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Welcome to the Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies official podcast, Tips Talk, the show where we delve into the fascinating world of economics and its impact on global development.
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Please note that the following podcast is not based on personal opinions, but it is research findings that each economist is reiterating for purposes of disseminating research.
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The conversation is based on the following publications that you can download on our TIPS website.
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Publication one Farm Labor and Climate Change in South Africa, assessing the role of active labor market policies.
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Publication two, identifying and evaluating measures to decarbonizing the mining value chain.
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This publication sources data from the emergency disaster database.
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Publication three, Diffusion of Climate Change Technology, Innovation and Practices for Small Scale Farmers in South Africa.
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Today I have three lovely guests who are also my colleagues.
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My name is Tobani Kay.
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I would like to ask our three guests to introduce themselves.
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Hello, my name is Akona Mia.
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I am an economist under sustainable development at TIPS.
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Hi there.
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I'm Dr.
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Michael Hector.
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I'm an economist in sustainable development at TIPS.
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Hello, I'm Julian Chigomira, and I'm a senior economist in the inclusive trade and industrial policy pillar.
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In this podcast, as it features guests who performed deep dives from the research gap stemming from the NIVA and SJRPs, I would like each one of them to actually give us a summary of the research that they did.
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Can I please start with you, Akon?
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My research was on evaluating focused accuracy, uh, infrastructure reliability as it pertains to the predictiveness of extreme weather events in South Africa and whether there's a focus to action gap, given that uh focus skill alone is not enough, and we needed to ascertain whether it can translate into real-world outcomes or actions.
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Michael.
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So the deep dive that I did looked essentially at the role of active labor market policies in the context of climate change.
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What we found was that essentially because farm workers especially are so vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, we see there is a need to have sort of policies that are geared towards protecting the livelihoods of farm workers.
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So one of the questions that came up while doing the first study on the vulnerability assessment was to see what would active labor markets look like if they are geared towards protecting the livelihoods of farm workers.
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So this deep dive looked at the diffusion of climate change technology innovation and practices for small-skill farmers.
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And I think we've already seen that climate change has really intensified vulnerabilities.
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And so what it did was just look at across the provinces the number of small-skill farmers we have, the vulnerability, and also just summarizing the types of technologies to mitigate some of these vulnerabilities, the access and also the initiatives that are being taken by government and the private sector.
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All right.
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Thank you guys.
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So, Akona, this question is for you.
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What does the data tell us about climate impacts for South Africa?
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So, when you look at the data or the historical trends when it comes to climate change, so the data tells us that droughts affect the highest population volume, but floods account for the most fatalities and financial damage.
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And if you study the period between 2011 and 2025, you can see that we have had the highest escalation of climate variability, which saw more than 51% of all extreme events recorded since 2000.
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And if you look at the data also, you see that the coastal provinces which sit on the escarpment, if you look at the climatic regions in South Africa, like Hazel and Eastern Cape and Western Cape, are the ones that carry the most disproportionate share of high impact extreme events.
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And if you look at inland provinces, you see that they face the most extreme heat, drought, and wildfire risk.
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And we see with the data that we have consistently reported high forecast accuracy, but it does not really translate into decision making for the parties that are mostly affected by these climate events when and as they do happen.
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All right.
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When you talk about climate data challenges, what does that actually look like nationally?
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So when you talk about climate data challenges, right?
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So firstly you talk about the system that is feeding the observation, right?
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Like your radar availability.
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So if you look at the data, you can see that the radar availability is subsequently very low, right?
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Then if you look at national level and you talk about the problem and what does it look like, right?
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You talk about the situation where climate data exists, as in the focus are being issued, right?
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But it's the issue of who has access to them and in what form or in terms of the level of granularity and what is the level of detail.
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So a central issue if you look at the data is the commercialization of high resolution data, right?
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High resolution is when you look at specialities like local municipalities instead of district municipalities.
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And then the more granular and decision-ready data sets are a premium product.
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That means that, for instance, for large-scale commercial farmers who have the financial resources to buy that type of data and have the financial muscle, they can buy the data, and then you have smallholder farmers who necessarily have to rely on the generalized focus for their decision making.
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You see that in the literature, authors like Chisazza 2020 and Core, they do talk about a situation where seasonal focus are only useful when they are localized and interpretable, which is not often the case for small users.
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So beyond commercialization, there's an issue of a digital divide where the people that are in the rural areas who don't have network connectivity cannot get the focus in time that necessitates uh proper decision making.
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And then there's the usability constraints, right?
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Some people do see the heat maps or this way with whether as it becomes presented on TV, but they cannot sort of comprehend what is being said, right?
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So nationally, the issue is not about whether the climate data focus exists, it's about climate data inequality where there's a two-tier adaptation, where the ones that have the financial muscles to afford the focus can buy them, the more granular ones, and then the smallholder farmers or more general public cannot afford that, which speaks to their planting decisions like for smallholder farmers, for agriculture, and for uh sectors like tourism.
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All right, thank you, Arkon.
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I want to go to Michael and ask him how does climate change translate into jobs and livelihood issues in agriculture?
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To essentially just speaking back of what Akona was saying, and I find it interesting that she mentions Eastern Cape and Western Cape, if I understand that correctly, as being sort of vulnerable regions when we look at the sort of climate data and the impact of climate change.
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Noticeably, when we look at agriculture, the Eastern Cape and Western Cape are also key agri regions for the country and including KwaZulu-Natal as well.
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They're important for agriculture in the country, and then most notably what we saw during the recent floods in and around May, we saw heavy impacts on our sort of key exports like citrus and wine.
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Now, as Akona mentioned, and this is what we found in the vulnerability assessment as well, your commercial farmers are able to afford to adapt to climate change.
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They're able to recover, obviously, at a cost to damages that occur to heavy floods, droughts, wildfires, et cetera.
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But a very big impact, and Jillian will speak to that in a bit, a heavier impact we do notice in the research is on small-scale farmers who are unable to adapt, who are unable to afford the technologies, and are often unable to transition or to fix the damages that were done due to floods or drought.
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But important for the research that I was doing on the vulnerability of farm workers, we see specifically once these sort of climate events happen, droughts, floods, et cetera, we see a sort of twofold impact on their livelihoods, right?
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So the first one is the natural one, which is essentially the productivity link there, where we see floods, droughts, wildfires, et cetera, tend to reduce agricultural output and naturally also reduce labor productivity.
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Things like high temperatures, for example, pose health and safety risks for farm workers.
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And notably what we see in the vulnerability assessment is that on all scales, whether this be financial, social, we see farm workers fare worse off than other workers outside of agriculture.
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So farm workers have low savings, they have low skills, well, relative to former workers outside of agri, but then also low educational levels as well.
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And a lot of these workers are concentrated on what would be considered elementary jobs.
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So things like picking on citrus farms, for example.
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So all of these issues, once you combine them, are essentially exacerbated by climate change.
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And this results in a situation where if climate change gets so bad that farms need to either close down or reduce working hours of farm workers, these farm workers will find it very difficult to transition into alternative forms of work.
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And this is sort of even worse on the small-scale farms that do employ farm workers because of the lack of financial resources, they would naturally have to let people go, for example.
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And then we start asking questions around okay, what happens to those farm workers in the event that they do lose their jobs?
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And I'll get to that in a bit if the topic does come up.
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So if farm workers are so vulnerable, even just compared to other workers in other sectors, what are ways or options in protecting vulnerable workers?
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Yeah, so one of the ways in which we looked, so from the small-scale farmer perspective, there's obviously the technological adaptation, right?
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So putting adaptation measures in place.
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But these, especially from the technological change side, can also pose risks to farm workers.
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And something that I actually forgot to mention earlier.
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But when farms adapt technologies, it is often found that they reduce the need for certain skills.
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So you require a higher skilled farm labor, right?
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So that also poses a risk.
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And that was one of the things that posed the question for in the event that this does happen, when farms either have to close down or when farms have to adapt to climate change through the use of technology, et cetera, what measures can we put in place to sort of support the livelihoods of farm workers?
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And one of the, for lack of a better word, one of the most obvious options that we looked at, and I'm sure there are other options as well.
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This was just the one that stood out the most was active labor market policies, right?
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So essentially, for the listeners who don't know what active labor market policies are, the whole purpose of them is to essentially mitigate short-term joblessness and prevent long-term retrenchments or prevent temporary shocks from turning into long-term unemployment.
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That is the theoretical foundation of it.
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South Africa has a long historical legacy of it.
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But because of our sort of high level of unemployment in the country, it makes it very difficult because economic diversification, economic opportunities need to be present, especially within farm towns, for active labor market policies to see some level of success.
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So one of the things that we looked at, and one of the questions in this research was we know that active labor market policies are not sort of the silver bullet that's going to solve employment problems.
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So we need to couple that with economic diversification.
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And then we started asking, what would this look like in the context of climate change?
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And we saw there is a need, and I won't go into too much detail, but the paper does detail sort of a three-tiered or three-dimensional system.
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But essentially, what we started looking at was asking questions around what if workers do not have the skills?
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What if workers do not have the physical ability?
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What if they're going to retire?
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So we realized that you need a sort of combination of tools to secure farm worker livelihoods.
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So specifically things like skills development.
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In the event that workers aren't able to transition into other forms of work, they might be at a retiring age or they might be disabled, etc.
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You will have to then also implement social protection policies, income protection, those sort of things.
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And all of this really just stems from that these farm workers already have low levels of social protection.
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So it's kind of a combination of developing skills, coming to the realization that active labor market policies alone cannot succeed in the absence where there is no genuine economic opportunities.
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So it's about providing farm workers with the skills, but then also looking at it from a municipal or provincial level and looking at improving infrastructure, improving economic opportunities around those farm areas so that they are not completely dependent on agriculture in the event that climate change does get worse.
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Because we have to remember that these studies were done in the context of not today, but climate change in five or ten years, right?
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Um so what would it look like essentially?
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And then kind of looking at it from a worst case scenario.
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What do we have in place now and what do we need to essentially prepare ourselves going forward?
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So there are a number of things that the SGRPs specifically highlight on what we can start laying the groundwork for now, especially when it comes to small-scale farmers.
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Jillian, I feel like you're the one suitable to speak on how can or how do small-scale farmers experience climate change and they just transition differently to large-scale farmers.
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Thanks, Tabani.
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So just building up on what Dr.
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Michael said, I think last week and last month we've seen the effects of heavy rains in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape and the floods that have devastated, you know, vineyards, orchards, cropland, and some of them have been completely decimated.
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And my colleague Ako now articulates some of these historic weather patterns in her paper.
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So what we do see is climate change has really intensified vulnerability for all farmers.
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However, the impact and response may be experienced quite differently.
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So for example, large-scale farmers have access to industry networks, government programs, and finance, and they are able to adopt technology better.
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I mean, if we're looking at technology of high-to-advanced, for example, smart irrigation and soil moisture enhancers, your large-scale farmers are much more able to kind of adopt and utilize and purchase these.
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Whereas when we look at small-scale farmers, there really is a disproportionate burden.
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They still face barriers, they have fewer assets and limited access to formal credit to kind of buy some of these technologies and utilize it.
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And so what we do see if we're looking at small-scale farmers across South Africa by provinces, you know, they're more pronounced in KZN, in Limpopo, and the Eastern Cape.
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And so, you know, these vulnerabilities really differ.
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They really struggle.
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For example, if we look at small-scale farmers who are mainly producing for consumption, their vulnerabilities are largely linked to food insecurity.
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If we also look at small-scale farmers who mainly produce for sale, they do face risks such as loss of income.
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They're not able to reinvest into their productive systems.
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Now, if we just look at small-scale farmers and what they produce, let's just look at what's happening with the intensive heat.
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You know, their animals will face heat stress, the spread of diseases, the high mortality rates of livestock, and you know, they may not have access to vaccines as much as the large-scale farmers have.
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And then let's just look at the impacts of prolonged droughts.
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These reduce the availability of grazing land.
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And so naturally what you would have is, you know, as people seek grazing lands, as animals move, it also increases the reliance on alternative feeds and also just exposing them to diseases, especially foot and mouth.
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And so if we just look at small-scale farmers, for example, in horticulture or those planting crops, you know, with the excessive temperatures there, they may literally lose some of their crops and declined yields.
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And so you do see a distinction there between just some of the impact on both of them, but overly, I would say climate change really is affecting the sector holistically.
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All right.
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I see.
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How can the public and private sectors collaborate to create pathways that supports greater adoption and uptake of climate-related technologies?
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Thanks, Tabani.
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So I think firstly, we do need to strengthen our gaps on data for small-scale farmers for targeted policy interventions.
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Currently, we do have the DSI HSRC Agribusiness Innovation Survey.
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And so I think we can leverage from some of these existing survey infrastructure and just include some of the small-scale farmers in it as well.
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And then I'm secondly, I think it's very important, you know, we expand extension offices through public-private partnerships and just standardizing some of this training towards climate smart agriculture.
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And I think thirdly, it's very important for collaborations, you know, on access to climate finance and just looking at subsidizing some of these memberships into industry organizations for small-scale farmers and just apportioning some of the business trust and statutory levy funds for technology for small-scale farmers, and just developing some accessible credit and grants and blended finance products.
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And I think lastly, you know, we just want to look at scaling up demonstration plots and just leveraging routine farmer interactions with people they see on an everyday basis.
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So we're speaking of, you know, informing agro dealers, your tractor service providers, your input suppliers and financiers, just to help bridge some of this gap on diffusion to small-scale farmers.
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Thank you so much, Jillian.
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I've heard about vulnerabilities of workers, I've heard about buying data, I've heard about commercial farmers and small-scale farmers, the inequalities that exist there.
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Can you just each give key points or closing remarks and also just maybe recommend the way forward in your respective research that you conducted?
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For me, I would say that South Africa does not have failure of forecasting science, but it has a failure of infrastructural stability, regional coverage, and institutional coordination.
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So, in order to sort of make sure that when the forecasts are issued, they can reach the people in the time that they need to reach the people.
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So we are fixing the observation to warning chain, right?
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That would mean that institutions like agricultural research institutions, disaster management authorities, municipalities and agencies that are involved with forecasting weather must coordinate instead of operating in silos, right?
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So for me, I feel like integrating these data sets and having a data interoperability system would improve both the analytical quality and the speed of hazard interpretation, particularly for first developing localized events like thunderstorms and flashlights.
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And building interoperable systems through common standards, shared platforms, and coordinated governance would also improve the data assimilation or what you put into the forecast models, and it would reduce inconsistencies across the data sets.
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It would enable faster and more accurate early warning systems, and it would then support cross sector decision making.
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But also, I think it's important to mention that yes, the forecast issued, but forecasts are not equal to safety.
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There's a deeper structural vulnerability that exists in South Africa, particularly pertaining to the history of the country in terms of the inequalities that exist, right?
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So for instance.
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If you see on the 2nd of June, there were warnings that were issued across the central, eastern, and western parts of the country, right?
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But you cannot tell someone from a poor background or someone that lives in informal areas that they must heed a warning from the whatever agency that has issued the warning because they have to go out and make an income.
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And then also if you look at remote areas, right?
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For remote areas, you could potentially do what Bangladesh does.
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So Bangladesh has more than 70,000 volunteers that are based in the most vulnerable areas that receive alerts through megaphones and then they go around the villages telling people that are going to be affected that this is an alert that has been issued.
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So for South Africa, something that could happen is that we could also sort of take that approach and/or make the youth climate change activists, right?
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But also you cannot blame forcasters.
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They do the job, they do what they need to do, which is issuing out focus, right?
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But there's a deeper structural problem in terms of municipalities.
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There's weak upkeep of the infrastructure that exists within municipalities like stormwater drainage systems, which means that an event like flooding needs proper stormwater drainage systems.
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So if that is not maintained, or if as a municipality, as you see that people are getting affected in the same way by flooding each and every year, each and every time that it occurs, then why are you not investing the resources that you would need to invest into stormwater drainage systems?
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So again, I would like to emphasize we don't have a focused skill problem where the science is not working.
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The science is working because it's according to the global standard that it needs to be according to.
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But also I think there is a deeper structural problem where we are not only facing climate fragility, but we are also facing municipal infrastructure fragility, which needs to be addressed by people who can make those decisions and who have the power to make the decisions.
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All right.
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I hope the municipalities all over the country heard that.
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Can I move on to Michael?
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Yeah, so for me, a key takeaway from this research that I did on active labor market policies and farm workers is essentially that skills and livelihood development is integral to improving the livelihoods of farm workers and their ability to adapt to climate change.
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We see various initiatives at an industry level.
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We've got AgriCETA, we've got CASP, etc.
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But if you look at these sort of initiatives, they were not inherently developed to improve farm worker livelihoods, right?
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And although we do see some provincial level initiatives, for example, the one that I'm aware of is the Western Cape Farm Worker Development Program, right?
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But existing research continues to show that limited attention is being paid to the systemic upskilling of farm workers and that agriculture stakeholders specifically are yet to adequately transform themselves to meet the developmental needs of farm workers in the country.
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So we need to start looking at initiatives that, and this is where the central challenge essentially lies is that how do we ensure that the measures that we put in place are sustainable and effective in the long term?
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That it's not something that's going to drain already strained municipal finances, municipal capacity, but something that is sustainable, but also does not that's also sort of built around the principles of a just transition.
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So securing farm workers' livelihoods in the face of uh climate change.
00:25:45.039 --> 00:25:49.920
So a number of things does come to mind, one of them being things like redeployment.
00:25:50.000 --> 00:26:01.200
I know it's common within the coal sector, but starting to think around, and it's something that will need a lot more research, purely based off the fact that farm workers have low educational levels.
00:26:01.440 --> 00:26:08.160
So it might be an issue, but we don't know yet, or I don't know yet, rather, because I need to do further research on it.
00:26:08.319 --> 00:26:12.960
And can we redeploy farm workers into agro processing, for example?
00:26:13.200 --> 00:26:24.319
But then also at the same time, we need to make consideration that if climate change gets so bad that these farms close, we need to realize that farm workers are naturally going to also migrate.
00:26:24.480 --> 00:26:36.640
Um, so further research needs to be done in asking questions about what happens to these farm workers once they migrate, where do they go, where can they go to seek employment opportunities?
00:26:36.880 --> 00:26:57.680
So it's a thing of once again comes down to what I spoke about earlier of putting in economic opportunities, getting economic diversification, right, improving municipal and provincial infrastructure in these agri-dependent towns so that we can sort of secure our sort of response to climate change going forward.
00:26:57.839 --> 00:27:06.799
And that's one of the considerations that I'm going to sort of end with today is essentially these are not short-term plans, these are long-term things.
00:27:07.039 --> 00:27:16.000
These are things we need to prepare for now so that we can kind of prevent the worst from happening in 10, 20 years time.
00:27:16.160 --> 00:27:23.039
Because as we see with the earlier deep dive done by Corner on climate change, we see that these impacts are only getting worse.
00:27:23.200 --> 00:27:28.480
So we need to put measures in place, not only for today and tomorrow, but also for years to come.
00:27:28.640 --> 00:27:31.039
Hence why I said it needs to be sustainable.
00:27:31.279 --> 00:27:51.680
We also can't just put or suggest economic diversification options like agritourism, for example, just because they need to be context-specific and we need to be careful in terms of of what proposals we make in going forward and improving climate adaptation within these communities.
00:27:52.079 --> 00:27:53.519
Thank you, Michael.
00:27:53.920 --> 00:27:55.359
Over to you, Julian.
00:27:56.079 --> 00:27:56.880
Thanks, Tabani.
00:27:57.359 --> 00:28:07.680
So I just want to say vulnerabilities really are a combination of climate change and the broader macroeconomic issues that we're currently facing in South Africa.
00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:09.359
I just want to speak, for example.
00:28:09.519 --> 00:28:15.279
So let's say we expose farmers to some of the technology and innovation, and they really want to adopt.
00:28:15.440 --> 00:28:23.359
But what we do see is they are facing deep financial constraints, and so we need to close this affordability gap.
00:28:23.599 --> 00:28:36.160
So I do think it's important for further investigation just to try and see where the finance is for smart climate agriculture and how small-scale farmers can access this.
00:28:36.319 --> 00:28:52.240
And then, secondly, just looking at some of the floods that have recently occurred in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape, once farmers said they had implemented soil conservation innovation, they had put the silt fences and they had trench beds.
00:28:52.480 --> 00:29:02.160
But just because of poor drainage and just the aging infrastructure, it resulted in the dams bursting and flooding some of their farms.
00:29:02.319 --> 00:29:08.400
And so we see it's very necessary also just for the maintenance of critical infrastructure.
00:29:08.640 --> 00:29:13.759
And then lastly, what we really do see is we are in a precarious situation.
00:29:13.920 --> 00:29:17.119
I'll just use the example of the avian flu.
00:29:17.440 --> 00:29:22.480
With shifting climate change, it also affects the migratory bird routes.
00:29:22.640 --> 00:29:27.200
And so this just really further complicates vaccination scheduling.
00:29:27.359 --> 00:29:37.279
And so what we do need to see, you know, is just a collaboration of climate change data, animal health data, and geospatial data coming together.
00:29:37.519 --> 00:29:38.400
Thank you.
00:29:39.039 --> 00:29:46.160
A huge thank you to our guests for sharing their expertise and time with us, and also for attending this training.
00:29:46.319 --> 00:29:52.400
We hope you will continue to champion the mandate of greening the economy in a just and equitable way.
00:29:52.720 --> 00:29:55.519
And to our listeners, your support means the world.
00:29:55.599 --> 00:30:00.079
Thank you for joining the Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies official podcast.
00:30:00.319 --> 00:30:07.359
Remember, sustainable growth is not just a goal, but a path to a more resilient and prosperous future.
00:30:07.599 --> 00:30:13.519
Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and connect with us on YouTube, Apple, and Spotify.
00:30:13.759 --> 00:30:17.200
Until next time, I'm Tobanike signing off.
00:00:05.679 --> 00:00:16.480
Welcome to the Trade and Industrial Policy Strategies official podcast, Tips Talk, the show where we delve into the fascinating world of economics and its impact on global development.
00:00:17.920 --> 00:00:29.199
Please note that the following podcast is not based on personal opinions, but it is research findings that each economist is reiterating for purposes of disseminating research.
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The conversation is based on the following publications that you can download on our TIPS website.
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Publication one Farm Labor and Climate Change in South Africa, assessing the role of active labor market policies.
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Publication two, identifying and evaluating measures to decarbonizing the mining value chain.
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This publication sources data from the emergency disaster database.
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Publication three, Diffusion of Climate Change Technology, Innovation and Practices for Small Scale Farmers in South Africa.
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Today I have three lovely guests who are also my colleagues.
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My name is Tobani Kay.
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I would like to ask our three guests to introduce themselves.
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Hello, my name is Akona Mia.
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I am an economist under sustainable development at TIPS.
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Hi there.
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I'm Dr.
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Michael Hector.
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I'm an economist in sustainable development at TIPS.
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Hello, I'm Julian Chigomira, and I'm a senior economist in the inclusive trade and industrial policy pillar.
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In this podcast, as it features guests who performed deep dives from the research gap stemming from the NIVA and SJRPs, I would like each one of them to actually give us a summary of the research that they did.
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Can I please start with you, Akon?
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My research was on evaluating focused accuracy, uh, infrastructure reliability as it pertains to the predictiveness of extreme weather events in South Africa and whether there's a focus to action gap, given that uh focus skill alone is not enough, and we needed to ascertain whether it can translate into real-world outcomes or actions.
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Michael.
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So the deep dive that I did looked essentially at the role of active labor market policies in the context of climate change.
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What we found was that essentially because farm workers especially are so vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, we see there is a need to have sort of policies that are geared towards protecting the livelihoods of farm workers.
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So one of the questions that came up while doing the first study on the vulnerability assessment was to see what would active labor markets look like if they are geared towards protecting the livelihoods of farm workers.
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So this deep dive looked at the diffusion of climate change technology innovation and practices for small-skill farmers.
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And I think we've already seen that climate change has really intensified vulnerabilities.
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And so what it did was just look at across the provinces the number of small-skill farmers we have, the vulnerability, and also just summarizing the types of technologies to mitigate some of these vulnerabilities, the access and also the initiatives that are being taken by government and the private sector.
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All right.
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Thank you guys.
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So, Akona, this question is for you.
00:03:38.639 --> 00:03:42.879
What does the data tell us about climate impacts for South Africa?
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So, when you look at the data or the historical trends when it comes to climate change, so the data tells us that droughts affect the highest population volume, but floods account for the most fatalities and financial damage.
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And if you study the period between 2011 and 2025, you can see that we have had the highest escalation of climate variability, which saw more than 51% of all extreme events recorded since 2000.
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And if you look at the data also, you see that the coastal provinces which sit on the escarpment, if you look at the climatic regions in South Africa, like Hazel and Eastern Cape and Western Cape, are the ones that carry the most disproportionate share of high impact extreme events.
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And if you look at inland provinces, you see that they face the most extreme heat, drought, and wildfire risk.
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And we see with the data that we have consistently reported high forecast accuracy, but it does not really translate into decision making for the parties that are mostly affected by these climate events when and as they do happen.
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All right.
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When you talk about climate data challenges, what does that actually look like nationally?
00:05:03.279 --> 00:05:06.240
So when you talk about climate data challenges, right?
00:05:06.399 --> 00:05:12.000
So firstly you talk about the system that is feeding the observation, right?
00:05:12.079 --> 00:05:13.839
Like your radar availability.
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So if you look at the data, you can see that the radar availability is subsequently very low, right?
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Then if you look at national level and you talk about the problem and what does it look like, right?
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You talk about the situation where climate data exists, as in the focus are being issued, right?
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But it's the issue of who has access to them and in what form or in terms of the level of granularity and what is the level of detail.
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So a central issue if you look at the data is the commercialization of high resolution data, right?
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High resolution is when you look at specialities like local municipalities instead of district municipalities.
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And then the more granular and decision-ready data sets are a premium product.
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That means that, for instance, for large-scale commercial farmers who have the financial resources to buy that type of data and have the financial muscle, they can buy the data, and then you have smallholder farmers who necessarily have to rely on the generalized focus for their decision making.
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You see that in the literature, authors like Chisazza 2020 and Core, they do talk about a situation where seasonal focus are only useful when they are localized and interpretable, which is not often the case for small users.
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So beyond commercialization, there's an issue of a digital divide where the people that are in the rural areas who don't have network connectivity cannot get the focus in time that necessitates uh proper decision making.
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And then there's the usability constraints, right?
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Some people do see the heat maps or this way with whether as it becomes presented on TV, but they cannot sort of comprehend what is being said, right?
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So nationally, the issue is not about whether the climate data focus exists, it's about climate data inequality where there's a two-tier adaptation, where the ones that have the financial muscles to afford the focus can buy them, the more granular ones, and then the smallholder farmers or more general public cannot afford that, which speaks to their planting decisions like for smallholder farmers, for agriculture, and for uh sectors like tourism.
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All right, thank you, Arkon.
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I want to go to Michael and ask him how does climate change translate into jobs and livelihood issues in agriculture?
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To essentially just speaking back of what Akona was saying, and I find it interesting that she mentions Eastern Cape and Western Cape, if I understand that correctly, as being sort of vulnerable regions when we look at the sort of climate data and the impact of climate change.
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Noticeably, when we look at agriculture, the Eastern Cape and Western Cape are also key agri regions for the country and including KwaZulu-Natal as well.
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They're important for agriculture in the country, and then most notably what we saw during the recent floods in and around May, we saw heavy impacts on our sort of key exports like citrus and wine.
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Now, as Akona mentioned, and this is what we found in the vulnerability assessment as well, your commercial farmers are able to afford to adapt to climate change.
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They're able to recover, obviously, at a cost to damages that occur to heavy floods, droughts, wildfires, et cetera.
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But a very big impact, and Jillian will speak to that in a bit, a heavier impact we do notice in the research is on small-scale farmers who are unable to adapt, who are unable to afford the technologies, and are often unable to transition or to fix the damages that were done due to floods or drought.
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But important for the research that I was doing on the vulnerability of farm workers, we see specifically once these sort of climate events happen, droughts, floods, et cetera, we see a sort of twofold impact on their livelihoods, right?
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So the first one is the natural one, which is essentially the productivity link there, where we see floods, droughts, wildfires, et cetera, tend to reduce agricultural output and naturally also reduce labor productivity.
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Things like high temperatures, for example, pose health and safety risks for farm workers.
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And notably what we see in the vulnerability assessment is that on all scales, whether this be financial, social, we see farm workers fare worse off than other workers outside of agriculture.
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So farm workers have low savings, they have low skills, well, relative to former workers outside of agri, but then also low educational levels as well.
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And a lot of these workers are concentrated on what would be considered elementary jobs.
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So things like picking on citrus farms, for example.
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So all of these issues, once you combine them, are essentially exacerbated by climate change.
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And this results in a situation where if climate change gets so bad that farms need to either close down or reduce working hours of farm workers, these farm workers will find it very difficult to transition into alternative forms of work.
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And this is sort of even worse on the small-scale farms that do employ farm workers because of the lack of financial resources, they would naturally have to let people go, for example.
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And then we start asking questions around okay, what happens to those farm workers in the event that they do lose their jobs?
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And I'll get to that in a bit if the topic does come up.
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So if farm workers are so vulnerable, even just compared to other workers in other sectors, what are ways or options in protecting vulnerable workers?
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Yeah, so one of the ways in which we looked, so from the small-scale farmer perspective, there's obviously the technological adaptation, right?
00:11:07.360 --> 00:11:09.679
So putting adaptation measures in place.
00:11:09.919 --> 00:11:14.799
But these, especially from the technological change side, can also pose risks to farm workers.
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And something that I actually forgot to mention earlier.
00:11:18.080 --> 00:11:24.320
But when farms adapt technologies, it is often found that they reduce the need for certain skills.
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So you require a higher skilled farm labor, right?
00:11:27.840 --> 00:11:29.360
So that also poses a risk.
00:11:29.600 --> 00:11:48.240
And that was one of the things that posed the question for in the event that this does happen, when farms either have to close down or when farms have to adapt to climate change through the use of technology, et cetera, what measures can we put in place to sort of support the livelihoods of farm workers?
00:11:48.399 --> 00:11:56.720
And one of the, for lack of a better word, one of the most obvious options that we looked at, and I'm sure there are other options as well.
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This was just the one that stood out the most was active labor market policies, right?
00:12:01.440 --> 00:12:17.360
So essentially, for the listeners who don't know what active labor market policies are, the whole purpose of them is to essentially mitigate short-term joblessness and prevent long-term retrenchments or prevent temporary shocks from turning into long-term unemployment.
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That is the theoretical foundation of it.
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South Africa has a long historical legacy of it.
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But because of our sort of high level of unemployment in the country, it makes it very difficult because economic diversification, economic opportunities need to be present, especially within farm towns, for active labor market policies to see some level of success.
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So one of the things that we looked at, and one of the questions in this research was we know that active labor market policies are not sort of the silver bullet that's going to solve employment problems.
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So we need to couple that with economic diversification.
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And then we started asking, what would this look like in the context of climate change?
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And we saw there is a need, and I won't go into too much detail, but the paper does detail sort of a three-tiered or three-dimensional system.
00:13:08.320 --> 00:13:14.399
But essentially, what we started looking at was asking questions around what if workers do not have the skills?
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What if workers do not have the physical ability?
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What if they're going to retire?
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So we realized that you need a sort of combination of tools to secure farm worker livelihoods.
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So specifically things like skills development.
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In the event that workers aren't able to transition into other forms of work, they might be at a retiring age or they might be disabled, etc.
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You will have to then also implement social protection policies, income protection, those sort of things.
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And all of this really just stems from that these farm workers already have low levels of social protection.
00:13:51.600 --> 00:14:04.799
So it's kind of a combination of developing skills, coming to the realization that active labor market policies alone cannot succeed in the absence where there is no genuine economic opportunities.
00:14:04.960 --> 00:14:24.639
So it's about providing farm workers with the skills, but then also looking at it from a municipal or provincial level and looking at improving infrastructure, improving economic opportunities around those farm areas so that they are not completely dependent on agriculture in the event that climate change does get worse.
00:14:24.720 --> 00:14:33.600
Because we have to remember that these studies were done in the context of not today, but climate change in five or ten years, right?
00:14:33.919 --> 00:14:36.080
Um so what would it look like essentially?
00:14:36.240 --> 00:14:39.279
And then kind of looking at it from a worst case scenario.
00:14:39.440 --> 00:14:44.879
What do we have in place now and what do we need to essentially prepare ourselves going forward?
00:14:45.120 --> 00:14:55.679
So there are a number of things that the SGRPs specifically highlight on what we can start laying the groundwork for now, especially when it comes to small-scale farmers.
00:14:56.320 --> 00:15:09.840
Jillian, I feel like you're the one suitable to speak on how can or how do small-scale farmers experience climate change and they just transition differently to large-scale farmers.
00:15:10.559 --> 00:15:11.440
Thanks, Tabani.
00:15:11.600 --> 00:15:13.519
So just building up on what Dr.
00:15:13.600 --> 00:15:29.360
Michael said, I think last week and last month we've seen the effects of heavy rains in the Eastern Cape and Western Cape and the floods that have devastated, you know, vineyards, orchards, cropland, and some of them have been completely decimated.
00:15:29.840 --> 00:15:35.679
And my colleague Ako now articulates some of these historic weather patterns in her paper.
00:15:35.919 --> 00:15:42.799
So what we do see is climate change has really intensified vulnerability for all farmers.
00:15:43.039 --> 00:15:47.440
However, the impact and response may be experienced quite differently.
00:15:47.679 --> 00:15:58.000
So for example, large-scale farmers have access to industry networks, government programs, and finance, and they are able to adopt technology better.
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I mean, if we're looking at technology of high-to-advanced, for example, smart irrigation and soil moisture enhancers, your large-scale farmers are much more able to kind of adopt and utilize and purchase these.
00:16:11.279 --> 00:16:17.279
Whereas when we look at small-scale farmers, there really is a disproportionate burden.
00:16:17.440 --> 00:16:27.279
They still face barriers, they have fewer assets and limited access to formal credit to kind of buy some of these technologies and utilize it.
00:16:27.440 --> 00:16:38.799
And so what we do see if we're looking at small-scale farmers across South Africa by provinces, you know, they're more pronounced in KZN, in Limpopo, and the Eastern Cape.
00:16:38.960 --> 00:16:42.000
And so, you know, these vulnerabilities really differ.
00:16:42.159 --> 00:16:43.279
They really struggle.
00:16:43.360 --> 00:16:52.799
For example, if we look at small-scale farmers who are mainly producing for consumption, their vulnerabilities are largely linked to food insecurity.
00:16:53.039 --> 00:17:00.159
If we also look at small-scale farmers who mainly produce for sale, they do face risks such as loss of income.
00:17:00.399 --> 00:17:04.079
They're not able to reinvest into their productive systems.
00:17:04.240 --> 00:17:11.920
Now, if we just look at small-scale farmers and what they produce, let's just look at what's happening with the intensive heat.
00:17:12.079 --> 00:17:24.640
You know, their animals will face heat stress, the spread of diseases, the high mortality rates of livestock, and you know, they may not have access to vaccines as much as the large-scale farmers have.
00:17:24.880 --> 00:17:28.480
And then let's just look at the impacts of prolonged droughts.
00:17:28.640 --> 00:17:31.359
These reduce the availability of grazing land.
00:17:31.519 --> 00:17:46.319
And so naturally what you would have is, you know, as people seek grazing lands, as animals move, it also increases the reliance on alternative feeds and also just exposing them to diseases, especially foot and mouth.
00:17:46.480 --> 00:17:59.279
And so if we just look at small-scale farmers, for example, in horticulture or those planting crops, you know, with the excessive temperatures there, they may literally lose some of their crops and declined yields.
00:17:59.440 --> 00:18:10.799
And so you do see a distinction there between just some of the impact on both of them, but overly, I would say climate change really is affecting the sector holistically.
00:18:11.359 --> 00:18:11.759
All right.
00:18:11.920 --> 00:18:12.559
I see.
00:18:12.799 --> 00:18:21.039
How can the public and private sectors collaborate to create pathways that supports greater adoption and uptake of climate-related technologies?
00:18:22.160 --> 00:18:23.200
Thanks, Tabani.
00:18:23.519 --> 00:18:31.519
So I think firstly, we do need to strengthen our gaps on data for small-scale farmers for targeted policy interventions.
00:18:31.759 --> 00:18:38.319
Currently, we do have the DSI HSRC Agribusiness Innovation Survey.
00:18:38.480 --> 00:18:47.440
And so I think we can leverage from some of these existing survey infrastructure and just include some of the small-scale farmers in it as well.
00:18:47.680 --> 00:19:00.799
And then I'm secondly, I think it's very important, you know, we expand extension offices through public-private partnerships and just standardizing some of this training towards climate smart agriculture.
00:19:00.960 --> 00:19:28.319
And I think thirdly, it's very important for collaborations, you know, on access to climate finance and just looking at subsidizing some of these memberships into industry organizations for small-scale farmers and just apportioning some of the business trust and statutory levy funds for technology for small-scale farmers, and just developing some accessible credit and grants and blended finance products.
00:19:28.480 --> 00:19:39.440
And I think lastly, you know, we just want to look at scaling up demonstration plots and just leveraging routine farmer interactions with people they see on an everyday basis.
00:19:39.599 --> 00:19:51.839
So we're speaking of, you know, informing agro dealers, your tractor service providers, your input suppliers and financiers, just to help bridge some of this gap on diffusion to small-scale farmers.
00:19:52.480 --> 00:19:54.000
Thank you so much, Jillian.
00:19:54.400 --> 00:20:05.519
I've heard about vulnerabilities of workers, I've heard about buying data, I've heard about commercial farmers and small-scale farmers, the inequalities that exist there.
00:20:05.680 --> 00:20:17.920
Can you just each give key points or closing remarks and also just maybe recommend the way forward in your respective research that you conducted?
00:20:18.400 --> 00:20:30.240
For me, I would say that South Africa does not have failure of forecasting science, but it has a failure of infrastructural stability, regional coverage, and institutional coordination.
00:20:30.559 --> 00:20:38.559
So, in order to sort of make sure that when the forecasts are issued, they can reach the people in the time that they need to reach the people.
00:20:38.640 --> 00:20:41.920
So we are fixing the observation to warning chain, right?
00:20:42.160 --> 00:20:58.319
That would mean that institutions like agricultural research institutions, disaster management authorities, municipalities and agencies that are involved with forecasting weather must coordinate instead of operating in silos, right?
00:20:58.559 --> 00:21:16.640
So for me, I feel like integrating these data sets and having a data interoperability system would improve both the analytical quality and the speed of hazard interpretation, particularly for first developing localized events like thunderstorms and flashlights.
00:21:17.200 --> 00:21:33.680
And building interoperable systems through common standards, shared platforms, and coordinated governance would also improve the data assimilation or what you put into the forecast models, and it would reduce inconsistencies across the data sets.
00:21:33.759 --> 00:21:41.440
It would enable faster and more accurate early warning systems, and it would then support cross sector decision making.
00:21:41.680 --> 00:21:48.240
But also, I think it's important to mention that yes, the forecast issued, but forecasts are not equal to safety.
00:21:48.400 --> 00:21:59.039
There's a deeper structural vulnerability that exists in South Africa, particularly pertaining to the history of the country in terms of the inequalities that exist, right?
00:21:59.279 --> 00:21:59.759
So for instance.
00:22:00.400 --> 00:22:09.039
If you see on the 2nd of June, there were warnings that were issued across the central, eastern, and western parts of the country, right?
00:22:09.119 --> 00:22:22.000
But you cannot tell someone from a poor background or someone that lives in informal areas that they must heed a warning from the whatever agency that has issued the warning because they have to go out and make an income.
00:22:22.160 --> 00:22:25.200
And then also if you look at remote areas, right?
00:22:25.440 --> 00:22:28.640
For remote areas, you could potentially do what Bangladesh does.
00:22:28.799 --> 00:22:43.839
So Bangladesh has more than 70,000 volunteers that are based in the most vulnerable areas that receive alerts through megaphones and then they go around the villages telling people that are going to be affected that this is an alert that has been issued.
00:22:44.079 --> 00:22:53.119
So for South Africa, something that could happen is that we could also sort of take that approach and/or make the youth climate change activists, right?
00:22:53.440 --> 00:22:55.839
But also you cannot blame forcasters.
00:22:56.000 --> 00:23:00.240
They do the job, they do what they need to do, which is issuing out focus, right?
00:23:00.400 --> 00:23:04.160
But there's a deeper structural problem in terms of municipalities.
00:23:04.319 --> 00:23:15.359
There's weak upkeep of the infrastructure that exists within municipalities like stormwater drainage systems, which means that an event like flooding needs proper stormwater drainage systems.
00:23:15.440 --> 00:23:31.359
So if that is not maintained, or if as a municipality, as you see that people are getting affected in the same way by flooding each and every year, each and every time that it occurs, then why are you not investing the resources that you would need to invest into stormwater drainage systems?
00:23:31.680 --> 00:23:38.079
So again, I would like to emphasize we don't have a focused skill problem where the science is not working.
00:23:38.160 --> 00:23:43.680
The science is working because it's according to the global standard that it needs to be according to.
00:23:43.839 --> 00:23:59.039
But also I think there is a deeper structural problem where we are not only facing climate fragility, but we are also facing municipal infrastructure fragility, which needs to be addressed by people who can make those decisions and who have the power to make the decisions.
00:24:00.640 --> 00:24:01.279
All right.
00:24:01.839 --> 00:24:05.519
I hope the municipalities all over the country heard that.
00:24:05.839 --> 00:24:07.599
Can I move on to Michael?
00:24:08.400 --> 00:24:27.920
Yeah, so for me, a key takeaway from this research that I did on active labor market policies and farm workers is essentially that skills and livelihood development is integral to improving the livelihoods of farm workers and their ability to adapt to climate change.
00:24:28.240 --> 00:24:30.799
We see various initiatives at an industry level.
00:24:31.039 --> 00:24:33.839
We've got AgriCETA, we've got CASP, etc.
00:24:34.240 --> 00:24:42.960
But if you look at these sort of initiatives, they were not inherently developed to improve farm worker livelihoods, right?
00:24:43.200 --> 00:24:51.599
And although we do see some provincial level initiatives, for example, the one that I'm aware of is the Western Cape Farm Worker Development Program, right?
00:24:51.839 --> 00:25:11.119
But existing research continues to show that limited attention is being paid to the systemic upskilling of farm workers and that agriculture stakeholders specifically are yet to adequately transform themselves to meet the developmental needs of farm workers in the country.
00:25:11.359 --> 00:25:24.160
So we need to start looking at initiatives that, and this is where the central challenge essentially lies is that how do we ensure that the measures that we put in place are sustainable and effective in the long term?
00:25:24.319 --> 00:25:40.079
That it's not something that's going to drain already strained municipal finances, municipal capacity, but something that is sustainable, but also does not that's also sort of built around the principles of a just transition.
00:25:40.160 --> 00:25:44.880
So securing farm workers' livelihoods in the face of uh climate change.
00:25:45.039 --> 00:25:49.920
So a number of things does come to mind, one of them being things like redeployment.
00:25:50.000 --> 00:26:01.200
I know it's common within the coal sector, but starting to think around, and it's something that will need a lot more research, purely based off the fact that farm workers have low educational levels.
00:26:01.440 --> 00:26:08.160
So it might be an issue, but we don't know yet, or I don't know yet, rather, because I need to do further research on it.
00:26:08.319 --> 00:26:12.960
And can we redeploy farm workers into agro processing, for example?
00:26:13.200 --> 00:26:24.319
But then also at the same time, we need to make consideration that if climate change gets so bad that these farms close, we need to realize that farm workers are naturally going to also migrate.
00:26:24.480 --> 00:26:36.640
Um, so further research needs to be done in asking questions about what happens to these farm workers once they migrate, where do they go, where can they go to seek employment opportunities?
00:26:36.880 --> 00:26:57.680
So it's a thing of once again comes down to what I spoke about earlier of putting in economic opportunities, getting economic diversification, right, improving municipal and provincial infrastructure in these agri-dependent towns so that we can sort of secure our sort of response to climate change going forward.
00:26:57.839 --> 00:27:06.799
And that's one of the considerations that I'm going to sort of end with today is essentially these are not short-term plans, these are long-term things.
00:27:07.039 --> 00:27:16.000
These are things we need to prepare for now so that we can kind of prevent the worst from happening in 10, 20 years time.
00:27:16.160 --> 00:27:23.039
Because as we see with the earlier deep dive done by Corner on climate change, we see that these impacts are only getting worse.
00:27:23.200 --> 00:27:28.480
So we need to put measures in place, not only for today and tomorrow, but also for years to come.
00:27:28.640 --> 00:27:31.039
Hence why I said it needs to be sustainable.
00:27:31.279 --> 00:27:51.680
We also can't just put or suggest economic diversification options like agritourism, for example, just because they need to be context-specific and we need to be careful in terms of of what proposals we make in going forward and improving climate adaptation within these communities.
00:27:52.079 --> 00:27:53.519
Thank you, Michael.
00:27:53.920 --> 00:27:55.359
Over to you, Julian.
00:27:56.079 --> 00:27:56.880
Thanks, Tabani.
00:27:57.359 --> 00:28:07.680
So I just want to say vulnerabilities really are a combination of climate change and the broader macroeconomic issues that we're currently facing in South Africa.
00:28:07.920 --> 00:28:09.359
I just want to speak, for example.
00:28:09.519 --> 00:28:15.279
So let's say we expose farmers to some of the technology and innovation, and they really want to adopt.
00:28:15.440 --> 00:28:23.359
But what we do see is they are facing deep financial constraints, and so we need to close this affordability gap.
00:28:23.599 --> 00:28:36.160
So I do think it's important for further investigation just to try and see where the finance is for smart climate agriculture and how small-scale farmers can access this.
00:28:36.319 --> 00:28:52.240
And then, secondly, just looking at some of the floods that have recently occurred in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape, once farmers said they had implemented soil conservation innovation, they had put the silt fences and they had trench beds.
00:28:52.480 --> 00:29:02.160
But just because of poor drainage and just the aging infrastructure, it resulted in the dams bursting and flooding some of their farms.
00:29:02.319 --> 00:29:08.400
And so we see it's very necessary also just for the maintenance of critical infrastructure.
00:29:08.640 --> 00:29:13.759
And then lastly, what we really do see is we are in a precarious situation.
00:29:13.920 --> 00:29:17.119
I'll just use the example of the avian flu.
00:29:17.440 --> 00:29:22.480
With shifting climate change, it also affects the migratory bird routes.
00:29:22.640 --> 00:29:27.200
And so this just really further complicates vaccination scheduling.
00:29:27.359 --> 00:29:37.279
And so what we do need to see, you know, is just a collaboration of climate change data, animal health data, and geospatial data coming together.
00:29:37.519 --> 00:29:38.400
Thank you.
00:29:39.039 --> 00:29:46.160
A huge thank you to our guests for sharing their expertise and time with us, and also for attending this training.
00:29:46.319 --> 00:29:52.400
We hope you will continue to champion the mandate of greening the economy in a just and equitable way.
00:29:52.720 --> 00:29:55.519
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00:29:55.599 --> 00:30:00.079
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00:30:00.319 --> 00:30:07.359
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00:30:07.599 --> 00:30:13.519
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00:30:13.759 --> 00:30:17.200
Until next time, I'm Tobanike signing off.
