Sustainability, Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation: Building from the Bottom Up – A South African Perspective from the Small-scale Fisheries Sector

This chapter explores the vulnerability context of coastal fishing communities, including the various factors that shape their capacity to cope with and adapt in the face of poverty and increasing threats associated with climate change and natural and human-induced disasters through the lens of small-scale fisheries (SSFs) in South Africa. South Africa has developed a suite of policies, strategies and laws to deal with commitments to sustainable development and address and manage climate change challenges and disaster risks. These national policies, however, are not well aligned or implemented in a coordinated and integrated manner. Nor are they attuned to the realities facing local communities. This chapter reports on work in coastal communities in South Africa that reveals the lack of policy alignment and limited coordination across government departments at all levels charged with oversight responsibilities for these endeavours. Findings suggest that incorporating local knowledge into local development and sector plans, as well as into sustainable development and sector-specific policies, strategies and plans at the national level, would enhance understanding of the realities on the ground and lead to policies, strategies and plans that are more harmonised and more likely to be supported and implemented. How this knowledge gets integrated both vertically and horizontally into formal government planning and decision-making processes, however, and leads to implementation of projects and plans that yield tangible results, remains a challenge.