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North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus PhD (Science with Geography and Environmental Management), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus People are at the heart of sustainable development and entitled to an uncompromised sustainable future with a balanced life in harmony with a protected environment, economic development and social well-being. Global political commitments promised a brighter future to advance sustainable development for future generations and laid the basis for Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and Social Impact Assessment (SIA) globally. Moreover, the adoption of global strategies increased awareness of the vulnerabilities of people and proclaimed the future of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). SIA internationally evolved as an integrated component within the broader context of EIA. South Africa has a similar EIA-bound scenario and SIA forms part of EIA as a social specialist report that informs EIA development planning. Despite considerable improvements in SIA after five EIA regimes, SIA in South Africa is firmly embedded in EIA and not considered as an assessment in its own right. One of SIA’s unique attributes is that it assists with the resolution of social conflicts, and the effects of proposed interventions on people’s vulnerabilities and social well-being. DRR shares similar characteristics and focuses on the strategic levels of Disaster Risk Management (DRM), where Disaster Risk Assessment (DRA) is a tool for the assessment of potential risks and impacts that developments might have on people. South Africa was one of the first countries in Southern Africa to legislate DRM, thereby embedding DRA firmly as part of disaster management planning. Due to the transdisciplinary nature of SIA and DRA they share many commonalities, however in South Africa they function as two distinct fields of theory and practice with little overlap. The poor quality of SIA reports has been under the magnifying glass, contributing to SIA’s subsidiary status. A shortage of skills to conduct risk assessments and a lack of flexible methodological guidance might have increased SIA’s inadequate performance. While SIA in South Africa is an established field of practice the need for comprehensive, flexible formative methodological guidance prevails. A potential avenue to strengthen the shortfalls of SIA is the emerging international trend of integrated impact assessments, e.g. integrating SIA and DRA. SIA can play a vital role in the understanding of the interaction between future developments and the risk they pose to vulnerable communities in striving to promote a sustainable future. However, the potential SIA-DRA integration and the contribution of DRA to improved SIA in South Africa is poorly understood. Understanding the basis for their future collaboration to improved SIA status and practice in South Africa is worth further exploration. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to investigate the contribution of DRA to improved SIA in South Africa. This study follows an exploratory mixed-methods research design. The research methods for data collection include indepth literature reviews and document studies, and one-on-one interviews with SIA and DRA specialists including self-administered questionnaires. The essence of the research results is captured in four article manuscripts that form Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 of this thesis. Chapter 2 (Article Manuscript 1) highlights the theoretical discourse of integrating SIA and DRA and demonstrates their differences as well as their complementarity to each other through their shared focus, people-centred, multi-stakeholder, and transdisciplinary approach, and promising opportunities for potential integration. Based on the evidence this chapter revealed considerable scope for potential integration to improve SIA, despite their distinct differences. This lead the way to Chapter 3 (Article Manuscript 2) that critically compared the legislative and statutory provisions of SIA and DRA in South Africa to search for potential opportunities to meaningful SIA and DRA integration. The results from the comparison reveal that the dominance of the biophysical paradigm over the social paradigm persists in the legislative requirements concerning SIA, which might be a contributing factor to SIAs subordinate status. Furthermore, in the legislative provisions concerning DRA the social paradigm has a prominent role at the forefront of DRR. The findings highlight SIA and DRA’s shared motives, and suggest that despite their regulatory segregation, integration can be worthwhile. Chapter 4 (Article Manuscript 3) investigated four current discourses in South African SIA and DRA practice that echo international trends: (1) the collaboration of specialists’ shared expertise should be encouraged; (2) the hindrances that specialists experience reflect broad international trends; (3) the need for strengthened rigorous methodological guidance coupled with formal training is emphasised, and special attention is drawn to a lack of guidance for Social Baseline Surveys as an essential component of SIA planning; and (4) integrated assessments are supported by the practitioner communities due to the benefits it might hold for both practices. The results from this manuscript underscore the need for specialists to strive for best practice and encourage the SIA-DRA integration to optimize SIA. Based on this evidence Chapter 5 (Article Manuscript 4) aimed to investigate and compare South African SIA and DRA methodologies in the goal to optimize SIA. A content analysis demonstrated alignments between SIA and DRA guidance documents and corroborated the lack of rigorous Social Baseline Survey guidance. Therefore, this chapter proposes an integrated Social and Disaster Risk Assessment (SDRA) approach to effectively guide inexperienced specialists to comprehensively identify and assess social issues, and thereby assist in improving the quality of SIA reports. This study has shown that SIA can benefit from the integration of aspects of DRA across regulatory commonalities, shared theoretical and practical discourses, and new combined methodologies, and thereby offer opportunities for improved SIA practice and status in South Africa, which could also contribute more effectively to social sustainability and – welfare. This is in line with international trends, therefore going forward the potential value that the contribution of DRA can make to enrich SIA practice should be encouraged. Doctoral

Digital, Introduction. Switching from polluting (e.g. wood, crop waste, coal) to clean (e.g. gas, electricity) cooking fuels can reduce household air pollution exposures and climate-forcing emissions. While studies have evaluated specific interventions and assessed fuel-switching in repeated cross-sectional surveys, the role of different multilevel factors in household fuel switching, outside of interventions and across diverse community settings, is not well understood. Methods. We examined longitudinal survey data from 24 172 households in 177 rural communities across nine countries within the Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiology study. We assessed household-level primary cooking fuel switching during a median of 10 years of follow up (∼2005–2015). We used hierarchical logistic regression models to examine the relative importance of household, community, sub-national and national-level factors contributing to primary fuel switching. Results. One-half of study households (12 369) reported changing their primary cooking fuels between baseline and follow up surveys. Of these, 61% (7582) switched from polluting (wood, dung, agricultural waste, charcoal, coal, kerosene) to clean (gas, electricity) fuels, 26% (3109) switched between different polluting fuels, 10% (1164) switched from clean to polluting fuels and 3% (522) switched between different clean fuels. Among the 17 830 households using polluting cooking fuels at baseline, household-level factors (e.g. larger household size, higher wealth, higher education level) were most strongly associated with switching from polluting to clean fuels in India; in all other countries, community-level factors (e.g. larger population density in 2010, larger increase in population density between 2005 and 2015) were the strongest predictors of polluting-to-clean fuel switching. Conclusions. The importance of community and sub-national factors relative to household characteristics in determining polluting-to-clean fuel switching varied dramatically across the nine countries examined. This highlights the potential importance of national and other contextual factors in shaping large-scale clean cooking transitions among rural communities in low- and middle-income countries., Ciencias Médicas y de la Salud

Role models have been researched extensively and studies suggest an influence on consumer behaviour. However, limited research is available on direct role models’ influence on the behaviour of young adults. The goal of this research was to utilise Social Cognitive Theory as a guide to understanding how direct role models, such as those of parents influence the consumer and the purchase behaviour of Generation Y (18-35 years old). Non-probability convenience sampling was used and three hundred and sixty-nine respondents completed self-administered questionnaires. The results from structural equation modelling (SEM) support Social Cognitive Theory as parental role model influence (the general perception of parents as role models) affects consumer behaviour, which, in turn, affects purchase behaviour. The consumer and purchase behaviour of the younger (18-25 years old) Generation Y cohort respondents thus reflect parents’ opinions; since the parents were regarded as the role models. These findings emphasise the important role of parents to provide guidance for young adolescence to become skilled consumers and to set good examples in terms of shopping habits. Generation Y consumers should be aware of retailers’ and advertisers’ attempts to capitalise on this influence of parental role models. Reinforcing marketing campaigns, whereby Generation Y consumers are reminded that their parents have been using the specific products or brands as to encourage them to follow suite, is one such an example.

Research has foregrounded the way in which heterosexual practices for many young people are not infrequently bound up with violence and unequal transactional power relations. The Life Orientation sexuality education curriculum in South African schools has been viewed as a potentially valuable space to work with young people on issues of reproductive health, gender and sexual norms and relations. Yet, research has illustrated that such work may not only be failing to impact on more equitable sexual practices between young men and women, but may also serve to reproduce the very discourses and practices that the work aims to challenge. Cultures of violence in youth sexuality are closely connected to prevailing gender norms and practices which, for example, render women as passive victims who are incapable of exercising sexual agency and men as inherently sexually predatory. This paper analyses the talk of Grade 10 learners in nine diverse schools in two South African provinces, the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape, to highlight what ‘lessons’ these young people seem to be learning about sexuality in Life Orientation classes. We find that these lessons foreground cautionary, negative and punitive messages, which reinforce, rather than challenge, normative gender roles. ‘Scare’ messages of danger, damage and disease give rise to presumptions of gendered responsibility for risk and the requirement of female restraint in the face of the assertion of masculine desire and predation. We conclude that the role which sexuality education could play in enabling young women in particular to more successfully negotiate their sexual relationships to serve their own needs, reproductive health and safety, is undermined by regulatory messages directed at controlling young people, and young women in particular – and that instead, young people’s sexual agency has to be acknowledged in any processes of change aimed at gender equality, anti-violence, health and well-being.Keywords: Life Orientation, sex, sexuality education, young people, heterosexual practices, gender equality, violence, health, danger.

Sexual violence against women and girls forms part of a global pandemic of human rights violations. In South Africa, crimes of sexual violence are at a globally unprecedented level. The majority of these crimes of sexual violence are underreported. Understanding the factors that contribute to the silence around sexual violence is pivotal, not only so that perpetrators can be held accountable, but also so that victims/survivors of sexual violence may experience some alleviation from the psychological symptoms related to internalised trauma. This paper, a case study which utilises a social constructionist research paradigm, focuses on the lived experience of one depressed South African woman, Zee, who lives in a low-income South African community. Her accounts of sexual, physical and emotional abuse are discussed, focusing specifically on how she constructs the impact of shame on the non-disclosure of sexual violence. The authors suggest that the relationship between shame and non-disclosure is complex, in that larger societal discourses play a pivotal role in the shame of women who are victims/survivors of sexual violence. On the one hand, as in the case of Zee’s community, sexual violence and the painful emotions associated with such violence are obscured in a communal complicity of silence. On the other hand, powerful gender discourses also compel women to be silent and passive.Keywords: Shame; non-disclosure; sexual violence; gender; agency; community