According to Kothler, South Africa doesn't have enough water and it is ranked the 30th driest country in the world, this results to South Africa  experiencing droughts because its ground water resources are scarce. According to Sarkodie and Adams Acces to energy technologies is expensive, and inadequate access of electricity promotes poverty, inequality and distructs the government revenues.

According to Calma social justice is fairness beyond individual justice. Environmental social justice is a specific form of social justice  which aims to address  equity and fairness resulting from environmental problems.

According to Zabala and Sulivan, a wetland programme (WFW) had 40 projects in South Africa which targeted all wetlands and created employment for close to 2000 people, and it addressed the severe environmental degradation experiences in the wetlands all over South Africa.

In SA there isn't enough water which then results to SA experiencing droughts  every now and then, while  Mpumalanga has the worst air quality in South Africa as it hosts  eskom power plants, this leads to air pollution whuch leads to natural disasters such as acid rains etc. Even though the  entire country gets  affected by these natural disasters, the effects  are not experienced equally  amongst  the poor, middle-class  and rich.

Four SA environmental narratives are:

• The conservation 

•The economic 

• Non-state actors 

• Local views

The motive of  the conservation is to make sure that there is conservation of land to benefit the nation and communities.

The motive of the economic is that the land should be seen as a resource or commodity to make money on and this is done by means of exploiting the land.

The motive of the non state actor view is that  the government and societies my protect their respective environment.

The motive of the local views is that the socio-political system shapes  the relation between the locals and the environment.

The conservation  narrative does contribute to an understanding of the SA  environment because in SA during apartheid era  and even currently the government aims to obtain conservation of the land by removing people  from some parts of the land, for example, kruger national parks etc. While the economic view narrative also does contribute to the SA environment by means promoting capitalism in SA whereby  the elites exploit the natural resources  claiming to improve the SA  economy and poverty whereas in reality  it is about growing themselves e.g mining industries.

Looking at the non state actor view it is visible that most NGOs is SA do support the idea of the land being used to benefit the locals, for example, there are some NGOs that promote planting trees and also teachbpeople about agriculture and about how to grow their own food etc. While considering the local views narrative, SA policies are formulated and finalised by the legislature  under law and constitution of SA. The people don't really have much to say apart from having a public opinion, and they can only contribute by voting for a possible representative.

The two main discourses are: The sustainable  development  discourse, and The social justice and environment discourse. The sustainable development discourse is influenced by beliefs about the society and environment relationship, while the social justice and environment discourse is about the access to good quality  environment resources in order to solve social problems like poverty.

The sustainable  development discourse links to SA policies  by having the SA policies considering factors such as  protecting the environment  in order to create development , for example, policies created for the protections of animals like  the rhinos, to prevent and end rhino poaching, and the prevantion of extraction  of natural resources like coals, gold etc

The society's  response to environmental problems  would be to have their members contribute their personal resources to help the society overcame challenges by either exchanging the resources directly or indirectly. According  to the social exchange theory, the society members become commited to their groups/communities  in order to satisfy their communities' well being but if  they don't  benefit they lose loyalty. In South Africa  the government  issues policy statements to provide proper services for all people but there is always other factors that prevent people from fully receiving proper public services, especially in rural areas.

The nature shapes the societies by providing raw materials in order for daily activities and other activities like globalisation to take place, however the societies also shape the environment by means of causing pollution which then leads to negative results like global warming/ climate change in a form of drought, floods and excessive heat/cold.

As the societies shape the environment, the people that get affected the most by the consequences are those in the  lower class, for example, wealthy people benefit from industrialisation and they don't get affected by the global warming and climate change that it creates because their houses are secured and they can afford to go to the best doctors whereas the poor people benefit less from industrialisation and they still get affected the most by climate change as their shelters are not secured enough to protect them from floods, and they cant even afford to go to doctors.

After modernisation theory and dependency theory were created and yet still didn't succeed in improving development for the poor, other approaches like the participatory approach were established to achieve development for the underdeveloped.

The participatory development approach works in a way that involves people who will be benefiting in the development process. By doing this the people will be able to create and build for themselves. This approach allows people to learn to rely on themselves by being partners in the development process, so this means that the participatory approach makes it easy to share information between the community people and the all stakeholders.

As much as the participatory approach involves people in the development process, it has challenges aswell, for example in a country like South Africa where some people are still living in poverty, it becomes hard for some community members to fully participate because of lack/ poverty, and also a lack of technology and coordination in these communities becomes a challenge. Corruption from the local elites also plays a big part in causing challenges that prevent achieving participatory development.

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The differences   between modernisation theory and dependency theory is that modernisation theory advances that in order for a country to develop it moves from being traditional underdeveloped country to being modern country and it states that, that can be done if these countries adopt the experiences of the most developed countries like the countries in the North, but this theory doesn't  mention inqualities in power, colonialism  and social class. The dependency theory originated after the failure of the modernisation theory. The dependency theory unlike the modernisation theory challenges the idea that underdeveloped countries fail to modernise because they lack values that the first world countries have. The dependency theory recognises worldly inequalities and the dependency theorists argue that the third world countries are poor because of being exploited by the first world countries.

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The first factor that constutes development  in South Africa is Improvement  in education and health, this is because education and health is important in terms of developing and promoting growth in a country. When education is prioritized a lot of people get the chance to be skilled and educated, and when a country has a lot of knowledgeable and skilled people then the human capital increases which then promotes development in South Africa. Even in the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement the Minister of finance usually emphasise on learning and culture expenditure as a necessity. Health also constitute development in South Africa because the more people are provided with proper health care they live longer which then helps to reduce death rate while increasing development.

The second factor that constitute development in South Africa is Growth and Structural  change. In  South Africa economy activity moves from primary sector by means of mining for raw materials like gold and coal and farming to secondary sector which consists of the manufactring of the raw materials. These primary and secondary sector therefore provide income and growth to the economy of South Africa hence it is seen as a developing country.

The third factor that constitute development in South Africa is modernisation, this can be witnessed through the industrialization and political transformation that took place in South Africa. SA has also been modernised by means of introducing technology in schools, universities and even workplaces like administration etc.

The fourth factor is rural to urban migration. Since from 1910 in SA, black people have been subjected to segregation whereby they were forced to overpopulate homelands in the rural areas and this incidence has been depriving growth to the black community, hence the need for a rural-urban migration. When people from the rural areas migrates to the urban areas   they are able to work in the urban industries which then helps to improve  their lives financially, this therefore promotes development in South Africa.

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Poverty has be defined as relative deprivation, this is due to the fact that poverty has been associated and related to the level of income and social living that is seen as average for a Society.

 Experts have came up with multiple theories and poverty lines that they use to determine and to define  poverty, for instance, the experts have derived measures like: the world bank one dollar or 216 dollars per day poverty line; the poverty datum lines (which was the first to be developed in South Africa); the minimum living level and supplemental living level (which was came up with Bureau for market research); while some experts came up with the household subsistence level; upper and lower poverty line, and lastly the food insecurity measures of poverty. In all these difinitions and poverty lines that the experts came up with there is no single straight forward difinition of poverty as all the experts base their definition of poverty on their orbitrary/ personal decisions, however one thing that stands out is the fact that it is the society that sets an average standard of living which every individual or family is expected to meet in order to not be associated with living in poverty.

In South Africa there are a lot of citizens who experience material deprivation and social exclusion because of unemployment due to inequality, however the South African government as a democratic state does incorporate some measures which serve to relieve those living in poverty.

The South African citizens who are underprivileged and who live in poverty  benefit by means of receiving grant money for children, while elderly people and people with disabilities  receive pension funds. Children attending in township schools learn for free, while those in tertiary are given an option to apply for Nsfas bursary to further their studies. There is also a Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) which is a socio-economic policy that was created to deal with the provision of RDP houses, clean running water and proper sanitation for those living in poverty.

The Government of South Africa has recently been issuing  R350 Covid-19 grant to all unemployed  South Africans. Most South Africans complain about the corruption in the South African government but even if that is the case, the South Africa constitution of 1996 was created for the purpose of eliminating poverty and reaching for equality.

The two theoretical approaches that will be discussed and compared in this activity are the functionalist theory and the conflict theory.

The functionalist theory states that the society is made up of different parts which are responsible for performing certain societal functions, and if one part doesn't perform its given duty it causes the whole society to suffer, for example, the governmental system is responsible for taking care of the security and the welfare of the citizens, while the teachers are responsible for passing education to the juveniles etc. but if the government and the teachers don't perform their duty, the whole society is at risk of experiencing social problems like unemployment, smash-and-grab, rape, depression etc.

The conflict theory however emphasise on inequality of gender, race, class as being the ultimate cause for social problems in societies. The conflict theory explains that those who are being ranked as superior are in conflict with the ones who are ranked inferior, This is due to the fact that the capitalists who are superior exploit the subordinate who are ranked as inferior. when the workers get exploited by the capitalists who seek to gain  profit, that exploitation creates conflict between the two, and this results to the formation of certain social problems like, crime due to unemployment and poverty, and alcoholism due to mental health issues. Social problems like rape, suicide also erupts as results of these inequalities.

In terms of finding solutions for social problems in societies, the functionalist theory emphasises that in order to reach for a better change and improvement the solutions for social problems must not be rushed and the changes should be minor changes every time, while the conflict theory emphasises on major social changes like eliminating inequality immediately.