What are the implications for South Africa of the Paris Agreement on climate change?Here is my initial take, following an earlier assessment of the contents of the Agreement The Paris Agreement is characterised by much broader participation than the Kyoto Protocol. Much more will be required for South Africa, together with all other countries, in terms […]
Late on Saturday 12 December, a new Climate Agreement was adopted in Paris. Here is my take on the key elements. Be warned, it is a longish read – but then climate is a complex, super-wicked problem. And solving it is not easy. The key points are in bold … As Nelson Mandela said on his […]
The agreement coming out of the climate change talks in Paris must be about countries taking responsibility for their vulnerable communities and citizens. To be judged a success, when the new climate treaty is agreed in Paris in December, we need an agreement that is able to solve the climate problem.
Renewable energy is finally a reality in South Africa’s electricity mix. The government’s renewable energy programme has procured 92 solar, wind, hydro and biomass projects. Some of these are already feeding into the national grid.
Can we have both poverty reduction and climate change? A decent lifestyle in a cool climate? Or do we need to choose between one of the two? The assumption of a trade-off between reducing emissions and boosting socio-economic development generally goes unchallenged. For those of us who live in developing countries, these trade-offs seem […]
I have worked on various aspects of climate mitigation policy in South Africa for over a decade, but it was only in early 2014 that I became aware that the climate mitigation policy community of practice, (of which I am a part) is dominated by particular approaches and that these approaches have limitations. On […]
The Long Term Mitigation Scenario (LTMS) process was an innovative and significant South African initiative conducted between 2006-8 in the emerging policy area of climate change mitigation. It was the first interpretation of international climate mitigation policy in a domestic developing country context, combining a participative stakeholder process and rigorous technical analysis to identify what […]
MAPS Director, Stef Raubenheimer gives his thoughts on the necessary change to a low to zero carbon economy including the role of stakeholders in the process.
Climate negotiators almost pride themselves on talks going beyond the deadline. So when the most recent round finished its main task, to agree elements of a draft negotiating text, on Day 3 of six, there was confusion. In a mild panic attack, the collective unconscious said “What do we do now?” Various reasons may have […]
The US and Chinese Presidents announced on 11 Nov 2014 that the US is to cut net greenhouse gas emissions 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025 China is to peak CO2 emissions around 2030, with the intention to peak earlier, and to increase the non-fossil fuel share of all energy to around 20% by 2030. […]
Climate negotiations in Lima[1] last week decided on national contributions – with light information and very weak scrutiny. It did put together the elements of a deal in Paris, though differences on detail remain large. But with lack of adequate long-term finance, and a refusal to balance support of adaptation and mitigation, Lima did not make […]
Leaders of the Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios (MAPS) processes in Peru, Chile, Colombia and Brazil shared experience yesterday in Lima. They talked about what really happens when stakeholders get around the table to propose mitigation options. CDKN’s Mairi Dupar reports. If anyone thought embracing climate compatible development at national level was an easy process, […]
“I’ve been struck”, wrote Emily Tyler, “by the complexity…” She was not alone in being astonished at the scope and richness of issues which were spoken about during the Conversations Series between climate change mitigation practitioners and ‘development’ experts as part of the MAPS PostDevMit work. As a conversation facilitator for this series and development […]
The DevMit Forum, held in January 2014, brought a group of nine brave South African ‘development provocateurs’ into an academic conference of the international climate change mitigation community working in developing countries. The results of this experiment were somewhat uncomfortable, but simultaneously energising. The provocateurs held up a mirror to the climate mitigation community, showing […]
The latest climate science affirms again that warming of the climate system is “unequivocal”. If we don’t change our high-emission development paths, even if we try to adapt, warming by 2011 “will lead to high to very high risk of severe, widespread, and irreversible impacts globally (high confidence)”. The IPCC’s synthesis report makes clear that […]
In designing climate mitigation strategies, one has to think hard about their impact on poverty and inequality. While it is often assumed that climate mitigation strategies are also pro-poor strategies, this is not necessarily so. This blog sets out some frameworks through which we can think through these issues and suggests areas where much more […]
‘The week after the week that was’ – is certainly how the Development and Mitigation (DevMit) Forum organising team is feeling right now! A little disoriented (what do I now do 24/7?), very relieved, and reflecting on invaluable time spent with excellent colleagues. When I embarked on the DevMit Forum journey in May last year […]
The challenge of development and climate The challenge at the heart of the Development and Mitigation (Devmit) Forum is about the relationship between development and climate – how to improve our understanding and change our practice. Next week we seek to theorise more fully the relationship between development and climate through a conversation between development […]
Rio, or rather the tourist precincts of Ipanema and Copacabana, is a place that seems to be much as you left it. People kicking back, beach bars and lots of vital looking citizens of all ages exercising with purpose. Brazilians in general do things with purpose. Of course one is dimly aware that Rio is […]
The third Annual Conference on Climate Change and Development in Africa (CCDA-III) took place from 21 – 23 October 2013 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The theme of the conference was “Africa on the rise: Can the Opportunities from Climate Change Spring the Continent to Transformative Development?”. Anthony Dane presented a paper co-authored with Marta Torres […]
Energy Research Centre (University of Cape Town), gives an overview of the climate change policy and institutional framework and agenda in Rwanda, and highlights the potential for a ‘MAPS approach’ to development and mitigation planning. MAPS researchers from the University of Cape Town recently visited Rwanda to engage with climate change experts based there. We are […]
From August to October MAPS is hosting a virtual Visualisation Lab aimed at equipping MAPS practitioners to effectively communicate technical modeling and process outputs to a wider audience through the use of different visualisation tools and technologies. This blog is adapted from the first Lab presentation. It’s no coincidence that we are grappling with questions […]
The Co-benefits Lab brought experts and decision-makers together from Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Chile, South Africa, Brazil, India and Sri Lanka in order to share their experiences in identifying, selecting and prioritising actions to mitigate climate change.
The final report from Holle Wlokas on the third day of the MAPS Co-benefits Lab in Bogota, Colombia. The third and final day of the Co-benefits Lab offered an inspirational end to our time in Colombia. The day started with Ellen May Zanoria, from the Gold Standard Foundation, sharing the foundation’s vast experience and unique […]
Holle Wlokas reports back on an insightful second day. Picking up where a successful first day left off, day two of the co-benefits lab focussed on training MAPS country participants on different decision-making tools and methodologies. Yvani Deraniyagala presented the Action Impact Matrix developed by Mohan Munasinghe and his team at the MIND Institute in […]
Holle Wlokas gives an update on the first day of the MAPS Co-benefits Lab in Bogota, Colombia. The co-benefits lab has started and what a start it was! Despite pouring rain in wintery Bogota, 22 participants gathered to share, discuss and explore issues around the co-benefits of climate change mitigation actions. Expectations ranged from thrashing […]
MAPS researcher, Dr Britta Rennkamp, introduces an international research collaboration to understand the relationship between reductions in poverty and GHG emissions in Mexico, South Africa and Thailand. Researchers from five countries – Germany, Italy, Mexico, Thailand and South Africa – started off a new project on the question of how to reduce emissions and poverty […]
Recent work by MAPS researchers have focussed on understanding the multifaceted relationship between emissions, low carbon development, inequality and poverty alleviation. In this blog Anya Boyd explains the challenges of bringing together poverty, development and climate change and suggest a South African Mitigation Action impact Matrix to support informed decisions for South Africa. Imagine the […]
The 2012 climate negotiations under the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol did not quite die in the desert sands of Doha. But they hardly took the big steps forward that are urgently needed. This kind of reflection, of incremental progress in political terms, but falling far short of what is needed, has now been the […]
Future Subjunctive is one of the best articles I have read in years. It’s about backcasting as social learning. For John Robinson, backcasting the future emerges from process, which communities learn about possible and desirable futures. Sound familiar? It seems to me that this Canadian researcher has discovered very similar things as we have […]
Brazilians love their flag, which successfully works as a label for products made in Brazil. Rubber sandals, beach towels, coffee cups, sports gear, caipirinha shots…Almost everything sells better with a Brazilian tag on it. Does this include wind turbines? Localization in the renewable energy industries is a hot topic in Brazil at the moment. The […]
Within the MAPS programme, countries are considering the potential role of forests in their overall climate change mitigation action plans. A recent MAPS workshop held in Iquitos (Peru), LulucF Lab, addressed this subject in depth. The rate of deforestation in many of the MAPS countries calls for strategies that could rapidly and effectively put an […]
There are a number of complex models that researchers can use to assess the socio-economic implications of mitigation actions and it is important that they choose the one that’s best suited to the specific task at hand. As noted by Prof. Rob Davies, an economist and research associate with the Human Sciences Research Council in […]
At the UNFCCC climate negotiations starting in Bangkok this week, 30 August to 5 September 2012, there will be further workshops on mitigation. Some are about commitments, some are about targets for developed countries, and another about mitigation actions by developing countries. There are important issues for both: Workshop on developed country mitigation targets, or […]
The Rio+20 summit came to an end without much suspense in the negotiations. The participating nations agreed on a 52 paged document, the Future we Want, which restated the challenge and postponed major decisions into 2015. The past twenty years have made the results of the 1992 Earth Summit more significant than they were at […]
MAPS is interested in the issue of cities, and is beginning to think of applying the MAPS approach to the city context. A city the size of Munich is created every week on the planet. Fifty percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) is produced in just 600 cities, the engine of development. More than […]
An interesting discussion was brewing at the side event CAN Europe hosted yesterday, 21 May, titled: ‘ Private Sector Finance and it’s role in enhancing climate action’ amongst the presenters and respondents (representatives from the European Investment Bank (EIB), European Commission, kfW, Government of Pakistan as well as CAN Europe & Eurodad). There was agreement […]
Saturday’s side event hosted by Ecofys was a success and included speakers from Ecofys, ECN, MAPS, CCAP and the Peruvian Ministry of Environment.
Great presentation by Alexa Kleysteuber, from Chile, in the NAMA workshop plenary on Friday 18 May 2012, outlining Chile’s 7 NAMAS in Energy, Transport and Forestry including a slide on the MAPS Chile process, which made us very proud! The workshop focused on the diversity of NAMA’s by developing countries – including a focus on […]
UNFCCC talks are happening in Bonn from 14th-25th May. So far many fellow MAPS’ers have been spotted in the corridors of the Hotel Maritim, including Andres & Alexa Kleysteuber (Chile), Maria-Paula (Colombia) and Tania Zamora Ramos (Peru) and Farhana Yamin (CIFF). Harald, Marta, Andrew and Anya from South Africa are also floating around. All are […]