| Climate change is set to wreak havoc on South Africa (SA)’s agri-food system. Increasing temperatures, lower and more erratic rainfall, and more extreme weather events will characterise the climate in Southern Africa over the next decades. This poses challenges for food production and food security.
At the same time, SA’s agri-food system is one of the largest contributors to national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. SA is ranked in the top 20 largest emitters globally but still constitutes only about 1% of total global emissions. This means that, while SA must do its bit to reduce emissions, the burden of responsibility lies with the United States, China, Russia, and Europe, which are by far the biggest emitters globally at present and historically. For SA, strengthening adaptation and resilience is essential, especially for smallholder producers who don’t have the necessary buffers to absorb the negative climate impacts.
The agri-food system is estimated to produce about 18% of South Africa’s total emissions. 49% of this is from livestock and emissions from crop production. Another 41% is from energy use and transport in the food system. Other food systems emissions include organic waste disposal, industrial processes, and refrigeration. This paper provides a detailed breakdown of emissions across these categories, as well as proposing entry points for emissions reductions.
Readily available short-term technical interventions can reduce emissions in the food system. However, climate change is just one of a set of intersecting challenges and imperatives facing the South African food system. Other key sustainability concerns relating to water pollution, land degradation, biodiversity loss, and social and economic injustice require an integrated approach that responds simultaneously to all of these issues, rather than siloing the responses.
Active participation by those directly affected, and local, context-specific planning and implementation are required. Agroecology encapsulates many of the proposed adaptation and mitigation options, including landscape and ecosystem-based approaches. This calls for an integrated and systemic response across environmental, social justice, and economic diversification and democratisation. The paper ends with a call for the promotion of agroecology as a key framing and guiding approach for the South African agri-food sector as it adapts to the imperatives of climate change. |
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