Divining the impact of climate change on the future of urban law in South Africa

The rapid rate of urbanisation in Africa raises challenges and questions of legal relevance. These questions are complex because cities and towns are spaces of cohabitation where law, quasi-law and lawlessness all converge to steer relationships among a diversity of people, as well as between people and things (including the urban commons). Cities are also characterised by head-on collisions between people’s rights. They are often ruled not so much by democratic order as by politics, trade and investment, coupled with the influential clustering of property ownership, wealth and advantageous access to otherwise obscured information and new technologies.

As the law ‘of’ and ‘in’ cities, urban law is firmly rooted in an intricate mix of private, public and mercantile law, with a plethora of sources of authority and origin. In the South African context, it comprises more than classic local government law. As a manifestation of legal geography, urban law determines social and environmental justice trajectories and is at the heart of many a court decision involving metropolitan, medium-sized and smaller municipalities. One might think that the study, design and implementation of urban law could not be any more complex than it already is.

Yet the fact that cities in South Africa find themselves in the eye of the storm brought about by a global climate crisis adds an entirely new dimension of complexity. This lecture reflects on the demands of climate-resilient development and how this is expected to influence the future of urban law in South Africa – not only as a matter of legal practice, but also as a field of research and teaching.

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Short biography

Anél du Plessis was appointed as the inaugural incumbent of the Chair in Urban Law and Sustainability Governance at Stellenbosch University in July 2023. Having completed her law training at North-West University (NWU) (BA (Law), LLB, LLM, LLD), she joined that institution’s teaching staff in 2005 and was promoted to full professor in 2012. In 2018, she became the first to head up NWU’s NRF SARChI Chair in Cities, Law and Sustainability. Upgraded to tier 1 after its first five-year cycle, the chair received an institutional award for engaged scholarship in 2023.

Her research and teaching centre on the intersection of environmental and climate change law and governance, and the legally relevant dynamics of formal and informal urban development and spatial justice. She also has a keen interest in understanding the emerging role of cities as distinct non-state actors in international law. She has supervised 17 doctoral and 37 master’s students through to graduation and currently has a further eight under her wing.

During her academic career, Anél has received fellowships, scholarships and grants from the Fulbright programme, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Max Planck Society, the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust and the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS). She currently serves as co-rapporteur of the International Law Association’s committee on urbanisation and international law and is a former member of the IUCN Academy of Environmental Law’s committees on governance as well as teaching and capacity building. Anél served on the executive committee of the Environmental Law Association of South Africa for 16 years and as an assistant editor of the Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal for more than a decade. She is a founding member of the African chapter of the International Association of Urban Law Scholars and holds the position of extraordinary professor of law at NWU.

She has authored and (co-)edited many scholarly books and published widely in accredited international and local law journals. Among others, she is the sole editor of Environmental Law and Local Government in South Africa (first and second editions).

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