African Climate & Development Initiative

Who we are:

The African Climate & Development Initiative (ACDI) is UCT’s active response to the climate change and development challenge. The ACDI was set up in 2011 by the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Vice-Chancellor Max Price as one of four strategic initiatives, each contributing to UCT’s mission to tackle key issues in the social and natural worlds. It is also one of the Vice-Chancellor’s

signature themes; these themes are chosen to drive research in a strategic manner, and are grounded in existing areas of internationally-recognized excellence at UCT , whilst being aligned to institutional, regional and national priorities. Uniquely, the ACDI merges climate change issues with development issues, bringing together UCT’s breadth and depth of research and teaching in these areas, which previously were conducted largely in isolation within a variety of departments and research centres. The need for ACDI:
The problems of responding to the challenge of climate change and also achieving sustainable forms of development are of high priority to the global agenda. The African continent in particular is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change and climate variability: some of the key impacts that are predicted under climate change are decreases in water availability over large areas of the continent, reduced agricultural production and food security, increased social and economic costs of extreme weather events, sea level rise and coastal flooding. If Africa follows a high carbon development path, this would cause between 1 and 3 degrees of global warming additional to that resulting from emissions from the rest of the world, and for the African continent specifically it would cause between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees of additional warming. Africa’s major economic sectors are already vulnerable to current climate variability, with huge economic impacts. This vulnerability is aggravated by existing developmental challenges such as: high levels of poverty and economic inequality; weak and/or ineffective governance systems; limited access to capital, markets, infrastructure and technology; increasing ecosystem degradation; and high rates of disasters and conflicts. These existing challenges will be greatly compounded under climate change, especially considering that Africa’s population of 1.1 billion is likely to more than double by mid-century, increasing to 2.4 billion in 2050, and potentially 4.2 billion by 2100.