Climate change resilience in South Africa

weissangie121
Oct 20, 2024
8 min read

Updated: Mar 21

Do we have it? Do we need it?

Buildings in Port Elizabeth City Centre — Port Elizabeth City Centre. Image taken by Leigh Kriel

Climate change is upon us, and more people are finally realising it. However, at this stage, we have moved from working on mere climate mitigation strategies to trying to survive global warming and climate change. It is becoming apparent that climate change is not just a bout of bad weather.

South Africans are no strangers to adverse weather conditions. We regularly have floods, droughts, heat waves, mudslides, and sea storms to contend with. So, we should be used to coping with these conditions. Still, the recent unexpected flooding on 16 October 2024 in Soweto after heavy rains worried citizens. The surprise and indignation at how severe the weather is becoming is apparent in this quote from Moshe Moses Selomo, which appeared in an article on MSN.com: "Just one day rain brings floods.”

Yes, just one day of rain can be catastrophic for our towns and cities that are vulnerable to this fast rate of climate change. Our large metropoles have very little capacity to withstand disasters caused by inclement and unpredictable weather patterns. Never mind our rural areas. Most municipalities around the country have hardly any or even no disaster preparedness. The municipal capacity struggles to keep up with normal services like, road repairs, refuse removal, and supply of clean water. Never mind being able to put in place infrastructure planning and development projects that will make our cities more resilient to future adverse climate conditions.

South African problems encompass environmental, social, and governance areas, and now it looks like Mother Nature wants to add to our problems. Do we, as a country and as a city here in Port Elizabeth/Gqeberha, have enough resilience to transition to sustainable ways of working and living successfully, combat climate change, and restore our natural environment?

What Do Scientists Predict About the Severity

of Climate Change Affecting Port Elizabeth

Waves breaking against ruins of an old pier that was destroyed during a flood. — Remains of an old pier damaged by previous floods. Image taken by Leigh Kriel.

Dr Andrew Muir, the chairperson of the Nelson Mandela Bay Climate Coalition and the CEO of the Wilderness Foundation Africa and Wilderness Foundation Global, told the Daily Maverick way back in 2012 that “[Port Elizabeth] The metro is getting hot. Future weather scenarios for Nelson Mandela Bay include a 2.2 to 2.5 ℃ increase in temperature, the sea temperature increasing by 2℃, and the sea level rising by between 0.75m and 1m, with significant changes in rainfall, including “rain bomb” events where between 200mm and 400mm will fall within a day. Metro is getting hotter at an unnatural rate. It requires urgent intervention.”

The climate change scenarios predict water shortages in Port Elizabeth and South Africa as a whole. It may seem like monger scaring talk, but in the back of our minds, we know it's true. We can all still remember our recent water shortage, and now we know we can expect more of those in the coming years.

“Water will become increasingly unavailable,” Andrew Muir warns. Global warming will increase extreme droughts, extreme heat, and frequent and intense weather events. He foresees residents having to queue for water from tankers as tap water becomes increasingly unavailable.

He goes on to say that our biggest threat will come from the ocean. A rise of a few millimetres in the ocean level can quickly translate into a few feet during a storm surge. Recently, we have experienced severe surges in the sea level along the N2 on the stretch between Blue Water Bay and the city centre. That stretch of road, which closely hugs the seacoast, was blocked for days by boulders and debris that the ocean waves had hurled onto it. Muir warns that the “severity of such storm surges may be such that the road would eventually have to be repositioned.”

Rural Transkei in Eastern Cape. Image taken by Leigh Kriel

Nelson Mandela Bay, he explained, is faced with a peculiar challenge. While it is only the fifth-largest metro, it is the second-largest in urban sprawl. It is also very fragmented. This means some parts have decent infrastructure, and others have almost non-existent infrastructure. Historically, these were the settlements for the poorest of the poor. There are no sewage lines, the only access is through dirt roads, and no services like running water inside homes or refuse removal. Basically, these informal settlements consist of only shacks or temporary dwellings made from whatever materials their owners could find. They are often built on land that is not suitable for occupation. It may be on swampy ground that the residents covered with extra sand and soil to build their living spaces. Now, if there is heavy rain, all their belongings will be flooded and damaged, perpetuating the cycle of poverty. Muir mentioned recent storm damage to the town of Addo in the Eastern Cape, where the municipality is currently struggling with repairs.

“A massive environmental event (like a storm or floods) will cause extensive and widespread damage. There will be no funds to replace infrastructure continually damaged by extreme events. This will have a compound effect and is a cause of very serious concern.”

Not only will the sea levels rise, but there will also be a shortage of water and a constantly present danger of droughts and floods. In addition, as the ocean waters become warmer, the acidity of the Atlantic Ocean’s water will increase. This acidic environment will grow the ‘red tide’. A harmful algae bloom with a serious impact on marine life. The presence of a large number of red algae will negatively affect the metro’s fishing industry and the dolphins, whales, and penguins, which are major tourist attractions in Nelson Mandela Bay.

This isn’t what we want to hear, but it’s something we need to know.

What does climate resilience mean for Port Elizabeth/Gqeberha?

In January 2024, Nelson Mandela Bay began designing a strategy to increase its climate resilience in collaboration with the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC), a multistakeholder body established by the President of the Republic of South Africa. The PCC advises on the country’s climate change response and supports a just transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy and society.

According to Dr Gary Koekemoer, the Business Chamber's climate change lead, this is great news for Port Elizabeth and the whole Nelson Mandela Bay Metro area. He said the “multistakeholder sign-up made this development unique as the climate-resilient strategy will not be driven by the municipality alone.” I agree that involving outside stakeholders is good news because our municipal councillors are too busy fighting amongst themselves about who will be mayor to notice things like global warming.

Even with support from the PCC, Port Elizabeth, whose battling economy heavily depends on the motor industry and component manufacturing, is likely to face a ‘double whammy’ of disaster—we will feel the direct impacts of climate change and the economic effects of the global response to it.

Dhesigen Naidoo, the World Bank’s senior adviser and climate adaptation lead on the South African Presidential Climate Commission, explains in The Daily Maverick the reasons for launching the climate resilience strategy in Nelson Mandela Bay. For one, the Bay faces a lack of energy and water security. The Port Elizabeth and Ngqura ports are in a “parlous state,” which hurts the automotive industry.

Several direct factors negatively affect our automotive industry. A significant risk is that the key export markets will ban internal combustion engines by 2035, so we will no longer be able to export our VWs. There is fierce competition, where businesses are openly and ferociously competing without any significant barriers or protections for control over supply chains for the manufacturing of electric vehicles. Are Nelson Mandela's businesses competitive enough to win a piece of that pie?

Naidoo said that Nelson Mandela Bay could go the same way as the US city of Detroit, which went into a steep decline when its automotive industry failed. “We must actively help people to transition and train people,” he said. “We must help communities and workers to navigate this [transition to electric cars].”

VW assembly line of cars and people working on assembling them — VW assembly line. These workers may be out of a job soon.

Lastly, Nelson Mandela Bay Metro lies in the Eastern Cape, one of the poorest provinces where unemployment is almost 30% of the population and the provincial economy is contracting. Poor people have very little resilience to adverse events.

Transforming Plans for Building Resilience to Climate Change into Concrete Actions Remains a Work in Progress.

The deadline to produce a final climate-resilience report for the metro was set by the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC) for February 2025. They have chosen to address six key principles: understanding the ecosystem, sustainable development, “think local, act global,” a just transition, collective stewardship, and accountability. In addition, on 23 July 2024, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Climate Change Bill into law, a move welcomed by the PCC. The planning stage seems to be on track, and the stakeholders understand the urgency of the change that needs to happen.

However, despite South Africa’s strong commitments and public support for tackling climate change, progress on facilitating a just transition is not happening at the pace and scale required to address this crisis.

Several barriers hinder progress, including incoherent policies, weak governance structures, insufficient finance, and inconsistent actions by the government and other stakeholders.

Contradictory to the need to put the environment first, public policies and positions, especially those in the energy sector, are causing delays in implementing climate resilience strategies.

The government struggles to balance the trade-offs between energy security, economic growth, the health impacts of pollution from fossil fuels, and climate commitments. The lack of consensus on the pace of the coal phaseout is delaying the implementation of necessary policy measures, such as the draft 2023 Integrated Resources Plan (IRP), the Integrated Energy Plan, and the South African Renewable Energy Masterplan.

We know what to do, but we (and by we, I mean the people in power) are struggling with HOW we will do it. Let’s look at an example. Amid our energy crisis (the constant load shedding we endured for years), the ANC government of the day decided to delay the decommissioning of old coal power stations, and Barbara Creecy, the then Minister of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment (DFFE) allowed Eskom to run the power stations without meeting emissions standards. She let Eskom do as it pleased even though her administration was part of the team that set the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) submitted to the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP). South Africa was supposed to limit emissions to 350-420 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) by 2030. JETP has pledged to give us $8.5 billion to finance this transition.

Needless to say, the JETP was not happy with our slow reduction of carbon emissions and called the current DFFE minister, Dion George to please explain the situation. During discussions with German officials, Environment Minister Dion George was informed that South Africa is moving away from fossil fuels too slowly. He immediately blamed the situation on Barbara Creecy and sent Rudi Dicks, head of the project management office in the Presidency overseeing the just energy transition investment plan to engage with JETP and The International Partners Group (IPG) responsible for supporting South Africa with climate finance.

Rudi Dicks stressed the difficulty South Africa has with adhering to the original decommissioning schedule set out in the IRP 2019.

This is especially true given the recent PCC report estimating that between 42,000 and 115,000 indirect and direct jobs will be affected by the decline in coal mining and related transport by 2030.

Luckily for us, (for now) the International Partners Group (IPG), which is supporting South Africa with climate finance, has accepted the need for pragmatism in dealing with the energy crisis, including the delay in the decommissioning of coal-fired power stations. He noted that the international partners have raised concerns but accepted the need for a pragmatic approach given our challenging situation.

Still, George noted that he is committed to ensuring South Africans have clean air. He also emphasized the importance of not leaving behind workers and communities dependent on coal value chains for jobs. Officials, including those from Eskom, have engaged with the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) partners on this delay.

The only bit of good news comes from Transnet National Ports Authority (TNPA), which is finalising plans to install hydrogen terminals at commercial SA ports, including Ngqura and Port Elizabeth, within the next ten years. This is good news for Hive Energy and Port Elizabeth’s job market. The call for tenders has been issued to export and import hydrogen initiatives, including green hydrogen, green ammonia, green methanol, and grey hydrogen.

Let’s see what will happen.

It is evident that South Africa, specifically Port Elizabeth, is facing significant challenges due to climate change. The predictions of extreme weather events are alarming, and it is clear that urgent government intervention is needed. We must prioritise climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies.

What are your views on climate change?

Do you think South Africa is doing enough to build resilience against climate change? If not, what type of change would you like to see?

Tell us in the comments.