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Social climate change impacts and sustainability innovation in Southern Africa and Northern South America (NISANSA)
The question of adequate social reactions to the consequences of climate change is one of the central challenges for the future. Western discourse on the impacts of climate change mainly focuses on the Global North and selected regions (Arctic, Pacific Island states). But what are the consequences of climate change in and for the countries and regions in the Global South? How do they address climate change and its consequences? What are the social implications for these regions, and what possibilities and potential exists to react to them? Which programs and institutional structures are used to address the impacts of climate change? Which practices of sustainable action emerge (sustainability innovation)? And what are the consequences for the Global North, Europe, and Germany?
In a group of seven subprojects, the interdisciplinary joint project between the Philipps-University of Marburg and the Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen has been investigating these questions in countries in Southern Africa (Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa) and northern South America (Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela) since July 2021.
Figure 1: Overall Project Management (For a larger view, please click on the figure)
Figure 2: Transversal Goals (For a larger view, please click on the figure)
Subproject 6) Sustainability innovation pathways in the adaptation to climate change impacts - Transregional knowledge combination and institutional dynamics (Cooperation partners: African Climate & Development Initiative, U Cape Town, Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change & Adaptive Land Management, Namibia)
Climate change-induced changes in the availability and security of water in Southern Africa require new innovative forms of approaches. Therefore, sustainability innovations gain momentum as they aim to promote forward-thinking adaptation processes to these consequences. These highly context-specific innovations form the core of this SP as they strive to normatively and sustainably change established, institutionalized social action practices. The overarching objective is to analyze comparatively the spatio-temporal dynamics of organizational and institutional transformation pathways in Namibia, South Africa, and Columbia, associated with the emergence and implementation of complex sustainability innovations. Processes and actors form the centre point of the three research questions:
(1) How is knowledge anchored in different cultural, socio-economic, and ecological knowledge domains, integrated and transferred across heterogeneous organizations, social and spatial scales in adaption processes
(2) How and in which ways are institutional dynamics shaped at local, regional, national, and 7 transboundary scales (e.g. multi-scalarity) to foster adaptive water governance systems?
(3) How do transnational networks (e.g. GWP SA, SASSCAL), international organizations, intermediary, and science-based organizations contribute to these processes?
Overall Project Leadership: Prof. Dr. Simone Strambach, Prof. Dr. Ernst Halbmayer and Prof. Dr. Jörn Ahrens (Gießen)
Coordination: Lena Büttner
Management Subproject (SP) 6: Prof. Dr. Simone Strambach
Scientific staff: Janek Riedel, M.Sc. & Stephen Momanyi, M. Sc.
Student Assistant: Hannah Spitzer
Term: 2021 – 2024
Promotion: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF); Förderlinie Regionalstudien