A legal perspective on the development of a South African local government climate change mitigation waste management framework

Abstract

Climate change is a global phenomenon caused by human systems having negative impacts on nature, threatening continued human existence on earth. These impacts are caused by increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions into the atmosphere, to dangerous levels. Although the waste sector is not the biggest contributor to GHG emissions, it could significantly contribute to the reduction in GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, especially relating to carbon dioxide and methane concentrations. The international community has under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, 1992, the Kyoto Protocol, 1996 and the Paris Agreement, 2015 established mitigation mandates to reduce GHG emissions. States need to set targets and commitments to contribute to GHG reductions (nationally determined contributions), to keep the "increase in the global average temperature to well below 2oC above pre-industrial levels and to limit the temperature increase to 1,5oC above pre-industrial levels". Section 24 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 provides that the state must protect the environment and secure sustainable development by implementing reasonable legislative and policy measures. The South African environmental legislative landscape on national, provincial and municipal level is therefore analysed to establish compliance with the climate change mitigation mandate, with specific reference to the waste management sector. The eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality is the object of a case study to verify the implementation of the environmental legal framework in practice. The questions asked in this dissertation are addressed by way of a desktop theoretical analysis of what should be included in a comprehensive legal and policy framework that could be used as a tool to regulate, monitor and evaluate the compliance of South African local government with legislation in implementing climate change mitigation factors for the function of waste management. The legal

framework will be structured in a compliance tool for climate change mitigation implementation in the local government waste management sector.