Sustainable Development

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Policy Brief Towards Local, Democratic, Agroecological Food Systems

This briefing draws on a combination of interviews and participatory mapping events in Walkerville, Orange Farm and the West Rand regions of Gauteng and uMgungungdlovu District in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) between August and November 2020. It highlights findings and recommendations from a short-term project to source fresh produce from smallholder farmers for food relief efforts in these areas as part of the emergency response to the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown.

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Policy Brief on Establishing Alternative Food Systems in South Africa

This policy brief summarises key lessons from a project to connect small-scale farmers with food relief efforts as an immediate response to the negative impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on food security in resource-poor communities.

The climate crisis is a result of the commodification of land and social relations

Interview

The climate crisis is the result of relations of power and exploitation, between the Global North and the Global South as well as between people and nature. A decolonial approach in climate activism stands for a radical break with colonial principles of economic, political and social systems – including industrial agriculture and landgrabbing. A conversation with Ruth Nyambura, climate activist from Kenya.

By Imeh Ituen

The right to belong and the protection of cultural property

Interview

For centuries, resources have been extracted from the African continent without adequate payment or compensation. With colonialism, Khoikhoi and San, the first inhabitants of Southern Africa, lost their land and many lost their lives. During decades of Apartheid they were racially discriminated and still have to fight for political and economic inclusion in the post-Apartheid era. We spoke to the Khoikhoi lawyer Lesle Jansen about her fight for the community and for the legal acknowledgement of the cultural heritage of Indigenous people.

By Imeh Ituen

Niklas Hughes auf Grundlage eines Fotos von @afribeing / Jane Louise Prinsloo

Youth Against Climate Change in South Africa: “There is a major lack of representation in the movement”

Interview

Most of food production in Africa is shouldered by small scale farmers and the majority of farmers are women. Alarmed by the effects of climate change on her family’s farm Ayakha Melithafa from South Africa’s Western Cape joined an environmental school club and engages now in a national and an international youth movements for climate justice.

By Imeh Ituen

How Organic Farmer Nazeer Sonday Became an Accidental Warrior for Land Reform and Ecological Justice

What began as a hyperlocal movement to protect the interests of emerging and commercial farmers, farmworkers and informal settlement residents in Cape Town’s Philippi Horticultural Area has become a much bigger campaign.

Women Human Rights Defenders during the Covid19 Pandemic

The Impact of COVID-19 on Women in Mining Affected Communities

Margaret shares her story of how the pandemic added an extra burden on the lives of women, particularly women living in mining-affected areas.

Shock at oil-gas prospecting plans for Okavango Delta and Kgalagadi

The window of opportunity to keep the average global temperature from breaking through the ceiling of 2°C — or preferably 1.5°C — as set out in the UN’s Paris Agreement is closing fast.

By Leonie Joubert

A Societal Transformation Scenario for Staying Below 1.5°C

Although economic growth is a major driver of GHG emissions, there is still a great deal of skepticism that it is viable. A Societal Transformation Scenario for Staying Below 1.5°C sketches out paths for genuine socio-ecological transformation that leads to a better life while reducing consumption and production in the Global North.

Major Climate Impacts Scupper Another Coal Power Plant

Major Win Against New Coal in South Africa

Major climate impacts and exorbitant costs have sounded the death knell for one of the last new proposed coal-fired power stations in South Africa: Thabametsi in water-scarce Limpopo.

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