Publications

Decisions based on narrow set of market values of nature underpin the current global biodiversity crisis.  Many opportunities exist to embed the diverse values of nature into decision making for navigating towards more just and sustainable futures.

This insights brief presents key themes and recommendations that emerged from the SARA activities and discussions that were convened over the course of 2021 in order to explore ways of addressing barriers and unlocking key actions to transform food systems in southern Africa.

This report contextualises the actions of the Southern African Resilience Academy (SARA) in 2021, a year covering many pivotal events towards food systems transformation.

A 5 year review of the history and work of the CST.

To capture visions of nature-futures as imagined by youth from the Global South, the CST facilitated a series of online events in 2021 with youth organizations and networks operating in southern Africa.

This special report looks at Russia’s political, military and economic cooperation with Zambia and Tanzania. It also analyses the Soviet Union’s legacy, from which the Russian government and businesses can benefit in current relationships with African countries.

Use of the term “resilience” has grown rapidly over the past two decades and is currently something of a buzzword.

As part of the Inclusive Metabolism project, researchers and city officials from Cape Town, South Africa, and Kumasi, Ghana, shared their perspectives on how improving food systems can have wider socio- economic benefits for society, building resilience to shocks. Important approaches included adopting a food-water-energy nexus approach and embracing the value of informality to build resilience in city food systems.

This paper proceeds from the assumption that the ocean is a commons. The problem this paper seeks to address is the complex challenge of governing the ocean as a commons. Governance systems since the dawn of modernity have evolved to govern city-states nation-states and international relations. But the transformations to sustainability require governing interlinkages and interactions that have not previously existed across sectors, and scales with multiple actors.

Infrastructure is critical to Africa’s development and its ability to address poverty. Achieving Africa’s development aspirations hinges on ensuring equitable access, not only to basic infrastructure such as water and sanitation systems, new electricity lines, roads and storm water drainage; but also to enhanced access to telecommunications and modern agricultural technologies for food security.

A system in conflict can also be resistant to peacebuilding efforts, locked into dynamics that reinforce and reproduce causes of tensions. Resilience thinking and the science on transformations can help identify leverage points for change and inform on how to use shocks and disturbances to spur renewal and innovative thinking.

The development of local support networks and visible role models offers a promising entry point for supporting increased youth participation and systemic change in the food system.

This brief aims to clarify some of the key dimensions of the concept of equity.

Biological invasions arise from the human-mediated spread of organisms out of their native range to new areas of the world whether purposefully or accidentally.

Net-Map is an easy to use social network mapping tool that can be used to assist grass-roots educators develop place-based, action learning in spaces where traditional structures of support are weak or absent. This toolkit provides an introduction to the use of Net-Map as a learning support tool

The Anthropocene poses highly uncertain, high stakes futures (one always refers to multiple futures, because we influence the future through our choices and actions in the present, and multiple different futures are therefore always possible). Given the Anthropocene context, it becomes vitally important for communities, citizens, policymakers, leaders and individuals to have visions of positive, hopeful futures that can help guide our choices and actions towards creating more just and sustainable futures.

Essential services, like water and electricity, underpin modern life. Disruption in service delivery exposes critical inter-dependency, ranging from community level to the national economy.

A resilience building workshop was designed to enhance the resilience of essential service delivery in a sociotechnical systems context through ongoing formative resilience assessments. The workshop utilizes seven generic resilience building principles, derived from social-ecological systems, found to enhance the resilience of ecosystem services.

There is a growing body of experience feeding the design of and motivation for social innovation labs as spaces that can be used to enable transformation or change. Olsson et al. (2004) have described transformation as...

Regime shifts are sudden, long-lasting changes in the structure and function of social-ecological systems that may have profound effects on human economies and societies. Regime shifts have been documented in a variety [...]

Human actions have affected the earth’s climate and environment in ways that threaten the ecosystem services on which human well being depends. This has necessitated a dramatic change in human relationships [...]

The growing recognition of the intertwinedness of society and the environment is driving a reframing of the conventional divide between social and natural systems and has given rise to the study [...]

The State Capacity Research Project today released a new report, How One Word Can Change The Game:  A Case Study Of State Capture And The South African Social Security Agency [...]

This report looks at the resource implications of projected urbanization, and calls for substantial changes in urban form, governance and design. Coordinated by Mark Swilling and Blake Robinson of the [...]

A major new study on the country's emerging Shadow State by the State Capacity Research Project.  

By May 2015, the renewable energy independent power producer procurement (REIPPP) programme had approved 79 wind, solar and hydro projects and asked each of them to contribute towards local community [...]