News in a Flash (SA)

CITY OF CAPE TOWN - SEA LEVEL RISE REPORT
Following the 11th Hour Talk at which the City of Cape Town's Greg Oelofse made a presentation regarding a report done by the City titled "Coastal Climate Change and Adaptation - A Sea-Level Rise Risk Assessment for Cape Town", this report and other papers on the topic are now available for download on the City's website here. On the same topic, we found this Real Estate Web article article regarding insurance and coastal properties in the context of climate change and rising sea levels.

SA CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY
This Engineering News article informs us that SA's plans to release a 'draft(zero?) climate change policy will be put on hold until after Copenhagen (will possibly released for public comment in March 2010). It went on to say "The end-goal was still to have a White Paper on climate change drawn up by the end of 2010, Yawitch stated. This document would translate into a legislative, regulatory and fiscal package by 2012." In yet another Engineering News article titled 'Hopes for Ambitious Climate Agreement at Copenhagen Fade', SA's Environmental Affairs express their concern about what will be accomplished at Copenhagen. In this Engineering News article, our MInister of Energy confirms that SA will not be raising its renewable energy target of 10 000 GWh by 2013 and went on to indicate that funding will be used to help "South Africa move closer to its vision of generating four percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2013, improving energy efficiency by 12% by 2015, and providing one-million households with solar water heating over the next five years."

LATEST ENGINEERING NEWS UPDATE ON ESKOM SAGA
Here is the latest report on the Eskom Saga which also include an outline of how events have unfolded up to now.

WATER
Some 'water' for thought from Manual: "What course should we Africans pursue - Water for profit or as a right?"..."..we need also to remind ourselves that we're living on earth in 2009 with the same amount of water that was available in 1900, while in the meantime the global population has quadrupled..." Source: Engineering News. In this Engineering News article we are informed that the AFrican Development Bank has developed a 'business plan' for climate change in Africa pointing out that two key focus areas are: agricultural water development and water storage enhancement. With that thought, we look at another interesting article on Reuters.com which again highlights the tremendous interest big foreign companies have in African soil - is it all in aid of Africa and its inhabitants?