Tracking inclusive sustainable development at multiple scales: South Africa’s safe and just operating spaces

Cole, M

Abstract:: Nations in the 21st century face a complex mix of environmental and social challenges. Population growth and natural resource use have led to ecosystem degradation and climate change and are pushing the planet towards and beyond its safe planetary boundaries. The global scale, speed of change and increasing complexity require international and regional cooperation. At the same time, human development has been uneven, with billions of people currently facing multiple forms of poverty and de...
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APA Style

Cole, M. (2017). Tracking inclusive sustainable development at multiple scales: South Africa’s safe and just operating spaces [PhD thesis]. University of Oxford.

MLA Style

Cole, M. Tracking Inclusive Sustainable Development at Multiple Scales: South Africa’s Safe and Just Operating Spaces. 2017. University of Oxford, PhD thesis.

Chicago Style

Cole, M. 2017. “Tracking Inclusive Sustainable Development at Multiple Scales: South Africa’s Safe and Just Operating Spaces.” PhD thesis, University of Oxford.
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Files:: DPHIL THESIS MJCOLE.pdf

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+ Cole, M More by this author

Division:: SSD
Department:: SOGE
Department:: Geography
Role:: Author

Contributors

+ Bailey, R

Department:: Geography
Role:: Supervisor

+ New, M

Department:: University of Cape Town
Role:: Supervisor

DOI:: 10.5287/ora-xmnkavxx1
Type of award:: DPhil
Level of award:: Doctoral
Awarding institution:: University of Oxford

UUID:: uuid:f2759b00-dcff-4f14-a588-ff83309a981f
Deposit date:: 2017-10-29
ARK identifier:: ark:/29072/ora_f2759b00dcff4f14a588ff83309a981f

Related item:: Tracking sustainable development with a national barometer for South Africa using a downscaled “safe and just space” framework
Description:: Nations in the 21st century face a complex mix of environmental and social challenges, as highlighted by the on-going Sustainable Development Goals process. The ‘planetary boundaries’ concept [Rockström et al. (2009) Nature 461(7263):472-475] and its extension through the addition of social well-being indicators to create a framework for ‘safe and just’ inclusive sustainable development [Raworth K (2012) Nature Climate Change 2(4):225-226)], have received considerable attention in science and policy circles. As the chief aim of this framework is to influence public policy, and this happens largely at the national level, we assess whether it can be used at the national scale, using South Africa as a test case. We have developed a decision-based methodology for downscaling the framework and created a national ‘barometer’ for South Africa, combining 20 indicators and boundaries for environmental stress and social deprivation. We find that it is possible to maintain the original design and concept of the framework whilst making it meaningful in the national context, raising new questions and identifying priority areas for national action. Our results show that South Africa has exceeded its environmental boundaries for biodiversity loss, marine harvesting, freshwater use and climate change, and that social deprivation is most severe in the areas of safety, income and employment. Trends since 1994 show improvement in nearly all social indicators, but progression towards or over boundaries for most environmental indicators. The barometer shows that achieving inclusive sustainable development in South Africa requires both national and global action on multiple fronts, and careful consideration of the interplay between different environmental domains and development strategies.
Related item:: Spatial variability in sustainable development trajectories in South Africa: provincial level safe and just operating spaces
Description:: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent the first globally agreed framework to address human development and environmental stewardship in an integrated way. One approach to summarising national SDG status is our “barometer for inclusive sustainable development in South Africa”. The barometer downscales global social and planetary boundaries to provide status and trends for 20 critical indicators of environmental stress and social deprivation. In this paper we explore the sub-national heterogeneity in sustainable development indicators by creating barometers defining the ‘safe and just operating space’ for South Africa’s nine provinces. Our results show that environmental stress varies significantly and provinces need to focus on quite different issues. Although generally environmental stress is increasing there are areas where it is decreasing, most notably marine harvesting. Social deprivation results show more of a pattern with high levels of deprivation in employment, income and safety across the provinces, and historically disadvantage provinces showing the most deprivation overall. Although deprivation is generally decreasing, there are notable exceptions such as food security in six provinces. Our provincial barometers and trend plots are novel in that they present comparable environmental and social data on key indicators over time for all South Africa’s provinces. They are visual tools that communicate the range of key challenges and risks that provincial governments face, and are non-specialist and accessible to a range of audiences. In addition, the paper provides a critical case study of spatial disaggregation of national data that is required for the SDGs implementation.

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Copyright holder:: Cole, M

Licence:: CC Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)

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Tracking inclusive sustainable development at multiple scales: South Africa’s safe and just operating spaces

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Tracking inclusive sustainable development at multiple scales: South Africa’s safe and just operating spaces

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