ABSTRACT
The Long-Term Mitigation Scenarios (LTMS) for South Africa showed that the impacts of climate change on South Africa and globally necessitate a series of drastic climate change mitigation policy interventions, to move the economy along a low-carbon path that stabilises levels of greenhouse gases (GHG) and avoids dangerous climate change (Winkler 2007). The LTMS served to identify those sectors that are emissions-‘heavy’, together with the ‘large wedges’ of mitigation activities. While the LTMS did not attempt to address the spatial policy implications of where these ‘hotspot’ activities are located, by implication the big consumers of energy are industrial operations and residentially based activities, including mobility. With regard to the latter, the South African pattern follows international trends in terms of which cities are disproportionately high-carbon producers and consumers. UN-Habitat notes that, with more than 50 per cent of the world’s population living in cities across the globe, cities are now responsible for 75 per cent of world energy consumption. In addition, GHG emissions from cities comprise 50–60 per cent of total global emissions, a figure which increases to 80 per cent when emissions induced by urban consumption and production are taken into account (UN-Habitat 2010). Cities thus need to be at the forefront of climate change mitigation policy implementation.
