Unveiling the power duo: agriculture and social science take center stage in the evolution of climate change adaptation research in South Africa

Abstract

Global changes in climatic conditions threaten the world’s socio-economic development, including South Africa (SA). Climate change adaptation (CCA) research in SA has grown in number (publication rate) and importance (influence on different sectors) over time. A growing body of research uses systematic literature reviews to examine themes within this rapidly evolving field. However, there is still a lack of analysis on the current state of CCA science literature in SA and its evolution over time. This paper fills this gap by providing a cross-validated bibliometric review of scientific literature on CCA in SA using Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases. The review is constructed across time, between databases, within databases and on most preferred journals. This transdisciplinary analysis of CCA literature and dominant research themes and priorities spanning 1966–2022 examines how they relate to SA’s adaptation strategy in response to climate change. CCA research has evolved in South Africa. Since 2011/12, publication rates have grown exponentially, averaging between 5% and 26% yearly. Term diversity peaked in 2018 when the publication rate reached 100 publications per year. This exponential development can be explained using themes of clustered terms over time, i.e. biodiversity emerging around 2015/16, Climate & Yield around 2017, and Agriculture & CCA, respectively, in 2018, with 41% similarity between Scopus and Web of Science. Future research needs to advance the monitoring of activities and outcomes on adaptation throughout the thematic evolution period.

Introduction

Climate adaptation research is crucial for advancing global socio-economic development under current global climatic changes [1]. For the purposes of this research, we classified research as Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) research in South Africa on the bases of two criterion: Firstly, on geographical focus, where the research must either be conducted within or pertain to South Africa, whether comprehensively, partially, or focuses on specific regions of the country. Secondly, on thematic focus, where the research must address some aspect of climate change adaptation. The key assumption is that research articles related to CCA in South Africa will mention both terms, i.e. ‘Adaptation’ & ‘South Africa’; at least once, either in title, abstract, or keywords. The CCA research focuses on the adjustment of the status quo, through natural (human systems) or artificial (environmental) factors that moderate harm or exploit opportunities, in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli [2]. From CCA research various types of adaptation can be distinguished, including anticipatory, autonomous and planned adaptation in developing countries like South Africa, already lagging the development curve [3, 4]. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change defines adaptation as an ecological, social, or economic adjustment in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli and their effects or impacts [5].

Climate change exacerbates economic stagnation, social instability, unemployment, and biodiversity loss [6, 7]. For these reasons, CCA is central to South Africa’s socio-economic development. The injustice in the failure to circumvent the two degrees increase in global temperatures rests all hopes on adaptation [8–10]. As a commitment to global climate change mitigation, South Africa is a signatory to key international agreements, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement. The country has had a strong adaptation and mitigation action agenda in national policy since 2001 [11]. The national climate agenda continues to make policy changes that contribute to national development [12]. In this study, we assessed how adaptation research occurs in South Africa. We undertook this study because South Africa has placed CCA as a leading edge in its strategic response to climate change. However, South Africa is also among the countries hardest hit by climate change [13]. The limited number of research reviews on CCA in South Africa may impede South Africa’s ability to understand shifts in thematic focus and the evolution of specific scientific domains in relation to policy outcomes in this field. In addition to this scarcity, no review has linked changes in policy imperative to changes in CCA research overtime.

Understanding the evolution of a country’s adaptation research agenda and which sectors are the potential beneficiaries provides valuable information and can benefit researchers and policymakers [14, 15]. Research that helps to identify specific actors in a comprehensive network of the scientific community on CCA is essential for advancing CCA goals. Much of the national policy information is based on thought leadership supported by scientific research [16, 17]. Therefore, understanding the complex network of relationships among research ideas in climate adaptation research is essential for informing the relationship between the government and the scientific community. To our knowledge, no review has examined the evidence of CCA research in South Africa, i.e. answering whether adaptation research is taking place and interpreting its bibliometric and sociological status [18–25]. Reviews of climate adaptation research in South Africa have previously focused on broader earth system science or the research capacity, such as Ziervogel et al. [18] or focused on the health sector [26]. Mainly CCA is discussed concerning something else, e.g. institutional dynamics [27], water resources management [28], wildlife management and biodiversity conservation [29], Water -Energy- Food [30] among others. However, there is no review of CCA itself as a science, e.g. understanding the scientific research domains of CCA evolution.

To effectively address CCA research in South Africa, it is crucial to explore several key knowledge gaps, each with significant implications for policy, social impact, and funding [31]. Addressing these gaps requires a multi-faceted approach for better understanding of CCA research in South Africa. First, other authors have outlined the essential need to determine if low journal indices influence publication rates across journals [32–34]. Low indices may impact the visibility and perceived importance and impact of research, potentially skewing thus distorting the understanding of the field's development and influencing funding decisions. If journals with low indices are under or overrepresented, it could lead to an incomplete picture of research productivity and relevance.

Second, evaluating the state of CCA research production using databases like Web of Science is fundamental [35, 36]. Evaluating the state of CCA research production sheds light on the volume and growth of research, providing insights into South Africa’s current focus in CCA. It also reveals whether research output aligns with national and international priorities, which affects funding and policy direction [37]. Evaluating the state of CCA research production allows confirming whether CCA research is a fully-fledged domain, indicated by consistent annual output of more than 100 articles, which is vital for validating the field's maturity and securing continued funding and policy support.

Thirdly, there is a notable gap in validating the status of climate change adaptation (CCA) research outcomes across both the WoS and Scopus databases. Addressing this gap would enhance the reliability and consistency of findings by mitigating database-specific biases. This comprehensive validation would provide a more robust and accurate foundation for informing policy recommendations and optimizing funding allocations [33, 34]. For instance, investigating evolutionary changes in CCA research scope in South Africa can reveal trends and shifts, informing policymakers about emerging challenges and guiding targeted adaptation strategies and resource allocation. Therefore, comparing research production and evolution of research domain between Scopus and WoS ensures comprehensive insights and mitigates database-specific biases, leading to more informed decisions.

Fourthly, Ostrom et al. [38] highlight that understanding how research effort is allocated across research domains is critical for defining and assessing research priorities. This approach has partly informed the structure of the current reviewer and helps to identify areas that require additional support and targeted interventions.

Finally, aligning the evolution of thematic distribution in CCA research with policy imperatives is crucial to ensuring that research outcomes effectively guide policy development and practical adaptation strategies [39]. Against this backdrop of gaps, a systematic review of the literature addressing these knowledge gaps can provide a thorough understanding of CCA research in South Africa, supporting the development of well-informed policies, optimizing funding, and ensuring that research addresses critical social and environmental needs.

Other significant gaps include limited research on climate-resilient agriculture and livestock management practices, which are vital for enhancing food security and supporting rural livelihoods [40, 41]. Additionally, there is a pressing need for more studies on the impacts of climate change on vulnerable populations, including small-scale farmers and urban dwellers, who are often disproportionately affected by climate-related stresses [42, 43]. Furthermore, the scarcity of research on climate change mitigation strategies, such as renewable energy adoption and carbon sequestration, limits our ability to develop comprehensive solutions that address both adaptation and mitigation needs [44].

Meanwhile, systematic reviews appear to have developed the desired transparency and standards to address the methodological challenges in synthesising and tracking adaptation to climate change from literature [45–49]. Hence, it is possible to use literature reviews to understand how global CCA research has become specialised and transdisciplinary [50].

Due to transdisciplinary specialisation coupled with the rapid production of international research over the past century, it is challenging to keep up with the latest research trends without research reviews. Transdisciplinary specialization refers to new fields emerging from the combination of two or more traditional disciplines. Transdisciplinary specialization can be perceived using modern text mining tools, which measure matrices like term diversity and co-occurrence; that can be indicators of how often terms from distinct traditional disciplines appear together in literature across disciplines.

In this context, this paper conducts a meta-analysis of existing research, to identify patterns and trends that could guide future developments in CCA research in South Africa. It examines several key aspects: (1) whether low journal indices influence publication rates, (2) the current state and growth of CCA research production as indicated by the WoS and validated by Scopus, (3) the recognition of CCA research as a fully-fledged domain based on annual output, and (4) evolutionary changes in the scope of CCA research domains and their impact on publication rates, comparing research domain changes between Scopus and WoS. Additionally (5), the study investigates how time allocation across research domains reflects research priorities and it aligns with policy imperatives to influence adaptation outcomes.

Materials and methods

Study area

Several population groups and geographical provinces in South Africa are especially vulnerable to the impacts of climate change (Fig. 1). Over the past five decades, the increase in the mean annual temperatures in South Africa has been 1.5 times higher than the global average rate of 0.65°C/year [18]. As a water-stressed country, the increase in mean temperatures in South Africa has risen drought and heat wave intensities, exacerbated by the worst El Niño events in decades for many areas. Extreme rainfall events have also increased, resulting in national flooding disasters, especially along the eastern seaboard, which has left many people homeless while destroying many businesses [51, 52]. These climate changes, unfortunately, result in the loss of human life, farm animals and crops. Even with the availability of disaster funds, the use of time and resources that could be used for national development, coupled with the destruction of produce and infrastructure, climate change results in a loss of progress in government programs for employment, food security, housing, and water provision. For the first quarter of 2022, the unemployment rate in South Africa was about 53% for ages 15–34 years and continues to increase [51, 52]. Unfortunately, it is this very unemployed and poor segment of the population that is most susceptible to floods and heat stress because their houses are mostly built with wood and corrugated iron compared to brick and mortar homes of those previously advantaged [53, 54].

South Africa has a well-documented framework of climate change policy. For instance, notable climate change policy documents in South Africa include the National Climate Change Response White Paper [55] and the National CCA Strategy of 2020 [56]. This legislative framework has culminated in the Climate Change Bill, which was approved by the Cabinet in mid-2024.

Data sources

Databases

The scope of this review is limited to literature indexed in Scopus and WoS, excluding non-English targets. No research was excluded based on geographical location of authors. However, the use of languages such as French in some regions of Africa may have inadvertently led to the exclusion of relevant research from those areas. The WoS and Scopus were used because they hold the most extensive peer-reviewed scientific publications spanning various disciplines and publication periods. Google Scholar was avoided because of its lack of transparency, stability, precision, and control despite its export capabilities. The purpose of using the two datasets was for cross-validation. Resources from both the WoS and Scopus have been extensively used in bibliometric research with VOS Viewer across many disciplines [57–60]. Combining these two databases increases the chances of capturing many documents in a particular area of research interest. That said, other authors, depending on different points of justification, prefer using either the WoS or Scopus (see [61]). The rationale for this approach includes the observation that WoS is older and is more extensive or that Scopus has a single subscription for all access and specialised content, i.e. Embase, Compendex, World Textile Index, Fluidex, Geobase, Biobase, and Medline [61].

Since the reliability of bibliometric analysis and systematic literature review results depends primarily on the data source, the choice of data source was carefully considered in this study. Unfortunately, the choice of data source can be influenced by the convenience and performance of a database's analytics interface, index information, or the lack of it, such as impact indicators, additional tools, and user options. For this study, ‘year’ refers to the 365 days of the same 12 calendar months from January to December. The ‘number of publications’ refers to the number of peer-reviewed research articles published in each year. Data on the publication rate across years were obtained from Scopus and WoS. Data on journal indices were obtained from the Journals' web pages, and data on publication rates were downloaded from Scopus and WoS. Bibliographic data as corpus files were obtained from Scopus and WOS and were subjected to Link strength. Total link strength data were calculated from term co-occurrence data extracted from the topic fields (title, abstract, keywords) of the research articles.

Search criteria

For this study, we employed the decision rule, that if the search criteria from both Scopus and WoS returned a substantial number of records greater than 100 per year, CCA research was active and taking place in South Africa.

Inclusion criteria

The articles returned by the search criteria used in the research were arranged by year and the source database. The search strategy for inclusion criteria text terms and controlled vocabulary (CV) terms that were included using wild cards, specifically the following keywords: ‘Climat*’ [example of CV = Climate, climatic, climates, climatal, climatise, climatised, climatises, climatology, climatising, climatically, climatologist, climatologists, climatological, climatologies], ‘Chang*’, ‘Adapt*’, ‘South*’, ‘Afric*’ targeting only English-medium publications on CCA in South Africa (or climat* AND chang* AND adapt* AND south* AND Africa* for Scopus). The asterisks indicate wildcard search. Wildcard search means evoking the capability to create a search strategy that captures unknown characters, multiple spellings or various endings. All words prefixed by the letters before the asterisk will be considered with any variation of the subsequent letters.

Exclusion criteria

All documents that did not meet the above inclusion criteria were excluded. The search was not confined to any specific timeframe exclusion criterion. The search returned publications spanning four decades, from 1966 to 2022. Duplicates were removed, and the remaining documents were used. The above process is shown in Fig. 2.

Exploration and thematic data analysis with VOS viewer and R

The bibliometric analysis involves using the metadata of the research articles, i.e. Abstract, Title, Address, Keywords and Publication information, to analyse and visually demonstrate relationships between the sentiments of the articles (Table 1). Bibliometric analysis helps decern the focus of a research domain through time, thus revealing the cutting edge of a research domain. VOS viewer was used for bibliometric analysis due to its modularity-based clustering method, which is comparable to multidimensional scaling and generated by intelligent local moving algorithms. The VOS viewer algorithm protocol produces data files that are an empirical description of the literature and further uses visualisation and mapping capabilities to show the observed results (see www.vosviewer.com). Thematic analyses were constructed using metadata entries from topic fields of articles from WoS and Scopus separately and combined (Table 1). Structured abstracts were included (Fig. 3), while copyright statements were excluded from the analysis. The full counting method was used to count terms, and relevance scores were calculated. Relevance scores were computed based on citation count of the paper and co-occurrence of keywords, appearing in conjunction with others in the dataset, indicating high relevance of the keyword within or across research domains. Term Diversity refers to the range of different terms or keywords present within a given dataset or network. It measures how diverse the vocabulary or terms are in the analysed corpus. In a set of research articles, if the dataset includes keywords such as ‘adaptation’, ‘South’ and ‘Africa’, then term diversity reflects the range of distinct topics covered by these keywords. High term diversity indicates a broad range of topics, whereas low term diversity indicates a narrower focus. Term diversity can be used to assess the breadth of research topics in a network. High diversity might suggest a multidisciplinary or broad research area, while low diversity could indicate a more specialized field. Co-occurrence refers to the frequency with which two or more terms appear together in the same context, such as in the same document or dataset. It measures the degree to which terms are associated with each other. If ‘adaptation’, ‘South’, and ‘Africa’, frequently appear together in research papers, they have high co-occurrence. Conversely, if they rarely appear in the same papers, their co-occurrence is low, which can be useful as an exclusion criterion. On the other hand, co-occurrence is used to identify and visualize relationships between terms within a network. For instance, in a keyword co-occurrence network, terms that frequently appear together will be closely connected, revealing patterns and themes in the research. Co-occurrence analysis helps to understand how different concepts are related and how they cluster in the research literature.

Hypothesis and significance testing validation

Variance analysis

The analysis of variance with a post hoc test and a term-by-year matrix to calculate term diversity and abundance were used to validate the differences in the timeline of the clustered themes in CCA research in South Africa (Table 5). The Welch One-Way ANOVA Test is an alternative to the standard one-way ANOVA; in our situation, it was preferred because the homogeneity of variance assumption was violated in the compared variables of clustered themes [62, 63].

The Welch One-Way ANOVA was used to evaluate whether the means for Links, Total Link Strength, Occurrence and Average Publication year are equal between the themes.Links indicate the number of links a term has with other terms—influenced by the number of times each term is published with other terms in the same article. Total link strength indicates the full strength of the specific links—influenced by how every two terms are published together, i.e. same page, same section, same paragraph, same sentence, next to each other few words apart, next to each other and no word apart; Average Publication Year indicates the mean of all the publication dates of the source articles; Occurrences shows the number of times each term occurred [64].

Error assessment

The thematic analysis was validated through the use of a confusion matrix to reveal the extent to which each element has been consistently classified or misclassified by each data set. A confusion matrix, which was first devised by Karl Pearson in 1940, enables the comparison of two sets of data containing the same variables [65]. A confusion matrix aims to help identify patterns and trends in classification accuracy. Through careful matrix analysis, one can discern the commonalities and discrepancies in how each data set characterises various elements. Overall, the confusion matrix is a powerful tool for understanding the error propagation of a classification algorithm or model.

Results and discussion

Journal sources

Fig. 5 shows a group of 11 dominant journals that published CCA research in SA in the period considered in this study (1966–2022). The top 11 most productive journals contributed 49.20% of all publications in the dataset, while a wide distribution of articles was published in many different journals (720). Sustainability has published just under 50 scientific papers over the sampled period (1966–2022), with more papers than any other journal sampled in Scopus and WoS datasets. Sustainability is followed by the journal Climatic Change. The journal Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change and Environmental Research Letters had an equal and the least number of published articles among the journals with >10 ‘group of dominant journals’. Most journals among the dominant journals had between 20 and 30 articles. Except for the Jamba Journal of Disaster Risk Studies, the dominant journals had a 5-year Journal Impact Factor (JIF) larger than one (2022–3 Clarivate Analytics JIF report). Meanwhile, the majority have a JIF of less than 10. Only two journals had a JIF greater than 10: Science of the Total Environment and Global Environmental Change. The journals with an intermediate JIF and citation index (JCI) had the highest publication rate.

Surging publication rate: rising trend of CCA research in South Africa

Our results for both Scopus and WoS show that both databases reached 100 publications per year at a similar timeline, around 2011/12 (Fig. 6). However, paired staircase plots (Fig. 5) revealed that a higher number of papers on CCA in SA were published annually in WoS between 1966 and 2022, with WoS showing an increase of 5%–26% more papers per year compared to Scopus. Moreover, the earliest peer-reviewed literature on CCA in SA first appeared in 1966 for Scopus. While for the WoS, peer-reviewed manuscripts on CCA first appeared in the last decade of the 20th century (1990–2000). There was an apparent exponential increase in the trend of publications on CCA in SA (Fig. 5) in both Scopus (F = 3_,39 513.3, P < .00, RSE = 10.47) and WoS (F = 3_,39 546.7, P < .00, RSE = 25.38). We described the exponential model as the third-order polynomial regression (Fig. 6), with insignificant dissimilarity in the models (D = 0.27907, P = .06111, Exact two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, alternative hypothesis: two-sided). This means the models are statistically similar between Scopus and WoS.

We assessed whether CCA research is a fully established field by analysing nouns specific to CCA research in South Africa, which yielded over 100 articles annually from the WoS and Scopus databases. The continued increase in publications shows that CCA is a burgeoning topic receiving increasing attention from researchers interested in climate change in South Africa. These results agree with Wang et al. [66], who found that the field of CCA has developed rapidly since 2006, with the number of publications increasing at an average growth rate of 29.06% per annum. In this study, we defined a research area as any field that receives more than 100 publications annually. This indicates an extensive enough research investment (technical and human resources) exclusively dedicated to a specific research area. Using the threshold value of 100 publications per year is not new in scientific research. Fricke and Emmerling [67] used the threshold of 100 publications per year to argue that aerogel research had attracted many scientists from different fields.

On the other hand, Flom and Hyde [68] have used the 100th publication threshold to indicate the point of the onset of an exponential increase in published literature over time on perceptual development. Savitz and Forastiere [69] define the threshold of 100 publications per year as the starting point of a proposed expected pattern of proliferation model for data from a cursory examination of PubMed articles on ‘epidemiology’ and ‘meta-analysis’. Furthermore, Jones [70] regarded surpassing 100 publications per year as indicating an uptick in published papers on biocatalysis and enzymology. Opmeer et al. [71] defined the 100th publication threshold as showing a significant increase. When using these criteria, both Scopus and WoS met this criterion at a similar timeline, around 2011/12.

We modelled and described the distribution of data on the publication rate of CCA research regarding South Africa between Scopus and WoS across the sampled publication period. Our results showed the commencement of the exponential increase of publications from 2009 for both WoS and Scopus and a peak in 2018. We validated these findings using approaches from research in ecological science. Specifically, we used diversity analysis which shows the number of new terms each year. We found that 2018 ranked the highest in the diversity of terms. To our knowledge, it is the first time that an increase in publication rate has been validated using the abundance of terms. This result could mean that the more researchers engage in research, the more they connect the dots and include new terms in the discussion. The diversity analysis also showed 2009 as the year when diversity began to increase. Moreover, there was a decrease in the variation of terms after 2018. We perceive this as an indication of consensus in the terms used from 2018.

Evolution of focal themes in South African CCA research over time

As illustrated in Fig. 7, for both WoS and Scopus, our analysis showed similar framings (41% similarity) with fair agreement kappa accuracy of 0.2–04 over the considered period for this study (Kappa = 0.2). The clustered themes for Scopus were Biodiversity, Climate and Yield, Agriculture & Climate Change Adaptation (Table 2). On the other hand, for WoS, the clustered themes were Biodiversity, Climate, Yield & Agriculture—Climate Change Adaptation. However, there were significant differences in the timeline (P < .001, One way Welch’s ANOVA, Table 3—with Post-hoc test, Table 4) that the different framings became prominent in each database (Fig. 7 and Table 2). For example, biodiversity framing became prominent in Scopus in 2013; by contrast, biodiversity became a significant theme in the WoS in 2016. The combined database confirmed the resemblance of Scopus themes. Our analysis revealed that the Scopus database represented the thematic evolution of CCA in South Africa more than the WoS database. The results demonstrated more similarity between the clusters of data from Scopus and the combined Scopus and WoS datasets, indicating a more accurate representation. Furthermore, the confusion matrix results indicated only 41% similarity between WoS and Scopus, further supporting our findings.

Data obtained from this study were analysed using word cloud clusters (Fig. 8). Word cloud clusters indicate groups of terms grouped due to the high number of times they appear within and across publications in literature databases. The assumption underpinning this kind of analysis is that abundant words can predict the focus of the discussion in the literature. This analysis also assumes that the spread of the clusters and the diversity of terms indicate the scope of the subject matter. Clusters can therefore be considered to reflect the general changes in the focus of publications in the database over time.

Our results show that dominant themes in CCA publications in South Africa have evolved (Fig. 8). The Scopus and WoS thematic analysis suggest that CCA research originates from biodiversity or environmental science themes. However, more recently (2011/12), the origins of CCA research are associated with the agricultural sector, shifting away from a focus on biodiversity to an emphasis on changing seasons and climate. In addition, recently (2017/18), there has been a focus on agriculture, with the farmer at the centre of the CCA discourse. The emergence of agriculture, primarily driven by social science studies, has brought about the use of 'farmers' and 'households' interchangeably (Table 5). However, the interchangeable use of the terms 'farmer' and 'household' might be more applicable to subsistence farmers, where each homestead represents both a household and an individual farm, rather than to commercial farms. Nonetheless, this interchangeable use of 'farmer' and 'household' has enabled subsistence farming to emerge as a subject of social science research that focuses on rural households that depend on subsistence farming as a key unit of analysis. In the social sciences, CCA is mainly conceptualized and understood in terms of socio-economic impacts, human behaviours, and policy responses, rather than through empirical biological data and quantitative models that focus on physical and biological processes [72–74].

The Biodiversity and the Climate and Yield prediction themes were grouped under one cluster as subthemes in the Scopus database. In the WoS database, the CCA cluster might have been incorporated as a subtheme under Agriculture with a locus on the term ‘policy’. Therefore, WoS and Scopus databases support each other in these results.

Our results suggest that CCA research in South Africa evolved from an environmental science perspective. These results show that initially, climate change was defined as an ecological and environmental science problem as it was framed from an angle of concern for the impacts of climate change on elements of the environment. Evidence for this framing is that published literature in SA from the early 2000s focused on the impacts of climate change on biodiversity, such as the impacts of climate change on species extinctions, the limitation in the patterns and distributions of species, and the decline in particular species populations. However, over time there was an increasing focus on predicting climate change’s impacts. Later, around 2016, published climate change science in South Africa was heavily invested in climate modelling (Fig. 8). A suite of global simulation models developed around this time form the basis of models that are still currently implemented worldwide. A general understanding of climate change’s impacts on crop production was heavily recorded in the literature. The main preoccupation was understanding the impacts on crop yields, changes in harvesting and planting times, as well as variations of changes in rainfall and drought events. Until 2017, climate change research focused on climate science rather than environmental science, and currently (since 2018), it is focused heavily on agriculture. The current cutting-edge CCA research is directly focused on agriculture. The focus on agriculture in CCA research of SA aligns well with the country’s national climate change strategy, which prioritises adaptation in its contribution to global climate change response.

Furthermore, the focus on the agriculture sector in CCA publications since 2018 could be driven by the need to highlight the prominent role of subsistence farming in sustaining livelihoods at the household level while also profiling the justice aspects associated with land tenure issues that have a long legacy in South African communities.

Publication dates of sectors and themes: a comparative synthesis

We compared the mean publication dates of nine key CCA sectors with the four themes identified from the word cloud analysis (Fig. 9). Our results on the mean publication date of themes show that all the key CCA sectors were located within the date range of the mean publication dates of the identified CCA themes (2015–2018).

We found that the mean dates of the themes were situated within the period of exponential increase in term abundance and diversity. Specifically, this period saw a significant jump in term abundance from never reaching 80 terms per year since 2009 until 2015, when term abundance was 79 terms per year. In 2016 there was a sudden increase in term diversity, reaching 206 terms per year. Subsequently, there was a rise to 353 terms per year in 2017, and the peak occurred in 2018 with 377 terms per year (Table 4). These findings suggest a notable association between changes in publication rate and the frequency and diversity of terms used within the analysed data set during the sample period.

According to the South African Climate Change Adaptation Strategy [56], the mean publication dates (Fig. 9) of all the key CCA sectors were within the range of the mean publication dates of the identified CCA themes (2015–2018). The mean publication date (2016) for three sectors, Forestry, Transport, as well as Biodiversity and Ecosystem, was associated with the mean publication date (2016) of the theme on biodiversity (2015). The mean publication date (2017) for three sectors, Energy, Water, and Agriculture, was associated with the mean publication date of the two themes on climate and yield and the theme on agriculture (2017). The mean publication date (2018) for three sectors Health, Human settlement, and Disaster, was associated with the mean publication date (2018) of the theme on Agriculture. Our analysis indicates that the coverage of critical sectors in the CCA literature is broader compared to the sectors addressed in the National Climate Change Response Strategy [55] and South Africa's Nationally Determined Contributions [75–77]. This broader scope suggests that there is a possibility that certain sectors, which the research community considers essential, might be missing from the policy framework. Understanding the evolution of a country’s adaptation research agenda and identifying the sectors that could benefit from this research provides valuable insights for both researchers and policymakers (see Figs 8 and 9). Research that highlights key actors and sectors within the broader scientific community involved in Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) is crucial for advancing CCA goals effectively (see Fig. 9).

Climate change adaptation: becoming a science of agriculture and social science

In this study, we also wanted to investigate the thematic evolution of South African CCA research. Many authors publishing reviews in CCA in recent years (2009–2022) have used VOS viewer thematic analysis to analyse topic fields [24, 30, 39, 58, 78–80]. Like this paper, they also explored changing trends of hot topics over time. Our results confirm the statement by Ziervogel et al. [18] that ‘like many other parts of the world, early climate change research in South Africa was initially framed as an environmental problem’. That is why the Biodiversity/Environment theme is the oldest. However, to our knowledge, this is the first research that posits that current climate change and its adaptation in South Africa are strongly framed as an agricultural problem. Indeed, agriculture remains vital in driving economic transformation, sustainable livelihoods, and development in South Africa.

Future projections for South Africa indicate reduced rainfall, increased temperatures, and high variability for the more significant part of the region, with severe reductions in the drier and marginal western parts. These impacts profoundly affect agriculture performance and contribute to national and regional developmental goals. Projected agricultural productivity in the Southern African region is expected to decrease by 15%–50%, contributing to a rise in food insecurity within South Africa. The challenge is to increase productivity on current arable land through efficient and sustainable management of available water and energy while reducing pressure on the environment. Affordability and accessibility of innovative adaptation measures on water resources remain critical, and these strategies should be part of broader sustainable development efforts. Overall, efforts to enhance agricultural productivity must emphasise investments in sustainable management and using water and energy resources in agriculture to achieve sustainable economic growth and livelihoods.

Conclusion

This paper presents a bibliometric review of CCA science literature in South Africa with a specific focus on the evolution over time of CCA research. This study is essential for identifying under and overrepresented areas of climate adaptation research. Insights stemming from this kind of study can guide future national research efforts and investments.

Of the 720 journals that published CCA research in South Africa in the period considered in this study (1966–2022), there were 11 dominant journals (with >10 publication) which contributed 49.20% of the publications. All these 11 dominant journals have high index values. Furthermore, this study confirmed the progression of CCA research in South Africa. These included all journals and articles by South African researchers and published by South African journals or non-South African journals and articles by researchers from elsewhere. Our study showed that publications of CCA have been growing exponentially between 5 and 26%/year, surpassing 100pubs/year. Since 2011/12 and peaking in 2018. The thematic evolution of CCA research in South Africa took place quickly (2015–2018) but with significant statistical differences and mean occurrence across themes and years. This exponential development can be explained using clustered themes over time. Analysis of themes showed that biodiversity was dominant in about 2015, Climate and Yield in about 2017, Agriculture in 2018 and Climate Change Adaptation respectively in 2017 in Scopus and WoS combined. This exponential development of CCA research in South Africa was corroborated by associated changes in the abundance of new terms in the research domain over time, indicating an increase (2009–2015), peak (2016–2018) and decline (2019–2022) in the development of terminology (Table 5).

According to the South African Climate Change Adaptation Strategy [56], the mean publication dates of CCA sectors were within the range of the mean publication dates of the identified CCA themes (2015–2018). The mean publication date for the Health, Human Settlement and Disaster sectors was 2018. The mean publication year for Water, Energy, and Agriculture was 2017, indicating the emergence of the (Water, Energy, and Food) WEF nexus. For biodiversity and ecosystems, forestry and transport, the mean publication year was 2015/2016. These data exhibit the ‘tragedy of the firsts’, where the themes that emerged first lose out on the benefit of the latest technology that recent themes benefit from. As a result, contemporary themes might be more researched and developed, although they are younger.

The ability of Scopus data to predict themes from combined Scopus and WoS data needs further research, especially since WoS is considered beneficial because it is more comprehensive. Our results suggest that the volume of a database does not mean better information content. Furthermore, this might indicate that Scopus might have fewer journals, but they adequately represent the broad scope of science.

The methodology used in the study is reliable as it is replicable, and the methods used to sample the data are widely used. The reliability of this study is reinforced by the cross-validation of the results between Scopus and WoS datasets, and rigorous transdisciplinary analytical approaches are used to validate the results. The methodology used in the study is novel as it combines ecological remote sensing statistical validation approaches while borrowing confusion matrix from Geoinformatics Statistics and Abundance Analysis from statistical ecological science validation techniques.

Author contributions

Basanda Xhantilomzi Nondlazi (Conceptualization [equal], Data curation [equal], Formal analysis [equal], Investigation [equal], Methodology [equal], Project administration [equal], Software [equal], Validation [equal], Visualization [equal], Writing—original draft [equal], Writing—review & editing [equal]), Brain Khanyisa Mantlana (Conceptualization [equal], Formal analysis [supporting], Funding acquisition [equal], Investigation [equal], Resources [equal]), Sasha Naidoo (Project administration [equal], Supervision [equal], Validation [equal]), and Abel Ramoelo (Formal analysis [supporting], Investigation [equal], Methodology [equal], Supervision [equal], Validation [equal])

Conflict of interest: None declared.

Funding

This research was supported by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the National Research Foundation (NRF) under Grant Number NRF EEM0012. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Data availability

The data underlying this article are available in the Scopus and Web of Science databases, accessible at https://www.scopus.com/home.uri and https://mjl.clarivate.com/search-results. Access requires registration and the creation of a user profile.

Ethics statement

This study did not involve human or animal subjects and therefore did not require ethical review. The research adheres to ethical standards of scientific integrity.

References