Research & Project Outputs

Gareth Haysom's notes on the research trip to India by the SI's sustainable agriculture group, including two MPhil students.

This paper will be delivered at conferences in Copenhagen and Brisbane taking place in August and September 2012 respectively. Building on the core arguments developed in his book co-authored with Eve Annecke entitled Just Transitions: Explorations of Sustainability in an Unfair World, this paper examines storlines of the future developed from various influential perspectives. Using the Multi-Level Perspective, Mark Swilling elaborates and extends his conception of transition to a more sustainable world.

Wendy Crane, an independent sustainable development consultant based in the Southern Cape, wrote this article on the relationship between land reform and biodiversity conservation in the Southern Cape in fulfillment of the research project requirement of her Mphil degree. She graduated in April 2006. The article has been accepted for publication in the accredited journal Geoforum, 22 August 2006.

Learnable Lessons on Sustainability from the Provision of Electricity in South Africa by M.K. Heuen, J.L. Van Niekerk, M. Swilling, A.J. Meyer, A. Brent and T. Fluri. Proceedings of ASME 2010 4th international Conference on Energy Sustainability, 17-22 2010, Phoenix, Arizona. Compiled by a team from the SI and Centre for Renewable and Sustainable Energy Studies, this paper reviews the crisis of electricity provision in South African within the context of the global 'polycrisis', and suggests policy alternatives to mainstream thinking.

Report by Phetang Mabeba on the completion of othe Lynedoch Sustainable RDP House which was built using SABS approved adobe bricks and includes a DC Mini-grid.

Mark Swilling - Growth, Resource Use and Decoupling: Towards a 'Green New Deal' for South Africa? ECSECC Working Papers Series 14. East London: ECSECC.

Reviews the contemporary urban studies literature and argues that with few exceptions this literature has ignored the rapidly growing literature on sustainable cities. The result is that SA urban development policies have not addressed the challenge of making urban development ecologically sustainable.

Published in the accredited journal Environment and Urbanisation, this article uses Cape Town to demonstrate that it will not be possible to finance pro-poor development if scarce financial resources are used to subsidized unsustainable infrastructure provision to meet the needs of middle and upper classes.

This is the most recent version (September 2007) of the National Framework for Sustainable Development that has been discussed by the Cabinet Clusters but not as of now (December 2007) approved by Cabinet. The Sustainability Institute was contracted to manage the background research and Mark Swilling helped draft the document. Changes were made as various government committees and departments considered the document.

See blurb for Part 1 of this document.