The South African Country Study on Climate Change (SACSCC) was initiated in the late 1990s by South Africa 's National Climate Change Committee (NCCC), funded by USAID as part of its international Country Study program (http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/environment/climate/index.html) . The study was the first which involved South African scientists from a wide range of disciplines in assessing the issue of climate change at the national and key sectoral levels.

Overall, the Country Study consisted of three sections: a Greenhouse Gas Inventory, a Vulnerability and Adaptation assessment, and a Mitigation Options assessment. The results of these studies formed one of the elements of South Africa 's First National Communication to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the National Climate Change Response Strategy (http://www.environment.gov.za/ClimateChange2005/Resources_Publications.htm ) , which contained summary results of the component studies.

REPORTS

All the reports below may be downloaded as .pdf files., and these reports may be cited individually as follows:

Author/s (of individual study) (2000)
Title (of individual study) In: Kiker, G. Climate Change Impacts in Southern Africa. Report to the National Climate Change Committee, Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Pretoria, South Africa.

Vulnerability and Adaptation section

The Vulnerability and Adaptation section aimed to develop climate change scenarios relevant to South Africa, and use these as a basis for a first-cut assessment of the potential impacts of this environmental change on key sectors and regions in South Africa . The section had three overall objectives:

1. Identify the sectors and areas most vulnerable to climate change.
2. Propose suitable adaptation measures to offset adverse impacts.
3. Synthesize vulnerability and adaptation results across sectors, for policy or mitigation analysis.

The NCCC identified seven key areas (subsections) for focused assessment in the Vulnerability and Adaptation section. Each of these formed the focus of a separate study. The results of all of these were distilled and collated in a Final Synthesis Report available here [Kiker, G. (2000) Climate Change Impacts in Southern Africa. Report to the National Climate Change Committee, Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Pretoria, South Africa.]

The Vulnerability and Adaptation section was divided into a number of subsections, each undertaken by a range of South African scientists and consultants, culminating in the production both of individual reports, and a summary report. Work on all subsections was completed by the end of 1999.

Although the summary results were released publicly in these documents, the original Vulnerability and Adaptation subsections were never officially published, apart from a popular information booklet on the Terrestrial Plant Diversity subsection released by SANBI (then the National Botanical Institute) with funding from the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) of South Africa (Midgley, G.F., Rutherford, M.C. & Bond, W.J. (2001) The heat is on - impacts of climate change on plant diversity in South Africa. National Botanical Institute, Cape Town , ISBN 1-919684-32-8, 10pp.,)

The Rangelands subsection was published as a CSIR occasional report ( Scholes, R.J., Midgley, G.F. & Wand, S.J.E. (1999) Vulnerability and adaptation of rangelands. South African Climate Change Country Study Contract Report ENV-P-C 98169. Division of Water, Environment and Forest Technology, CSIR, Pretoria.).

Rationale for the release of the individual Vulnerability and Adaptation reports

Although these studies are now somewhat dated, they nonetheless provide useful insights into the first-cut projections of the impacts of climate change on key sectors in South Africa. It has previously simply been unfeasible to distribute the individual reports to the public due to the large volume of information contained in them.

SANBI has now undertaken to provide access to the work in pdf form through its website on behalf of the NCCC, in response to ongoing requests for this information and in the spirit of transparency, especially following the South African National Climate Change Conference held in Midrand in October 2005.

It must be stressed however that new work has since been undertaken, and still more is needed to update and reassess these results in the light of better data on and understanding of climate change impacts on the environment and society.