Addressing climate risk and building adaptive capacity in South Africa’s Biosphere Reserves

The severe impacts of droughts in South Africa over the last decade highlight the vulnerability of the country to water scarcity, a condition which is expected to worsen considerably due to climate change. There is therefore a need to include climate change impacts in medium to long term water planning, and to adopt ecosystem-based adaptation that ensure long-term sustainability. The proposed project introduces a novel, bottom-up participatory approach to climate change adaptation, providing an adequate planning pathway for decision making at the local, regional and national level. The project is funded by the Flemish Government, Belgium, as part of the bilateral development aid to South Africa.

Project Objectives

Overall Objective

To enable pilot areas in South Africa to develop effective ecosystem-based and gender responsive adaptation pathways to climate change using a bottom-up, participatory approach.

Specific Objectives

The specific project objectives are to:

Establish a bottom-up approach to gender responsive climate change adaptation under climate change scenarios in the four target areas;
Develop national-level monitoring and early warning capacities for climate-related hazards and climate-change indicators;
Provide capacity building of national and local stakeholders and technology transfer on innovative tools for climate change adaptation and monitoring.