It was a spontaneous turn off her intended route through Oxford 17 years ago, and into a side street, that led geographer Gina Ziervogel into the lobby of a building that would become the institutional home where she gained her doctorate, and launched her into a career that recently landed her a top research award here in South Africa.
She was just 23 then, an honours graduate from the University of Cape Town (UCT), and working as an au pair the UK. But she needed additional work, and her chance encounter with the Oxford geography department on that day landed her a secretarial job. It wasn't long before she was nudged up into the role of research assistant, before stumbling onto an advert for a doctoral position focusing on the social application of regional climate forecasting in southern Africa.
This overlap between the different disciplines - social and natural sciences - in the context of development and environmental health, is the hallmark of Ziervogel’s work these days. In recognition of the reach of her trans-disciplinary work in climate change adaptation, Ziervogel was recently given the prestigious Distinguished Young Women Researchers award in the humanities and social sciences category, by the national South African Department of Science and Technology (DST).
‘Society won’t be able to meet its poverty reduction goals unless it sees the overlap between development and environmental health,’ says Ziervogel, an associate of the Environmental Policy Research Unit (EPRU) at UCT, who maintains that the significance of this award is that it recognises a previously under-appreciated aspect of research in the climate space.
Environmental services provide the bedrock for water, sanitation, housing, food security and so-forth, she explains.
‘But society tends to emphasise the importance of the physical sciences in addressing things like climate change and adaptation. And yes, it’s important to understand the technical side of how these things work. But if you don’t understand the societal contexts in which these events unfold, the governance issues, the people on the ground - the social side of things - you aren’t going to realise the benefits of climate adaptation that the physical sciences can give you.’
A recent project, for instance, looked at Cape Town municipality’s ongoing challenges with urban flooding in informal settlements around the city. The collaborative work didn’t only look at the physical difficulties of sanitation and infrastructure to help keep communities’ homes dry during the rainy season, but it looked at how the city and the community govern themselves and manage infrastructure, neighbourhood development, and crisis managing flooding events. The findings were later written up in a popular report, Rising Waters.
This year’s award recognised women 41 years or younger, whose work is aligned with the Millennium Development Goals.
‘My research was well suited for this, because it addresses two of the goals, ensuring environmental sustainability, and addressing poverty.’
The 40-year-old researcher and senior lecturer in UCT’s Department of Environmental and Geographical Science, collaborates with EPRU research fellow Prof Martine Visser on two projects.
The first in an initiative focusing on wellbeing and adapting to climate change in communities in Namibia and Botswana. The second is a trans-disciplinary project looking at local economic development in the town of Piketberg, about an hour’s drive north-east of Cape Town. By applying a behavioural economics lens to the work, the collaborative team is tracking the social and economic interactions between the local government, businesses and the community.
Ziervogel donated R5 000 of the R50 000 prize to the eight young ‘ambassadors’ on the Piketberg project, all volunteers who are assisting the researchers and need additional resources to continue with their work. The remainder of the money will go towards funding a sabbatical in Australia in 2016.
‘The environment is a socio-economic issue,’ she says. ‘We are dependent on ecosystem services and we need healthy functioning systems if we want to address poverty. This award recognises the important overlaps in scientific disciplines.’
Watch a brief interview with Dr Gina Ziervogel.
Dr Gina Ziervogel is based at the University of Cape Town’s Department of Environmental and Geographical Science, is part of the university-wide African Climate and Development Initiative (ACDI), and an associate of EfD’s southern African office, EPRU.