unrest, increases in municipal costs and materials, and lack of consistent power supply from Eskom. Increased capital costs in property development projects have reduced returns for property developers, forcing many to consider investing outside of South Africa. This was identified as the main impact of the risks on property development projects. The recommendations made in this study to mitigate property development risks are government subsidies for bulk infrastructure, fixing of material prices, greater engagement of all stakeholders in the property development process, ensuring that construction contractors have the required capacity and skills, greater use of technology in property development projects, and municipal rebates for property developers, in order to incentivise development. It is also recommended that in all property development projects, developers factor in potential cost increases.
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    OMP‐18rev: The revised 2018 Operational Management Procedure for the South African anchovy fishery
    (2021) de Moor, Carryn
    This document details OMP‐18rev, the Operational Management Procedure to be used to recommend total allowable catches for anchovy in South African waters from 2022.
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    Risk in Postgraduate writing: voice discourse and edgework
    (University of the Western Cape, 2013) Thesen, Lucia
    This paper brings writing into the contested space of research and knowledge-making in South Africa. An often hidden dimension of research is that it has to find expression in a written product, increasingly in English. This creates challenges for both students, who have developed writing identities in other domains, disciplines and languages, and also supervisors and journal editors who are gatekeepers for the making of new knowledge. In a competitive and uncertain climate where discourses of risk management play an increasingly important part, people tend to play it safe when it comes to writing, conforming to a narrow image of scientific writing. This has consequences for knowledge-making as students often set aside the experiences, allegiances and styles they have developed along the way. Drawing on data from an international publishing project on risk in academic writing, the paper explores dilemmas around the process of research writing. These instances make the contradictions and tensions faced by writers and gatekeepers central, highlighting the importance of voice and risk. Both voice and risk are explored experientially and theoretically, with the emphasis on the potentials of risk. The concept of risk, not as risk management, but as risk-taking, offers new ways of thinking about writing that brings the decisions that writers and readers make to the fore. A focus on risk has the potential to offer new understandings about the changing landscapes in which writers and readers weigh up their options against notions of what is 'normal'. Finally I suggest edgework as a productive concept that can take work on risk forward in both research and pedagogy.
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    The Evolutionary Ecology of Sprouting in Woody Plants
    (2003) Bond, William J; Midgley, Jeremy J
    Woody plants may be killed by severe disturbance or resprout from vegetative tissue. Sprouters can persist at a site through several generations of nonsprouters. Differences in sprouting behavior are therefore important for understanding vegetation dynamics, extinction risks, and woody plant management. Although sprouting appears not to be uniquely correlated with many other intrinsic attributes, such as specific leaf area or breeding systems, a clear correlate is reduced seedling aboveground growth rates from sprouters allocating more to belowground structures. Consequently, sprouters tend to have low seedling recruitment rates, and saplings take longer to reach maturity. Sprouters also tend to have lower seed output than nonsprouters, but comparative studies have seldom taken other trait differences such as plant size into account. Added to these trade-offs between persistence and recruitment, sprouters are often multi stemmed and shorter than related nonsprouters and may be outcompeted by them when disturbances are rare. Since sprouters tend to have long generation times, damped demographic trends, and gene flow across generations, it has been suggested that their speciation rates would be low. The available data, primarily from fire-prone Gondwanan shrublands in South Africa, show no strong differences in speciation rates of related sprouters versus seeders. This indicates that ecological factors are important determinants of the evolution of fire life
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    The nexus between growth of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) and youth employment in Eritrea
    (2019) Malamulo,Terence Crayl; Mukuddem-Petersen, Janine
    Economic growth and development are strategic for the overall development of a country. Micro, small and medium enterprises play a surmountable role in economic growth and development. Among other contributions, they provide jobs in an economy. Several developing countries, such as Eritrea, face limited private sector growth, yet also have the need to invest in the creation of enough and decent job for youths. Hence, this study intended to identify the prominent factors that deter the growth of micro, small and medium enterprises as well as the connection between their growth and youth employment, using a case study of Eritrea. The study used econometric research method. Through stratified sampling and a questionnaire, it collected data from 76 micro, small and medium enterprises. In the analysis, it used ordinal and binary logistic regressions, chi-square and correlation tests. The study concludes that there is no sufficient evidence that the growth of micro, small and medium enterprises influences youth employment. It finds that the growth of micro, small and medium enterprises is deterred by obstructive access to raw materials, obstructive banking regulations and obstructive general business regulations and policies. The study recommends improvement of the macro-economic conditions for pro-business sector growth, establishment of a policy on development of micro, small and medium enterprises, and a gradual liberalization of the private economy. Further, it proposes an impact investing based growth model of micro, small and medium enterprises to increase certainty on employment creation contribution. It suggests that an investment in micro, small and medium enterprises for youth employment creation that does not address the identified deterrents faces a significant impact risk.
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    The vulnerability, impacts, adaptation and climate services advisory board (VIACS AB v1.0) contribution to CMIP6
    (2016) Ruane, Alex C; Teichmann, Claas; Arnell, Nigel W; Carter, Timothy R; Ebi, Kristie L; Frieler, Katja; Goodess, Clare M; Hewitson, Bruce; Horton, Radley; Kovats, R Sari; Lotze, Heike K; Mearns, Linda O; Navarra, Antonio; Ojima, Dennis S; Riahi, Keywan; Rosenzweig, Cynthia; Themessl, Matthias; Vincent, Katharine
    This paper describes the motivation for the creation of the Vulnerability, Impacts, Adaptation and Climate Services (VIACS) Advisory Board for the Sixth Phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), its initial activities, and its plans to serve as a bridge between climate change applications experts and climate modelers. The climate change application community comprises researchers and other specialists who use climate information (alongside socioeconomic and other environmental information) to analyze vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation of natural systems and society in relation to past, ongoing, and projected future climate change. Much of this activity is directed toward the co-development of information needed by decision-makers for managing projected risks. CMIP6 provides a unique opportunity to facilitate a two-way dialog between climate modelers and VIACS experts who are looking to apply CMIP6 results for a wide array of research and climate services objectives. The VIACS Advisory Board convenes leaders of major impact sectors, international programs, and climate services to solicit community feedback that increases the applications relevance of the CMIP6-Endorsed Model Intercomparison Projects (MIPs). As an illustration of its potential, the VIACS community provided CMIP6 leadership with a list of prioritized climate model variables and MIP experiments of the greatest interest to the climate model applications community, indicating the applicability and societal relevance of climate model simulation outputs. The VIACS Advisory Board also recommended an impacts version of Obs4MIPs and indicated user needs for the gridding and processing of model output.