Three people were killed and dozens injured a year ago when the tailings dam at the Jagersfontein diamond mine collapsed

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Meet the dogs who are helping combat the plant poaching that serves insatiable overseas markets

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The first study on airborne microplastics discovered that the tiny plastic particles are affecting cloud formation

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Lapalala housed 120 learners who took part in a competition through speeches and posters to raise awareness for the rhino

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The electricity minister warned that if the country took too long to make decisions on transmission expansion, it would add to its electricity crisis

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A series of powerful tidal surges battered coastal areas in South Africa’s Western Cape, Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces over the weekend of 16 September. One person died; cars, homes and businesses were damaged.

A critical combination of three factors resulted in this significant flooding. First, a storm surge associated with low-pressure weather systems coming onshore. These happen very commonly but often don’t result in high amounts of flooding by themselves.

Second, low-pressure cells often result in strong onshore winds, and these can whip up the sea surface and create big waves which can potentially run further inland, especially when the sea surface is raised.

Third, the coincidence of the storm with the period of high tide (a monthly event) and equinoctial high-high tide (a seasonal event). It is this combination that is the cause here, not these individual factors in isolation.

What is a storm surge?

This is where the level of the sea surface near the coast is temporarily raised up and results in flooding along that coastal stretch. Storm surges are caused by a low pressure (cyclone) weather system approaching the coastline from the ocean. Low pressure causes the sea surface to bulge upwards below the centre or eye of the cyclone, and the magnitude of this disturbance is related to the severity of the low pressure system – the deeper the low pressure cell, the higher the elevation of the sea surface. This is usually on the order of tens of centimetres to one metre or so.

As the cyclone approaches land, the water surface along the coast rises.

What is a spring tide?

Despite their name, spring tides are regular occurrences throughout the year. They take place when the sun, Earth and moon are in alignment, and this happens once every (lunar) month. In addition, there are also times of the year, around the equinoxes, where spring tides are higher than average.

The spring (vernal) equinox in the southern hemisphere (which is on or about 22 September) is a period when the sun is aligned overhead of Earth’s equator and so exerts a bigger tidal force on the oceans. This may have been a contributing factor to the higher water levels around the coast.

Were people sufficiently warned?

Tidal patterns are highly predictable and this data is widely available for ports or harbours along the coast. In this case, the South African Weather Service issued a warning. This information is particularly useful for boaters, fishermen and other coastal users. Weather patterns are also fairly predictable, which is what weather forecasting is all about, so we know when a big storm may be approaching.

However, the net result of all of these factors in combination is less predictable: although low-lying coastal areas are vulnerable to flooding, forecasters may not know exactly when or how high.

The other issue here is not just areas being covered by water but also the speed at which the water waves are moving, which is a factor in their destructiveness.

What kind of emergency measures could be put in place?

Local communities need to be warned more clearly and effectively if there is a threat of a storm surge and of coastal flooding. People and assets (like cars, anything that is moveable) should be moved from the area or kept inside. People tend to want to go to the sea to watch the waves but this puts them at more risk. Roads should be closed off where possible to keep people safe and away from the area. Floodwater management through using sandbags and similar actions should be undertaken.

Exactly the same measures used in places like Florida in the US for reducing hurricane risk should be used in South Africa, such as boarding up windows, keeping assets indoors, evacuating people from high risk areas, and moving furniture in houses to the first floor to reduce flood impacts.

Storm surges – and sea levels rising in future – are not going to go away so we need to be prepared for them.

Jasper Knight is Professor of Physical Geography, University of the Witwatersrand.

This article was first published by The Conversation.

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The nonprofit is working with government departments and Nedlac to change South Africa’s food donations policy

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A public action project looks to halt the functional extinction of endangered seabirds by 2035

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Pledges in support of South Africa’s Just Energy Transition stand at $11.9 billion, and the country is mobilising additional finance, including grants, to facilitate the shift from fossil fuels to clean energy.

Since the initial $8.5 billion pledged at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow in November 2021, referred to as COP26, there have been further pledges by the Netherlands and Denmark. Spain has also committed additional funding towards the transition.

The treasury told Oxpeckers that, so far, it has received €600 million (about $640 million) of the pledges. These are loans of €300-million each from Germany and France that were concluded through the Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP) in 2022 and early 2023, to support policy and institutional reforms related to climate change.

“We now have pledges of $11.9 billion, but it’s still a long way from the just under $90 billion [about R1.5 trillion] that will be required over the next five years,” said Neil Cole, financing manager of the JET-IP project management unit.

Concessional loans

Cole said concessional loans make up the highest proportion of the total pledges, at $5.3 billion. A concessional loan, or “soft loan”, is made on more favourable terms than the borrower could obtain in the marketplace. Private investments make up a similar amount.

Just over R530 million of the pledges comprise grants, he said.

Cole said the project management unit (PMU) believes that multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank and the African Development Bank, will also significantly invest in the Just Energy Transition, through grants and concessional loans.

“Included in that group of multilateral development banks is the New Development Bank, otherwise known as the Brics bank, that we have approached as part of our mobilisation of funds,” he said.

The PMU has not set a target figure for the amount of grants to be mobilised, head of the unit Joanne Yawitch told Oxpeckers, but “in principle, the greater the grant amount, the better. Similarly, increased allocation of concessional finance is important to take the JET forward.”

At the recent Africa Climate Summit in Kenya, Environment Minister Barbara Creecy stressed the importance of African countries developing a new financing model that will not increase debt and worsen Africa’s fiscal positions.

“African countries need a new suite of financing instruments, with a set of favourable terms and conditions that are not merely debt generators, or our efforts and actions of mobilising the trillions of dollars required for significantly scaled-up climate action will be actions in futility,” she was reported as saying in an article published by the Mail & Guardian.

According to Cole, the PMU certainly wants to increase the amount of grants that it is going to be mobilising because grants have all kinds of benefits. “It’s a call to the international community, and that call is at different levels. It’s a call at multilateral forums such as COPs and various climate summits that take place,” he said.

Small and medium enterprises

Economic diversification and participation of small and medium enterprises in the renewable energy value chain need to be financed, Cole said, and the sources of that financing will come from both grants and concessional loans, as well as investments that are going to be made by the private sector.

He said the government is participating in multilateral forums, as well as bilaterally with individual countries. “We recently had the Brics summit that took place in South Africa with very strong commitments from the Chinese government to support the transition and investments in renewable energy,” he said.

The Chinese government pledged a grant of about R500 million for the energy sector during a state visit in Tshwane in August, where President Cyril Ramaphosa hosted his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping.

“South Africa deeply appreciates China’s support in addressing our current energy challenges. This includes the donation of emergency power equipment worth R167 million and availing a grant of approximately R500 million as development assistance,” Ramophosa was quoted in BusinessTech.

Details of this grant are not available, but a memorandum of cooperation between South Africa and several Chinese entities was shared by the ministry of electricity with Oxpeckers. It focuses on enhancing South Africa’s energy security through regulatory reform, infrastructure and technology development, human capital development, and research and development capacity.

It also aims to “promote sustainable energy solutions and diversify South Africa’s energy mix; strengthen bilateral cooperation … to support South Africa’s localisation and industrialisation programme objectives; facilitate knowledge and technology transfer; and encourage investment in the energy sector in South Africa”.

Participant companies from China are listed as “State Grid Corporation of China, China-Africa Development Fund, China Energy International Group, China General Nuclear Power Corporation, China National Electric Engineering Company Ltd, Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, TBEA Co Ltd and Global Energy Interconnection Development and Cooperation Organisation”.

Coal belt

In Mpumalanga, where the transition is being felt most by coal-affected communities, grants and concessional loans will play an important role in benefiting these communities, according to the PMU.

“There are two key sources of financing that we need to turn to mobilise in order to ensure that we mitigate the impact that the transition is going to have on workers in the coal belt and also the communities that were benefiting from having a coal power station or having a coal mine in the area,” Cole said.

“This is why we place so much emphasis on an increase in the contribution in the form of grants, mainly from development partners but also from multilateral development banks. Grants are going to enable us to address some of the ‘just’ components in the JET-IP,” Cole told Oxpeckers.

“We want to be supporting those workers who are transitioning out of the coal value chain and affected communities. And we also want to ensure the plan includes the investments that are required when those communities transition into the new value chain.”

He was unable to say how much of the €600 million received by the treasury so far had been allocated to this mission in Mpumalanga.

COP28 expectations

According to the treasury, the government will continue its efforts to access concessional financing from international financial institutions, including through climate finance. In 2023-24, the government plans to raise the equivalent of $2.6 billion.

Cole said at COP28, to be held in Dubai from November 30 to December 12, South Africa needs to point out two things, the first being what progress the country is making in the implementation of the JET-IP.

“How and where are we with the implementation? What kind of progress has been made? And also, of the pledges that the international community has made, what progress are we making in terms of how that money is going to be used because in 2024, we have to see the disbursement of those funds.”

The investment plan is a five-year plan that runs from 2023 to 2027, he added. “There’s a lot happening alongside the plan, and we need to consider that the transition is a transition to 2050. But what we’re dealing with now is a five-year plan so we remain focused on the next five years.”

The second issue “is where we join with other African countries and also countries in the Global South, in calling for developed countries to meet the commitments that they had made, both in the form of grants and of climate finance”, said Cole.

It is important that Western countries meet the commitments they made in the past, he said. “I’m sure by the time they get to COP28, they are going to be making new commitments. We certainly want to see them delivering on the previous commitments that they had made.”

Thabo Molelekwa is an associate journalist of Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism, and a graduate of our #PowerTracker professional support and training programme. This investigation was supported by the African Climate Foundation’s New Economy Campaigns Hub.

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When one thinks of Africa, there are certain iconic animals that spring to mind amid the vast diversity of its wildlife. The tusks and ears of an African elephant, the spindly legs and elegant neck of a giraffe, and above all, the grey bulk and distinctive horn of a rhinoceros.

Why do we care so much about the plight of the rhino and their very real risk of extinction? There are, after all, many other far more interesting and attractive animal species also facing an ongoing challenge for survival. 

As we commemorate World Rhino Day on 22 September, it’s an apt time to reflect on the true conservation value of rhinoceros in our natural ecosystems and why it really is important to care about whether these animals flourish or fade into the history books.

The outlook is deeply concerning

It’s apparent to anyone who follows conservation news that the remaining wild rhino populations in Africa and Asia are under extreme stress from threats of poaching for their horns, habitat loss and fragmentation. 

At the beginning of the 20th century, an estimated 500 000 rhino roamed Africa and Asia. Today, about 27 000 remain in the wild. 

The Javan and Sumatran rhino each number fewer than 100 individuals, and the northern white rhino has only two females that remain, making it functionally extinct.

Faring better, for now, is the southern white rhino, at about 15 000 remaining, but they are classified as near threatened, with numbers declining across existing strongholds. Without active conservation measures and intervention, the future for the rhino is bleak. Yet there is a compelling argument to be made to ensure the survival of this species.

Rhino play a crucial role in the ecosystem

Rhino are a sentinel species, both the harbinger of environmental destruction and equally, when successfully rewilded into rehabilitated spaces, the symbol of a conservation success story. 

They are typically the first species to be poached out of natural systems, thereby acting as a warning alarm for further degradation of an area. But they are also typically the last species to be reintroduced into an area that has been well managed and secured, signalling a conservation success and renewed hope.

It is crucial to have enough safe spaces for the species to inhabit so that they can play their part in the ecosystem. White rhino are mega-herbivores that provide a vital link in the conservation chain. They shape grasslands through grazing, which positively impacts nutrient cycling, reduces the rate at which fires can spread, and they create natural water holes that are beneficial for other species, providing a habitat and water for many other animals. 

They contribute to storing carbon by maintaining the savanna ecosystem which is a major carbon sink — savannas store about 30% of the world’s terrestrial carbon, mostly in the soil. By grazing on grasses and browsing on shrubs, rhino prevent woody or brush encroachment, which if left to proliferate reduces the carbon storage capacity of savannas.

Where rhino are present within an ecosystem, there is an increase in fauna and flora diversity. Biodiversity is particularly important for maintaining the resilience and adaptability of ecosystems to climate change. Rhino are a keystone species — they have a disproportionate impact on their environment and influence many other species. Returning rhino to a protected area signals successful conservation across a large landscape that is well managed for the benefit of all species in that ecosystem. And yes, that includes humans.

People and animals co-existing

It’s a great irony that while people constitute the greatest threat to any rhino population, rhino can be a positive influence in the lives of the people who live around the protected areas they inhabit. Well-managed protected areas are a drawcard for tourism, generating more revenue for local communities and improving livelihoods, and the presence of rhino in these areas adds to the attraction of a protected area for tourists hoping to catch a glimpse of these animals. 

When conservation is owned by communities, protected areas are recognised as a viable land use model that delivers benefits to them. This enhances the financial sustainability of their areas, and a conservation-led economy can flourish. The presence of rhino in a protected area can directly and indirectly help create jobs, stimulate local micro-enterprise development and ultimately, improve livelihoods in the region.

A sound community development strategy is needed to make sure this happens. Those entrusted with the management of protected areas must partner with communities to understand their needs and ensure that they directly benefit from these areas under conservation. These benefits include the same things we all want for ourselves and families — education, health services, and jobs. 

Successful partnerships must ensure that the communities derive economic benefits from the protected areas, creating a conservation-led economy through employment and other conservation-positive enterprises.

The work lies ahead

Quite apart from the emotional lure of saving a noble species, there are also sound ecological and climate-related reasons for saving the rhino. African Parks has recently embarked on an ambitious project to rewild 2 000 southern white rhino into protected areas across Africa — our best shot yet to supplement existing populations, and to create new populations, strategically, across the African continent. 

Rewilding the 2 000 rhino is far more significant than just the species — it demands successful conservation across multiple large landscapes that are well managed for the benefit of all species in that system. The importance of these iconic animals in the ecosystems is indisputable. It is incumbent on us to do what we can to protect the species and secure their future.

Donovan Jooste is the rhino rewilding project manager at African Parks.

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SA Harvest and OneFarm Share are collecting food that would have gone to landfill and redistributing it to vulnerable people

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Confusion over sell-by, use-by, best before and expiry dates among consumers drives food waste

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Woolworths donates surplus food to 890 local charities across South Africa, every day

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Understanding the potential effect of the typically hotter and drier El Niño phenomenon on agriculture and food security in South Africa in the upcoming months is crucial, experts say.

Historically, the weather pattern has been associated with drier and warmer conditions over the Southern African summer rainfall region,  “although this relationship is not straightforward”, said Ramontsheng Rapolaki, a researcher in agrometeorology and climate modelling at the Agricultural Research Council (ARC).

“The El Niño Southern Oscillation (Enso) is currently in an El Niño state, and according to the predictions it is expected to persist through most of the summer months. Currently, global forecasts indicate a great deal of uncertainty for the typical drier than normal conditions that South Africa experiences during an El Niño.”

El Niño and La Niña are the warm and cool phases of a recurring climate pattern across the tropical Pacific — the Enso, according to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. The Enso is one of the most important climate phenomena on earth because of its ability to influence global atmospheric circulation. 

Above normal rainfall 

Rapolaki said over the next four months, according to the South African Weather Service’s latest seasonal watch, the multi-model rainfall forecast indicates above-normal rainfall for most parts of the country during the mid- to late-spring seasons. 

Above-normal rainfall is also expected in early summer (November, December and January) for the north-eastern parts. “These above-normal rainfall forecasts for the summer rainfall regions will likely have a positive impact on crop and livestock production.” 

Still, below-normal rainfall is predicted over the central areas (parts of North West, Free State, Eastern Cape and Northern Cape) during the early summer season. Minimum and maximum temperatures are expected to be mostly above-normal countrywide for the forecast period.

“At this point, we need to continue monitoring how the event evolves at both weekly and monthly scales, since there is a possibility of conditions changing,” Rapolaki said.

If drier than normal conditions materialise, South Africa should be prepared. “If you look at the past El Niño’s, if the season before that one was dry, and now you’re moving to another dry season, the impact won’t be the same. Now … we’re moving from the wet season to what we can expect as El Niño-like conditions.

“For now we’re in a better position to prepare, even the fact that we’re going into early spring and early summer, we’re still expecting above average rainfall for some of the regions. It gives us some time to prepare in the long run but we don’t know what’s going to happen next year around this time … so that’s why we should prepare for that time.”

Farmers should continue monitoring advisories such as the Umlindi report, a

monthly report on drought conditions in South Africa prepared by the ARC, together with its Agriculture Drought Early Warning System and the weekly and monthly forecasts issued by the weather service. 

They should stay watchful for advisories from the department of agriculture and “make necessary adjustments as required”, Rapolaki said. He urged decision-makers to advise farmers in these regions to adopt soil and water conservation practices, implement proper water harvesting and storage methods and establish effective drainage systems.

‘Very hot summer’

“What is interesting about this El Niño phenomenon is that it’s a particularly strong one,” said Janse Rabie, the head of AgriSA’s Centre of Excellence on Natural Resources. 

“A lot’s been written about El Niño, the effects of that globally, but what we are seeing in the Northern Hemisphere is a record hot summer.

“And that is coinciding with the El Niño development or the El Niño Southern Oscillation over the eastern parts of the Pacific Ocean,” Rabie said. “There is a correlation and that worries us. 

“They normally last for anything between six and 18 months and normally we expect hotter, drier conditions. If what is happening in the Northern Hemisphere bears out, then we’re in for a very hot summer in the Southern Hemisphere and with us in particular.” 

The difference between the current period and the extreme drought of 2015-16 was that “that we’ve had about four years of very good rainfalls all over the country. The soil moisture content for agriculture, for crop producing areas of the country, is good”.

“Our concern is mainly heat and heat stress and what that would do for the various commodities, but we do think that we’re in a good position at least for the six to 18 month period with regard to higher temperatures, coupled with lower rainfall.” 

In late summer, “that’s where we expect really high temperatures and low rainfall and where we hope that our built up resources – the soil moisture content and dam levels – carry us through”, Rabie said.

Load-shedding plus El Nino spells trouble

Load-shedding is placing severe additional strain on the agricultural sector, Rabie said. “We saw that in the last season — and we had a good rainfall season — that load-shedding had enormous implications for irrigation farming in particular and definite negative and adverse effects.

“Should it be that we have to experience the same thing that we did in the past summer months for the irrigation periods in the harvest cycle, then we do need to worry,” he said. “Particularly if we go into a longer El Niño cycle, 18 months or longer, coupled with a drought, which is not unforeseeable, then we’re in for a much more unstable harvest season and agricultural financial year in particular.” 

Load-shedding is detrimental for irrigation farming in particular, Rabie said.

Johan Malherbe, a senior researcher at the ARC’s Natural Resources and Engineering division, agreed. “The big thing with load-shedding is that when you have a warmer and drier period, then you don’t get slack from the climate system because you don’t get your shower instead of having to irrigate and it’s hot and there’s more evaporation so you need to irrigate more often.

“Then under such conditions, if you have load-shedding at schedule six, you can … really see that impacting on the yields you get. If we do see the potential negative impacts of the El Niño, in terms of lower rainfall and high temperatures this summer, and that coincides with very high stages of load-shedding, it will have a further negative effect on the irrigation farming sector.”

Food inflation

On the potential for food inflation, Malherbe said an oversupply of maize in the summer can lower food prices. “We had that during the previous summer, an oversupply, so our maize was relatively cheap as we moved towards the late summer. 

“But now if you have a summer where you don’t produce sufficient maize to export and you might have to import, and also taking into account that usually if you have a strong El Niño and the drought occurs over South Africa, usually it is also affecting our neighbouring countries and then we export white maize to these countries.”

Then, there is a larger export demand regionally “so the import demand from other countries around us … if we have a drought, which usually it’s a regional drought in El Niño, so then also there’s a bigger demand for our maize.”

If South Africa doesn’t produce as much as it does during a wet year, “that can also in terms of keeping the food inside the country, it can also support the price very strongly and that can have a food inflation effect”. 

He noted how in 2015-16 and even the summer thereafter because of the knock-on effect, “we had much higher maize prices than the international price because of this effect so higher maize prices than the parity”. 

El Niño occurs on average every two to seven years and episodes typically last nine to 12 months, the World Meteorological Organisation said. “It is a naturally occurring climate pattern associated with warming of the ocean surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. But it takes place in the context of a climate changed by human activities.” 

It said 2016 is the warmest year on record because of the “double whammy” of a very powerful El Niño event and human-induced warming from greenhouse gases. “The effect on global temperatures usually plays out in the year after its development and so will likely be most apparent in 2024.”

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Government processes and disputed debt are delaying the power that Mozambique has offered South Africa

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Public Enterprises Minister Pravin Gordhan says all critical elements for creating a more dynamic, responsive and competitive electricity industry are in place

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Given the resource scramble for our oceans and the use of increasingly sophisticated technology for exploration, mining and fishing on an industrial scale, we urgently need transformative ocean governance because business-as-usual is destroying our oceans. The first step is to establish a set of principles towards achieving this transformation. 

Since January 2020, a group of 21 senior researchers from around the world and across ecological, social, economic, industry and legal disciplines, have developed a set of 13 principles for transformative ocean governance and action. They focus on the reform required for ocean-use practices and address a combination of the UN’s sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Led by Nelson Mandela University’s Institute for Coastal and Marine Research, the “Principles for transformative ocean governance”, was published on 7 September in Nature Sustainability. The authors have a total of 440 years of experience gained from working in and influencing the ocean governance realm in over 30 countries.

While there are a lot of rules about sustainable governance on land, there are fewer for oceans, especially areas beyond national jurisdiction. Oceans are difficult to govern because they are dynamic and without borders, hence they require international cooperation and collaboration. 

To date, governments, industry and organisations have failed to offer equal access for all humans to the ocean environment and have failed to halt the decline in ocean health and ecosystem service delivery. Ecosystem services, such as oxygen production, sustain life on Earth and half of the Earth’s oxygen is generated by tiny plants in the ocean called phytoplankton. 

In South Africa, we have rules for catching certain species, and organisations such as the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) sets rules for the hake fishery and compliance is required in order to sell to Europe. But this is just one species and many species lack rules. Many other species are also caught as by-catch.

The large fishing companies and the oil and gas industries have the technology to provide researchers with data such as camera footage from the oceans so that we can work together to achieve a sustainable marine environment, but so far there isn’t much willingness to do this. 

Researchers rely on grants and donor funding and there aren’t sufficient funds to pursue the work we would like to do to better understand the ocean. Even our exclusive economic zones are not well understood and the high seas beyond are even more unknown; it’s the wild west out there with few rules. 

To address these issues, we invited a group of researchers from around the world to a conference hosted by Nelson Mandela University in January 2020. The goal was to engage with the latest developments impacting ocean governance from a developmental, ecosystem-based and human-rights-based approach.

At the conference it was agreed to develop a set of ocean governance principles that work to establish a balance between the economic, conservation, social and cultural requirements of the wide range of role-players in the ocean environment. Our aim is to offer guidelines for countries and hopefully help to inform policy and enforceable regulations.

It’s taken three-and-a-half years to develop the 13 principles because we are a very diverse, transdisciplinary group, representing a wide range of needs, including legal frameworks, international and domestic politics of ocean governance, developmental approaches including inclusive and equitable development, the blue economy and SDG 14 (Life Below Water), and ecosystem-based and human rights-based approaches, including marine planning, ocean health, social justice and the role of civil society in governance. 

The 13 principles, which are elaborated on in the article, span the following areas:

• Biological diversity: to maintain and restore biological diversity, which is key for resilient ocean ecosystems; 
• Upholding human rights in all ocean-related activities; 
• Adopting social-ecological systems approaches: for ocean governance to be effective, it needs to understand and embrace both the social and environmental components;
• Policy integration: integrating cross-sectoral policies to achieve social and ecological connectivity; 
• Metrics: the use of metrics to support ocean governance in order to gauge and report on the state of the system and trigger action; 
• Integrated ocean management (IOM): an integrated approach that conserves species and resources and manages human activities for optimal, sustainable use; 
• Business engagement: to coordinate transparent engagement between ocean businesses and diverse ocean stakeholders to address the interlinked and cumulative impacts of businesses on the ocean and society and to promote net positive outcomes for both; 
• Managing and governing diverse incentives: to encourage diverse incentives and promote and enable sustainable ocean-use practices; 
• Technological innovation: to support transformative ocean governance;
• International mechanisms: leveraging international mechanisms that support inclusive decision-making for sustainable development and that support local-level and national-level environmental commitments such as the SDGs; 
• Governance approaches: advocating for inclusive and adaptive approaches to the governance of dynamic, interconnected ocean systems and the ability to adapt to the status of ecosystems, including human and non-human pressures on these systems; 
• Power dynamics: this requires appropriate responses to existing and potential power dynamics and vested interests that can inhibit the implementation of the required transformative approaches to ocean governance; and 
• Urgent action: required across governance levels — the cumulative impacts on the ocean have amplified and the rapid deterioration of ocean health and the well-being of millions dependent on it signals that urgent action is required for the timely and effective implementation of SDG 14.

It’s not easy to govern the ocean and apportion fair access to all the competing groups. And at the same time to respect non-measurable cultural needs, such as indigenous communities whose ancestors live in the ocean and who call for it to be respected and conserved because this is their spiritual home. Exemplary work has been done in Canada to include Indigenous ocean knowledge and the needs of the First Nations.

To illustrate the transformative principles of ocean governance in action we drew on our work done to date in Algoa Bay. Since 2017 a group of us have been working on Algoa Bay’s Marine Spatial Plan (MSP), which is the first in South Africa, and will be released early in 2024. The plan has been developed by the Institute for Coastal and Marine Research and the SARChI Chair in Marine Spatial planning at Nelson Mandela University, as well as the Chair of Marine Natural Products at Rhodes University, with a number of collaborators, and with funding from the South African National Research Foundation/ Department of Science and Innovation. 

In 2019, the Algoa Bay project joined the One Ocean Hub (OOH), an international programme of “fair research partnerships for sustainable development” among the Global North-South, funded by UK Official Development Assistance. The aim is a “healthy ocean for all”.

Together, the Algoa Bay and OOH projects have brought together researchers from the biophysical sciences (including deep-sea and fisheries science), the social sciences (including anthropology and the arts), and ecological and resource economics and law (national and international law on environment, human rights and the sea), with the joint aim of helping to inform stakeholders and governments on what transformative ocean governance entails and what can be achieved through it. 

It requires considerable consultation, including talking to industry, government, lawyers, biologists, small-scale fishers, ocean-dwelling communities and holders of Indigenous knowledge. It also requires investigating the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process used by industries such as oil and gas and marine minerals. 

The EIA process that gets approved is often wholly insufficient. Exploration goes ahead in most cases, with some exceptions where multinationals are taken to court such as the contesting of seismic blasting along the Wild Coast in the search for oil and gas. 

Industry has the power and money, and characteristically uses economics and job creation in their bid for a large slice of the ocean. It’s very difficult pushing back against big industry and governments or any sector that gains the most benefit from the ocean but we have to reach a point of collaboration. We are hoping the ocean governance policies and MSPs will assist in putting pressure on industry and governments to work with other sectors and collaboratively come up with win-win solutions for ocean sustainability.

Many developing nations are working on their MSPs now and they regularly contact us for help. One of our teams is working with Madagascar; we work a lot with Western Indian Ocean countries — from South Africa all the way up the east coast of Africa.

We are well into the UN Ocean Decade and the 2030 drive to protect the oceans, which cannot be a box-ticking exercise. We have to move beyond the “blue team” wanting to conserve the oceans and industry hitting back that they don’t like what we are presenting. It’s a constant fight instead of working as one team. The ocean environment is screaming for collaboration and hopefully this can be achieved.

Professor Amanda Lombard holds the SARChI Chair in Marine Spatial Planning at Nelson Mandela University and is lead author of a seminal article ‘Principles for transformative ocean governance’, published on 7 September in the leading international journal, Nature Sustainability.

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This is because of a reduction and fluctuation in krill in their feeding grounds in the Southern Ocean

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Cattle farmers will either have to provide protection for their animals, or shift to more resilient breeds or to other livestock

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The Petrus Steyn breeder on the farm Steilfontein was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment or pay a fine of R4 000

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