South Africa, and the world, has done research and investigations into sustainable development and has set sustainable development targets, and now needs to accelerate progress towards those targets, says Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) holistic climate change impact area manager and Presidential Climate Commission member Dr Brian Mantlana.

"The past decade has seen the setting of targets, such as the Aichi marine biodiversity targets, set in 2010 at the Conference of the Parties for the Convention on Biological Diversity and, even locally, our National Development Plan was done during the previous decade," he points out.

Notiwthstanding the recent decline in multilateralism, one of the trends over the past decade has been the inculcation of an all-hands-on-deck approach worldwide, which has seen State and non-State actors trying to work together on solutions, he adds.

"It is clear that the decade from 2020 is the decade of action. We have the targets in terms of biodiversity, climate change and United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), among others, and this decade is about how we achieve those targets," he emphasises.

The targets inherently necessitate a response at national and sub-national levels by State and non-State actors, and nations are where the action has to happen and where the context of each country comes into play, he adds.

"Context is important. South Africa has a largely incoherent national development policy, constrained fiscal capacity and constrained State capacity, while many communities are also constrained. Therefore, it is very important that we understand the context when we talk about implementing actions to achieve the targets," Mantlana says.

Further, national trends and statistics may mask local challenges and the uneven distribution of pressures, such as water stress or where communities are vulnerable. Sub-national levels of action are, therefore, important to ensure effective implementation.

This challenge necessitates multiple loci of agency, and one of the most important issues is expanding the role-players involved, and bringing in the private and public sector at all levels, he notes.

Additionally, the CSIR climate team has developed a research agenda to investigate various sustainable development concepts, such as climate change, the just transition and a green economy, to better inform national discourse and actions.

"These concepts do have a few things in common, namely that all of their objectives contribute to ending inequality, poverty and unemployment. Some of them also have common enablers, such that they require similar resources and capabilities and tend to work similarly in different sectors," he notes.

There are also tensions and clear-cut differences between the concepts, however, necessitating enquiry to determine whether the collective net impact of these three sustainable development concepts - climate change, the just transition and a green economy- used as examples would reduce poverty, inequality and unemployment, he adds.

Parallel to its academic approach, the CSIR climate team is also developing an action programme, in which it tries to find programmes, companies developing products and partner institutions that are impactful.

"We are trying to separate the incremental actions from transformative actions, and we have built a conceptual framework of triggers of change based on the basket of sustainable development pathways concepts that form South Africa's context. Our work is, however, limited to climate change and adaption [owing to the team's research focus]," he says.

"We are looking at contributions to sustainable development pathways and what needs to be restructured and what shifts in the local context would mean for climate change adaptation, and how this would help or hinder us in addressing the persistent challenges," Mantlana says.

"For us as the climate change team at the CSIR, we are trying to understand the impact of various actions, as well as building strong conceptual understanding and frameworks for action in South Africa," he adds.

POLICY SHIFT
Meanwhile, South Africa developed a National Framework for Sustainable Development in response to agreements made under the Plan of Implementation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, in Johannesburg, in 2002.

Until 2011, South Africa's sustainability agenda fell under the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE), then the Department of Environmental Affairs, says DFFE International Sustainable Development and Trade senior policy adviser Devina Naidoo.

"There has recently been a substantial shift in South Africa's policies in terms of keeping with not only international trends but also emerging national trends.

“Therefore, we have industrial policies, education policies and science policies, as well as growing discourse around the need for policy to support responsible use of natural resources, support the country to follow a low-carbon growth trajectory and investigate the nexus of overconsumption and waste of resources," she says.

The country currently defines sustainable development as the integration of social, economic and environmental factors, and planning, implementation and decision-making must encompass these factors.

However, to mitigate potential negative impacts on the economy arising from decoupling development and resource use intensity, the solution is to transition sustainable development to policies, programmes and implementation to promote sustainable consumption and production (SCP) patterns, Naidoo adds.

"As recently as 2020, State-owned enterprises were mandated under sustainability policies to focus on SCP, and each had to develop guidelines or a framework that speaks to sustainable use of natural resources and SCP patterns," she points out.

"Globally and regionally, unsustainable patterns of consumption and production are the root cause of the triple global challenges of biodiversity loss, pollution and climate change," she emphasises.

Additionally, as technology and innovation increase, there is a growing reliance on natural resources, such as rare earths, and precious and industrial metals. Therefore, there are challenges in terms of SCP. There is a rising need and a huge global discussion around the management of natural resources, she adds.

"However, despite the development challenges, the UN SDG 2030 agenda is a pro-development text that includes the perspectives of many developing countries and seeks to align sustainable development to allow the reframing of national visions to speak to sustainability, as well as to guide international cooperation on sustainable development," says Naidoo.

Further, South Africa's National Development Plan (NDP) aligns with about 74% of the UN SDGs. Of the remaining 26% not addressed in the NDP, 90% are addressed at a sectoral, local or provincial level, and the final 7% of the UN SDGs are not applicable to South Africa, as it is not a small island nation, nor a least developed country, she notes.

"This shows that the NDP is structurally sound and takes the correct direction in terms of promoting sustainable development," she adds.

Meanwhile, Section 24, under the Bill of Rights of South Africa's Constitution states that "everyone has a right to have the environment protected, for the benefit of present and future generations, through reasonable legislative and other measures that secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development".

In July, the UN officially adopted a similar definition into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Naidoo highlights.