Can we shield South Africa from climate change?

In recent years, railway beds in the UK have melted from extreme heat, electricity grids have frozen in Texas, and Europe has ground to a halt as a result of catastrophic flooding.

In South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) was hit by severe flooding in 2017, 2019 and again in 2022. The most recent event was the worst in the country’s history.

Global temperatures have already risen 1.1°C relative to pre-industrial levels, and the scientific consensus is that further warming is inevitable. The harm is expected to become exponentially worse if global temperatures increase beyond 1.5°C, as seems likely. 

Global climate reports present mind-numbing data on the dire future that awaits the planet. South Africa-specific statistics are easier to grasp, though less easy to come by. Fortunately, climate economist Brent Cloete, an associate at Pretoria-based consultancy DNA Economics, has derived a regional report for Southern Africa from the latest global Climate Vulnerability Monitor, or CVM (third edition).

The CVM process is driven by a high-level global research consortium. Its methods and models are peer reviewed and its latest findings chime with the “Sixth Assessment Report” of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Cloete’s paper, “Climate Vulnerability of Southern Africa”, was commissioned by Economic Research South Africa, a regional CVM partner.

Cloete’s prognosis, based on the latest CVM data, is bleak for the five countries studied — Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Eswatini and South Africa. Under a 2°C global warming scenario, the region is expected to warm above the global norm, averaging an additional 1.3°C by the end of the century. However, socioeconomic challenges and developmental backlogs mean the region lacks the resilience to cope with this looming disaster.

South Africa warms at roughly twice the global average. This means that if the world has already warmed by 1.1°C, South Africa is about 2.2° hotter. So an extra 1.3° will put the country up by a total of 3.5°C by 2090.

Cloete’s paper shows that whereas there were 850 heat-related deaths of elderly people in South Africa in 2005, there will likely be about 12,000 by 2090 under a 2°C global warming scenario.

By 2090, there will also be more than 10 additional, severe droughts per country every 20 years and there could be malaria in Lesotho. In South Africa, even 1.5°C of global warming will create conditions in which an outbreak of dengue fever could become an epidemic.

Unsurprisingly, given that Southern Africa is already water-stressed, the region is one of the most vulnerable to climate-linked food insecurity. Rising temperatures and the increased frequency of droughts will significantly reduce key crop yields and labour productivity while pushing up food prices and disrupting supply chains, the research shows.

Seasonal Climate Watch 2023

The impact on maize, a major staple in the region, will be particularly severe. Even if warming is contained below 3°C, nonirrigated maize production will no longer be viable in the country, says Cloete.

Under a 1.5°C warming scenario, South Africa will experience a 5.4 percentage point increase in moderate to severe food insecurity by 2090 due to heatwaves (see graph).

The likely upshot is that food prices, inflation and interest rates will rise, and GDP growth will fall.

Clearly GDP forecasts made 60 years into the future need to be taken with a large pinch of salt. But as a purely indicative exercise, the research shows that under a 2°C global warming scenario, South Africa could expect GDP per capita growth to fall by at least 3.4% a year on average by the end of the century. Under conditions of extreme climate change, it could drop more than 13% on average annually.

In addition, the region will likely experience climate-linked migration from even more vulnerable (and hotter) countries further north.

“The marked difference in vulnerability between the three largest economies in Southern Africa and the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa means that significant climate-linked migration to Southern Africa is possible,” warns Cloete. “Immigration in a low-growth environment has already created social instability in South Africa, and this could be exacerbated by climate change.”

In short, the region could become an apocalyptic wasteland in 60 years — with South Africa at the centre of it — if the country doesn’t step up its efforts.

Certainly, the stakes could not be higher. Many South Africans are concerned that looming water shortages will dwarf the socioeconomic costs of the current electricity crisis — and be a lot harder to work around than Eskom’s load-shedding schedules.

So far, South Africa’s agricultural sector has proved remarkably resilient, despite receiving little state support. There is widespread agreement within the sector as to what it needs to do to mitigate, and adapt to, climate change to protect the viability of farming and food security.

Commercial agriculture’s focus is on raising its general efficiency, and some “truly significant and important work” is being done, says Janse Rabie, who represents Agri South Africa on the Presidential Climate Commission.

For instance, there is a significant push to boost the adoption of precision technology, including satellite, drones and other remote measuring and sensing tools, to help farmers optimise their water and fertiliser usage and adopt more efficient practices.

There is also an increasing shift towards conservation and regenerative agricultural practices, which limit the use of synthetic fertilisers, eliminate ploughing and require that farmers rotate fields and maintain constant crop cover.

However, significant increases in input costs — energy, water, labour, fertiliser, and machinery, for example — are already threatening the sector’s viability.

“There is only so much room for it to absorb these costs while also meeting further mitigation requirements being imposed by the government and export destinations like the EU,” says Rabie.

Increasingly there is a trade-off between farmers’ ability to survive in the short term and the sector’s long-term need to reduce its use of fossil fuels and synthetic fertilisers, while also contributing to the carbon tax — something it will be required to do from 2026.

South Africa-based Cambridge University development economist Gracelin Baskaran says strengthening the country’s infrastructure and financial resilience to climate shocks is essential to South Africa’s long-term sustainability.

One of the biggest impacts, she argues, could be had in building climate-resilient infrastructure. This means any new rail or road should be constructed to withstand storms and floods as well as 40°C temperatures, and commercial buildings and factories designed to minimise the need for artificial cooling.

She points to the long-term costs of flood damage in KZN: “Each time the same roads and bridges get washed out and have to be rebuilt repeatedly. This is costing it [the province], and the country, dearly.”

According to Baskaran, every dollar invested in climate-resilient infrastructure in middle-income countries yields $4 in benefits. Not only does it reduce the reconstruction costs, it also minimises business disruptions and ensures people can get to work, children can get to school, and people can access hospitals.

She also recommends that South Africa set aside a contingency fund for loss and damage attributable to climate change.

“We know the frequency and severity of climate shocks is going to increase, yet the contingency reserves are often depleted by bailouts of state-owned enterprises, public sector wage increases and the like,” says Baskaran.

Cloete agrees that the funding going towards climate adaptation in South Africa is nowhere near what is required.

He points out that the crime, energy and water problems all started off as longer-term concerns that didn’t receive sufficient attention until they turned into acute short-term crises. He fears that the same is happening with climate-change adaptation.

“Day Zero in Cape Town, the recent floods in KZN, the drought in the Eastern Cape, all show that it is becoming increasingly costly to adapt to climate change, particularly for the public sector and insurers,” he says.

“Increased investment to enhance resilience to climate change makes much more sense than continuing to spend ever-increasing amounts to recover from climate disasters, which are becoming more frequent, more severe and more costly.”

Cloete stresses that a regional response to climate change is also required. He notes that intra-African trade and regional food value chains are notoriously inefficient and opaque. Making them work better is going to be critical to responding to increased food insecurity.

This, he says, will require better trade facilitation, more efficient markets, improved climate risk forecasting and the creation of dedicated adaptation funds to allow entities along the value chain to deal with and recover from climate disasters.

“A lot of work has been done to include climate change into private and public sector planning frameworks. It is now time to move beyond awareness and planning to implementation,” says Cloete.

“This will require an increase of several magnitudes in funding to initiatives to increase resilience to climate change.”

Ultimately, climate economists agree that there is nothing more important for South Africa than achieving a just, low-carbon transition, as this will help drive sustainable economic development, strengthen social cohesion and generate the resources needed to deal with climate change.

If done well it even has the potential to solve some of South Africa’s current short-term crises. We live in hope.