Legal notice EU (project) How do spatial variation in inequality and quality of institutions interact to explain variation in subjective wellbeing in South Africa? The EU-AFD Research Facility on Inequalities will seek to answer this question in collaboration with the University of Cape Town (UCT).
Context
Despite several efforts to promote pro-poor growth, South Africa remains one of the most unequal countries in the world. While the country's colonial history and apartheid are known to have contributed to this inequality level, the nature and dynamics of its impact on society are yet to be fully understood.
Literature suggests that better institutions and lower level of inequality improve subjective wellbeing. However, evidence that examine how the interaction between these two variables explain variation in wellbeing is relatively scarce. This study will thus contribute to a deeper understanding of inequalities in South Africa.
This project is part of the call for research proposals “Advancing the inequality agenda through collaborative research: identifying the priorities for a global Team Europe approach on inequalities”, launched by the Strategic Committee of the Research Facility on Inequalities. It is coordinated by AFD and co-financed by the European Commission, AECID and ENABEL.
Objectives
This research project has two main objectives:
- Explore how variations in governance (such as audit outcomes) across South Africa's district municipalities explain the variation in the well-being of individuals.
- Investigate how the interaction between the variation in governance across local government municipalities and inequality among individuals explains variation in subjective well-being.
Method
To investigate the interactions between the quality of institutions and of the governance, the level of spatial inequality and the subjective wellbeing, researchers will use the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), a nationally representative survey of individuals across South Africa, which is repeated over five waves between 2008 and 2017. They will also use audit outcomes of local municipalities to proxy for the quality of governance.
Results
You will find below the research paper related to this project:
Contact
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Anda DAVID
Economist, scientific coordinator of the EU-AFD Facility on Inequalities
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Analyzing the employment effects of the “green economy” transition in South Africa
Completed
2023 - 2024
Within the framework of the ECOPRONAT research program, AFD has supported the development of methodologies to assess a country’s environmental sustainability. Among them is the ESGAP framework, a “dashboard” for monitoring the state of several components of the environment. Drawing on the cases of South Africa and Colombia, this research project also explored how ESGAP could help public decision-makers steer environmental policies.
Context
To prioritize their actions to conserve natural capital and assess their effectiveness, public actors need to monitor the state of the environment objectively. To do so, they must be able to rely on science-based reference values.
Developed with this in mind, the ESGAP (Environmental Sustainability Gap) is an innovative method for calculating indicators that assesses the distance between the state of a territory’s critical environmental functions (air or water quality, pollution, forest resources, fisheries, etc.) and their sustainability level.
For several years, AFD has supported research to test this tool in different contexts (New Caledonia, Kenya and Vietnam). With this new project, it sought to refine how ESGAP can reflect the state of biodiversity and serve as a guide for public policies to estimate and preserve the critical functions of the natural capital of a given country.
This project is part of the ECOPRONAT research program, which supported research aimed at improving the consideration of biodiversity and mainstreaming it into key economic sectors.
Objectives
Building on the lessons learned in other countries, the researchers implemented the ESGAP framework in Colombia and South Africa and tested its relevance in fostering dialogue on environmental public policies. To this end, University College London and the Basque Centre for Climate Change partnered with teams from Stellenbosch University (South Africa) and the National University of Colombia (UNAL).
The project had four objectives:
- Improving the ESGAP indicators related to biodiversity and the state of ecosystems that could be used by the Colombian and South African governments, and promoting the use of science-based targets by public authorities;
- Promoting reflection on strong sustainability in Colombia and South Africa through the ESGAP framework, by assessing whether the development of these countries lies within the safe operating space for humanity;
- Clarifying how the ESGAP framework aligns with, complements and adds value to other types of sustainability indicators that both governments already use;
- Beyond the research work, strengthening the capacity of partner countries to use the ESGAP framework, notably through training activities for postgraduate students and awareness-raising activities for policymakers.
Method
The ESGAP framework is based on a dashboard that provides information on changes in the state of 23 components of the environment. These components cover the 4 main categories of critical and essential environmental functions: resource provision, pollution reprocessing, biodiversity maintenance and human health.
Their state at a given point in time is compared with a value that science considers “sustainable” (i.e., compatible with the preservation of life and human activities). The difference between the two is the “environmental sustainability gap”: the wider the gap, the longer the path to environmental sustainability.
The scores for the 23 components are then aggregated to provide an overall picture of the state of the environment, scored out of 100. A score of 100/100 would be achieved if the indicators for all components matched the sustainability reference values.
Learn more about the ESGAP methodology
Results
The research project helped further develop the ESGAP tool by testing its relevance for countries where environmental data may be less accessible and data infrastructure less advanced. It also deepened reflection on how to operationalize the ESGAP framework, particularly its complementarity with other indicators.
In Colombia and South Africa, specific work was carried out to improve the indicators related to biodiversity maintenance because, although both countries had a regulatory framework and natural resource management in place, not all data – particularly on biodiversity – were always available.
In terms of capacity building, five students and early-career researchers – four of them women – took part in this research as part of their training. The results were also presented to the Colombian and South African public authorities.
At the end of the project, a webinar in the “Research Conversations” series presented the results of the articles to the scientific community.
South Africa’s overall environmental sustainability gap score is 42/100. Major challenges remain for indicators related to human health: CO2 emissions, ambient air pollution and microbiological water pollution. However, South Africa scores well on indicators related to biodiversity conservation, indoor air pollution, groundwater use and consumption of ozone-depleting substances.
Key institutional actors – the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) and the Ministry of Environment – welcomed the research findings at a seminar organized by the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) to present and discuss the results. The 60 or so participants discussed ways to integrate these results into national strategies (biodiversity strategy, nationally determined contribution and municipal climate plans); they also stressed the need for a formal collaborative process to adapt and operationalize the framework.
Colombia’s overall environmental sustainability gap score is 32/100, showing considerable room for improvement. Good scores are achieved in areas where the country has made international commitments and set clear targets, such as the consumption of ozone-depleting substances. However, the ESGAP framework highlights critical vulnerabilities that require urgent attention: exploitation of forest and fishery resources; CO2 emissions; surface water pollution; coastal ecosystem health; conservation of endemic biodiversity; and conservation of natural World Heritage sites.
In Colombia, the indicator was built from assessments carried out by the Ministry of Environment. The ESGAP framework could only be applied to 17 of its 23 components, highlighting major data availability issues in some areas (such as groundwater resources, monitoring of chemical pollution in terrestrial ecosystems and ecosystem health indicators).
A workshop with several ministries provided an opportunity to present and discuss the results, leading to exchanges on the quality of the data and reference values used, and on how to make better use of these results to formulate concrete public policy recommendations. A summary for decision-makers was written specifically for the Colombian case.
Going further
- Research paper: Assessing environmental sustainability in Colombia: Metrics and policy recommendations, Environmental and Sustainability Indicators n°27 (2025)
- Policy brief: Enhancing Environmental Sustainability Through the Environmental Sustainability Gap (ESGAP) Framework in Colombia (2024)
- Infographic: Assessing the state of the environment in Colombia: What can we learn from the ESGAP analysis
This research project deepened reflection on how to operationalize the ESGAP framework, particularly its complementarity with other international indicator frameworks.
- The limitations of the SDG framework
The research team showed that the framework for monitoring progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly the environmental ones, does not ensure that progress toward environmental sustainability is properly measured: most indicators do not refer to critical environmental functions, and only a minority come with sustainability reference values.
Read the research paper: The SDGs Provide Limited Evidence That Environmental Policies Are Delivering Multiple Ecological and Social Benefits, Earth’s Future, vol. 12 (May 2024)
- The potential of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA)
The team recommends that public decision-makers make better use of the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA). Although recommended by the United Nations, it has so far been little used to monitor progress toward the SDGs or the Global Biodiversity Framework. The solution would be to integrate science-based sustainability reference values (such as those of the ESGAP framework) into the SEEA ecosystem accounts. This would make it possible to quantify gaps relative to ecological thresholds and thus make the SEEA more useful for monitoring progress toward the SDG sustainability targets or biodiversity targets.
Read the policy brief: Mobilizing strong sustainability indicators to achieve global durability goals
Read the research paper: Strong sustainability in the SEEA and the wider indicator landscape, One Ecosystem (May 2025)
Lessons learned
The ESGAP framework is a replicable tool for monitoring a country’s environmental sustainability and can inform public decision-makers about the action needed. Complementary to other indicators, it underscores the importance of science-based sustainability reference values for properly assessing the effectiveness of environmental public policies.
The ESGAP approach is recent but is gaining scientific legitimacy. It is currently considered to produce the most credible strong sustainability development indicators (Neumayer, 2025). It has also been cited as a methodology particularly well suited to assessing national policy frameworks for environmental sustainability (by WWF) and to assessing nature-related financial risks (by the NGFS).
While other research has developed the ESGAP approach in several developed countries (notably in Europe and Japan), the research supported by AFD through the ECOPRONAT program has shown that the ESGAP analytical framework can be adapted to countries of the Global South (Kenya, Vietnam, Colombia and South Africa). It thus provides an innovative and meaningful overview of the degree of environmental sustainability in a country.
As not all the data needed for the ESGAP analysis are systematically available, indicators adapted to each country can be developed. The downside is that countries cannot be compared with one another. AFD will launch new research to propose a standardized ESGAP framework that will allow countries’ environmental performance to be compared. This would be a kind of Human Development Index (HDI), but for nature.
In countries of the Global South, the picture of environmental sustainability is often incomplete because the data may be:
- Missing: there are blind spots in the environmental statistics system;
- Available but hard to access (not compiled, scattered, not public, etc.), so they cannot feed into the dashboard needed by public authorities, researchers or the general public;
- Available and accessible, but without a science-based sustainability reference value, which prevents a rigorous assessment of the sustainability of these functions.
Conducting an ESGAP analysis therefore reveals blind spots in some countries’ monitoring of the state of the environment and, consequently, in their assessment of the effectiveness of environmental public policies. This can help a country identify concrete actions to ensure that knowledge is available and accessible to guide action on biodiversity (Target 21 of the Global Biodiversity Framework). More broadly, investing in better environmental data collection systems is essential to accurately assess the state of the environment and the effectiveness of the policies implemented, thereby supporting better decision-making
Testing ESGAP in Colombia and South Africa also made it possible to assess its usefulness in initiating dialogue on environmental policies. The results were discussed between researchers and public decision-makers, and public policy recommendations were formulated for both countries. These discussions showed that, even though the ESGAP analysis is partial due to the lack of data, it can help integrate biodiversity into decision-making (Target 14 of the Global Biodiversity Framework).
The project demonstrated how ESGAP complements other indicators. In particular, it can be integrated into the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) recommended by the United Nations, and it can improve the monitoring framework for the SDGs and the Global Biodiversity Framework.
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Contact
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Oskar LECUYER
Economist
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Julien CALAS
Research Officer on Biodiversity
The ECOPRONAT programme explores the levers for mainstreaming biodiversity into different economic sectors. As part of this research programme, AFD is working with the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) to connect agricultural and ecosystem conservation issues in an innovative way, by studying the business models of wildlife ranches as well as the levers for developing wildlife economy.
Context
South Africa’s Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development assists persons (or their descendants) who were excluded the formal agriculture economy on the basis of their skin colour, and who have recently begun to engage in farming with the support and assistance of the State. This broad policy is implemented through the Land Reform Programme, where Recapitalisation and Development funding (Recap) is used to help land reform beneficiaries establish viable enterprises. However, this programme remains focused on traditional models of crop and livestock systems.
The consortium of researchers assembled by the South African National Bioinformatics Institute (SANBI) argues that the Land Reform Programme would benefit from integrating the ecosystem services paradigm to help reduce inequality and understand the benefits of land transfer more holistically (Clements et al. 2021). This research consortium is working to integrate wildlife economy enterprise development within the Recap scope of investment.
More specifically, the research project focuses on wildlife ranching, which can be defined as the breeding and commercial use of wild animals for hunting, game meat production, live animal trading or ecotourism. This economic activity can be an interface between conservation and agriculture but, although anchored for many years in South Africa, it remains little studied. Decision-makers thus lack data on the functioning of this wildlife economy as well as its socio-economic and environmental impacts.
Developing knowledge and decision support tools on this wildlife economy with the support of the ECOPRONAT programme is therefore an opportunity for better management of agricultural land and natural ecosystems, for the benefit of beneficiaries of the Land Reform Programme. The survey methodology and lessons learned in South Africa will be used for exchanges with Kenyan authorities who are also conducting studies on the role of wildlife economy in that country.
This project is part of the ECOPRONAT research programme, which supports research on how to better take into account biodiversity and mainstream it into key economic sectors.
Objectives
This project aims to support the development of agricultural policies in Africa that are sustainable on the long-term, and to develop wildlife economy research in South Africa and Kenya. Through its work, the research consortium aims to produce knowledge and tools to enable a large-scale transition, going from a land use that degrades ecosystems to profitable wildlife enterprises that restore natural capital, create jobs and catalyze investment to expand conservation areas.
To this end, the project aims to:
- Develop foundational knowledge for the wildlife economy to facilitate its mainstreaming into agricultural and biodiversity public policies (production of data on business models, their viability, investment and skills development needs, etc.);
- Co-produce decision support tools that enable local actors, companies and public authorities to adapt their policies and investments and create a systemic impact;
- Create a regional community of practice to strengthen research capacity in the South and the development of the wildlife economy. Two master’s students are involved in this project, led by SANBI in partnership with the South African Universities of Rhodes, Stellenbosch and Nelson Mandela.
Method
This research project is based on participatory knowledge building (including training workshops) and on the development of survey methods to collect social, economic and ecological data. This information will be used to produce decision-support tools. In particular, a geospatial selection tool will be developed to identify the actions and investments to be undertaken.
The methodology consists of collecting data from the established wildlife ranching industries established in South Africa and Kenya, on the contributions of the wildlife industry to biodiversity, land restoration and socio-economic development. Through statistical analysis and data visualization, the team will convert this information into knowledge products to make it more accessible, and then into decision support tools to assist new and emerging farmers to create businesses in the wildlife economy and thus expand the wildlife ranching estate.
Results
The research team has published academic articles on the functioning of the wildlife economy and its socio-economic and environmental impacts:
- Clements, H.S., Child, M.F., Lindeque, L. et al. Lessons from COVID-19 for wildlife ranching in a changing world, Nature Sustainability 5, 1040–1048 (2022).
- Denner, C., Clements, H. S., Child, M. F., & De Vos, A. (2024). The diverse socioeconomic contributions of wildlife ranching, Conservation Science and Practice, 6(7), e13166.
The team collaborated with public authorities to ensure that this information could be used by local stakeholders. Their data, gathered from surveys with a representative sample of wildlife ranchers, fed into fact sheets on the wildlife economy published by South Africa’s Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE). These are available on the Biodiversity Sector Investment platform, which aims to inform South African citizens and investors interested in engaging in this type of activity.
The research has also informed local decision-making, notably in the revision of the National Biodiversity Economy Strategy and related debates on the sustainable use of biodiversity for economic purposes.
Finally, the team shared its findings with a broader audience through The Conversation Africa, analyzing how different wildlife use models can contribute to local development and the inclusion of disadvantaged communities.
Lessons learned
Several findings have emerged from this research project:
Researchers have demonstrated that wildlife-based land uses support higher biodiversity levels, citing a number of scientific studies that assess their impact in South Africa and other southern African countries. Some of these studies show that wildlife ranching can support higher densities of wild animals per hectare than conventional agriculture or livestock farming.
- Shumba, T., De Vos, A., Biggs, R., et al. (2020). Effectiveness of private land conservation areas in maintaining natural land cover and biodiversity intactness. Global Ecology and Conservation, 22, e00935.
- Taylor, W. A., Child, M. F., Lindsey, P. A., et al. (2021). South Africa’s private wildlife ranches protect globally significant populations of wild ungulates. Biodiversity and Conservation, 30(13), 4111–4135.
- Saayman, M., van der Merwe, P., & Saayman, A. (2018). The economic impact of trophy hunting in the South African wildlife industry. Global Ecology and Conservation, 16, e00510.
- Lindsey, P. A., Romanach, S. S., & Davies‐Mostert, H. T. (2009). The importance of conservancies for enhancing the value of game ranch land for large mammal conservation in southern Africa. Journal of Zoology, 277(2), 99–105.
The research team identified six primary wildlife ranching business models in South Africa, and assessed their employment potential, profitability, and socio-economic impacts:
- Three specialized models: ecotourism; trophy hunting; wildlife breeding
- Three mixed models: mixed hunting (meat and trophy); wildlife breeding combined with agriculture; trophy hunting combined with game meat production
Specialized models, particularly trophy hunting and ecotourism, tend to be more profitable and generate more high-quality jobs than mixed-use or production-focused models (e.g., game meat hunting or livestock farming):
- Employment: Ecotourism ranches employ more people per hectare and offer more skilled jobs and opportunities for women than conventional agriculture or mixed models. Trophy hunting ranches rank second in employment per hectare, although roughly one-third of these jobs are seasonal. Both models offer significant non-wage benefits to employees.
- Profitability: Trophy hunting is the most profitable model, with a median profit margin of 33%. Wildlife breeding is less profitable and contributes less to employment compared to the other two specialized models.
However, specialized models proved to be far less resilient during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast, mixed models—though less profitable—showed greater resilience. The volatility of the hunting and tourism sectors highlights the need for long-term studies and targeted public policy.
In general, ranches focused on ecotourism and trophy hunting stimulate local economies:
- Due to higher operating costs, they purchase more goods and services locally and support a broader ecosystem of businesses.
- They employ more women and offer better wages than conventional agriculture. For instance, in ecotourism-focused ranches, over 40% of staff are women.
- While concerns about job precarity exist, most positions are permanent—except in trophy hunting, where seasonal work is more common. Higher wages and more stable jobs help reduce economic vulnerability.
However, specialized models require large tracts of land and substantial infrastructure, which can be a barrier to entry for disadvantaged South Africans. Conversely, more accessible mixed models may enhance social inclusion and offer historically marginalized groups opportunities to participate in a wildlife economy that also supports biodiversity better than conventional farming systems.
The researchers recommend that policymakers recognize the diversity of wildlife ranching models in order to better integrate them into conservation and sustainable development strategies.
Research Papers
Contact
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Julien CALAS
Research Officer on Biodiversity
