Funding priorities
Earth Stewardship
African Climate and Development Initiative
The abundance and wealth of Southern Africa's natural resources hold exceptional opportunities: the obligation to inspire with visions of a brighter future, coupled with responsible earth stewardship. The picturesque landscape of UCT itself, poised at the foot of Table Mountain, is a constant reminder of the university's role in being a guardian of our natural world. The African Climate and Development Initiative (ACDI) is a response to this call and seeks to engage with climate variability and global change from an African perspective. It aims to draw on, and coordinate the University's current resources, partnerships and intellectual capital across a wide range of disciplines. In doing so, it shares the perspective of three lenses: cutting-edge research, teaching at postgraduate level, and public awareness.
Chair in Energy and Climate Change Policy
Climate change is the single greatest threat facing our planet and the future of humanity may well depend on the urgency and intensity of our response. The combination of environmental, economic and social challenges urgently poses the question: what mitigation actions can South Africa undertake to address climate change? In South Africa, the human, intellectual and institutional capacity for stepping up climate change policy remains severely limited, particularly in the area of energy and climate change mitigation. The aim of establishing a Chair in Energy and Climate Policy is to build on the human capacity required to continue excellent technical analysis and to extend teaching in this area to grow a critical mass of dedicated researchers. The Chair will significantly enhance the capacity for independent research in support of international negotiations and climate action at the local, national and African scale. Open inter-disciplinary and collaborative spaces for priority research will provide a focus for energy and climate policy, by notably reducing its emissions from energy use and supply. The Chair and team will develop analytical tools required to meet the challenge of climate change mitigation appropriate to a Southern and African context, and strengthen UCT's international leadership position in research and policy.
Animal Demography Unit
The growing challenge, in our mission to save the planet, is our understanding of other animal species with whom we share the cycle of life. This unique but long misunderstood relationship is a central concern of the university's Animal Demography unit (ADU). Paying particular attention to the study of animal populations, especially population dynamics, the unit provides critical monitoring, analysis and dissemination of data services that raise the alarm on regional climate changes. ADU has established a database of 16 million digital biodiversity records describing the species, date, location and frequency, and a count of number of animals. South Africa's citizens are responsible for providing most of these data, through a series of Citizen Science projects such as the Bird Atlas, in which participants are trained to collect data according to a scientifically rigorous protocol. The analyses of these data are performed by specialist statisticians, who operate at the cutting edge of a new discipline: Statistical Ecology.
Now in its 20th year, the ADU started out as a project-oriented group. It has maintained and expanded this focus on citizen scientists, encouraging them to become ambassadors for biodiversity. The unit is fast becoming the leading centre of research expertise in Statistical Ecology in Africa, with 22 doctoral students since 2002. This impressive track record now poses a further challenge of maintaining the ADU's momentum through building an early warning system to monitor biodiversity trends in both space and time. The ADU also seeks to interpret these trends in terms of land-use and climate change: the leading drivers of change for the 21st century.