Plenary: Climate Change

The planting of trees across the globe is punted as one of principal solutions to mitigate against climate change. However this notion negates the role of other equally important ecosystems e.g. grasslands and savannahs, in carbon sequestration whilst providing other crucial goods and services. Equally important is that this has potential to create tension across the three Rio Conventions, namely: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (UNCBD) and the United Nations Convention for Combating Desertification (UNCCD). In South Africa, the grassland and savannah biomes are already undergoing transformation through bush encroachment and woody thickening respectively. Bush encroachment and woody thickening are global phenomena attributed to the increase in atmospheric CO2, fire suppression and herbivory. A myopic interpretation of this transformation presents the risk of lending credence to the notion of bush encroachment and woody thickening as a phenomenon worth promoting at the expense of other important goods and services e.g. biodiversity and water reticulation. Ecosystem based Adaptation (EbA) is an emerging area of practise considered a comprehensive response to challenges presented by climate change. As a result, the contention here is that EbA is a smart 21st century practise that presents the opportunity for a balanced approach in addressing bush encroachment and woody thickening in South Africa.

South African range and pasture systems make a significant contribution to the agricultural and wider economy. Their vulnerability to climate variability and climate change is highly context-specific, depending on local climate, soils, water resources, plant species composition, livestock species, and management practices. Changing risks associated with warming and altered rainfall patterns also vary across the country, across different spatial scales, and for different future timeframes. Nevertheless, research shows that a fundamental understanding of ecosystem services, and how these are impacted by climate risks together with management practices, can help to identify practices and technologies which can increase the resilience of these farming systems in the short to medium term. Provisioning, regulating and supporting ecosystem services (for example, relating to soil conservation, soil fertility, carbon sequestration and hydrology) within natural and semi-natural grazed landscapes support primary production of plants and animals. They also provide resilience to climate extremes such as droughts, floods and heat waves. Planted and intensively managed pastures display significantly altered abiotic and biotic characteristics and processes and climate vulnerability. In addition to impacts on the quantity and quality of grazing and fodder, climate change exerts direct impacts on the animals through heat, pests, diseases, nutritional stress and lack of water, manifested as changes in growth and fertility. However, the scale of impacts is highly differentiated between different livestock species and farming systems. This presentation will outline some of the complexities inherent in assessing climate risks at farm level, and then focus on some practical approaches to adaptation (with mitigation co-benefits) in South African contexts which can confer increased greater resilience. Key findings of the SmartAgri Project (Western Cape Climate Change Response Framework and Implementation Plan) and national and global scientific sources will be presented. The presentation will close with a summary of some research gaps and a discussion of the need for collaborative and strategic research partnerships which are cross-sectoral and inter-disciplinary.