Plessis, Anél du --- "Climate Governance in South African Municipalities: Opportunities and Obstacles for Local Government" [2012] ELECD 726; in Richardson, J. Benjamin (ed), "Local Climate Change Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Local Climate Change Law

Editor(s): Richardson, J. Benjamin

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857937476

Section: Chapter 13

Section Title: Climate Governance in South African Municipalities: Opportunities and Obstacles for Local Government

Author(s): Plessis, Anél du

Number of pages: 36

Extract:

13. Climate governance in South African
municipalities: opportunities and
obstacles for local government
Anél du Plessis

1. INTRODUCTION
The parameters of any complexity, including that of climate change, are deter-
mined by context. How one understands its causes and impacts, how one
projects it and the lens through which one proposes any solutions to address it,
depend on text-based comprehension as well as one's understanding of vari-
ous other contextual factors. One of the contexts within which climate change
and governance should be understood is the territorial, in-country, domestic
context where `the nation-state' or `the government' as sovereign national
governor is required to or may want to design and implement plans, programs,
laws or policies directed at climate mitigation and adaptation.1 Generally,
neither the concept of the `nation-state' nor that of `government' is straight-
forward to understand. Government, for instance, is differently constituted
from one country to the next, and it often comprises of different related and/or
autonomous organs of the state with different degrees of public power, func-
tions and duties.2 Nevertheless, as this book suggests, it would be possible for
the purposes of research and knowledge generation within a national context
to focus on governance and climate change in relation to the level of govern-
ment closest to the people. In most countries this is known as local or munic-
ipal government.


1 Stephen H. Schneider and Michael D. Mastrandrea, `The Politics of Climate
Science' in Maxwell Boykoff (ed.), ...