LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENT
‘Our common future depends on climate action now’ – Ramaphosa
At COP27 we will be outlining our own contribution to the global climate change effort, but at the same time be making a clear call for developed-economy countries to meet their obligations.
Seven months ago, parts of our country experienced a deadly natural disaster that showed how vulnerable South Africa is to the effects of climate change.
The floods that lashed parts of KwaZulu-Natal, North West and the Eastern Cape in April this year were of such intensity that they laid waste to nearly everything in their path.
Homes were swept away by the rising waters and landslides. Businesses and properties were waterlogged, causing millions of rands in damage. Key infrastructure like ports, rail lines and roads were damaged or destroyed, resulting in substantial losses to the economy. Worst of all, more than 400 people lost their lives.
It has long been established that there is a clear connection between the frequency of extreme weather events and climate change. It is also well established that climate change has increased the likelihood of such events recurring.
According to one study, extreme weather events that were once expected every 40 years, now happen every 20 years. Extreme weather like flooding is also increasing in intensity. During the April floods, the city of eThekwini received the equivalent of 110 days of rainfall in just one day.
This week I will be attending the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Egypt, also known as COP27.
The conference is taking place at a time when developing economy countries are coming under increased pressure to contribute more to reducing global warming.
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South Africa will be chairing a high-level roundtable on just transition, where we will be making the case for developed economies to do more to support developing ones to meet their climate change commitments.
Although South Africa is playing its part in the global climate change effort, we have been consistent in emphasising our right to development. We must ensure that the transition to a low-carbon, climate change resilient economy does not jeopardise our developmental goals. The move from fossil fuels to greener, cleaner energy sources cannot take place at the expense of economic growth and job creation.
Strong position
We go to COP27 in a strong position. We recently adopted a Just Transition Framework to guide our national approach to this process. Last week we released the Just Energy Transition Investment Plan for public comment. It lays out the investments that are needed for us to realise our decarbonisation goals.
Africa historically bears the least responsibility for climate change, but it is Africa that is feeling its effects most.
Seven years since the Paris Agreement was adopted at COP21, countries with developed economies have largely failed to honour their commitments to provide substantial financial support for climate actions in developing economies.
One of the issues we will be highlighting at COP27 is that multilateral financial institutions need to lower the cost for developing economies to borrow money to fund their climate adaptation and mitigation efforts.
Many people may think that the discussions taking place in Egypt at COP27 are far removed from their everyday lives. This is far from the case. We all have a clear stake and an abiding interest in the outcomes of COP27.
The flooding earlier this year, the wildfires in the Table Mountain range, the locust plague outbreak in parts of the Northern Cape, Western Cape and Eastern Cape, are all associated with climate change. They affect our health and safety, our social and economic infrastructure and our nation’s food security.
As a country we will be outlining our own contribution to the global climate change effort, but at the same time be making a clear call for developed economy countries to meet their obligations.
It is only with this substantial support that we will be able to build the resilience that is needed to protect our country and safeguard our economy. It is only with significant additional funding that we can ensure that future generations of South Africans live in an environment that is clean, conducive to health and well-being, and that has not been destroyed because of the inaction of today’s leaders. DM
This is the President’s weekly letter to the nation released on Monday.
At Cop27 a great deal of hot air has revolved around who should pay – with the cry from the developing World that it should be the developed World, whom they believe have most benefitted – yet clearly, given the staggering improvement in births in Africa, brought about by better healthcare and medicine’s – the results of development – all parts of the World have benefitted, so the equation is not as simple as it is often portrayed as the developing World with it’s myriad problems of not only relative poverty but with often the weakest and most corrupt patterns of leadership.
At Cop27 a great deal of hot air has revolved around who should pay – with the cry from the developing World that it should be the developed World, whom they believe have most benefitted – yet clearly, given the staggering improvement in births in Africa, brought about by better healthcare and medicine’s – the results of development – all parts of the World have benefitted, so the equation is not as simple as it is often portrayed as the developing World with it’s myriad problems of not only relative poverty but with often the weakest and most corrupt patterns of leadership. I concur that human activity has been one of the major forces impacting on climate change – indeed, I have been an activist for Population Matters for pretty much the whole of the relevant five decades, but the clean-up and changes required, need to be both best managed and paid for by all, though the ability to pay means that, as ever the developed World will bear the heaviest burden – but not just the Western World, the whole of the World, and the developing World must get out of it’s knee-jerk reaction of blaming it all on “them”, which invariably, in their eyes, means the West, and look at both changing their ways and behaviours – becoming if you will, part of the solution rather than standing on the sidelines finger-pointing at “them” and waiting for “them” to deliver a solution.
Jon Quirk: “as ever the developed World will bear the heaviest burden …”. Good grief! Cumulative historical CO2 emissions are responsible for today’s global climate crisis. To fuel development, the “developed” West produced an overwhelming share of these emissions: the US is responsible for 25% of cumulative emissions, and the EU 22%. In comparison, between them, all the “developing” countries in the entire African continent and South America together produced only 6% — 3% each. Pakistan and Bangladesh produced 0.3 and 0.09% of the cumulative emissions. People in “developing” countries bear the brunt of the climate impacts of all these historic emissions: floods, droughts, heat waves, violent conflict, famine, displacement etc.
So, what is “development”? Can “developing ” countries ever “develop” without urgent massive financial support AND a new, fair, international economic order? With what sources of energy? In what timescale? Can “developed” countries sustain or even justify their development model?
Meanwhile, SA is responsible for 12-13% of today’s global emissions, and our carbon emission targets are not nearly ambitious enough. Something has to change in the way we imagine the world.
Russia, that by invading Ukraine – an event that arguably has resulted in a serious ecological disaster on an apocalyptic scale, should be made to pay not only gargantuan reparations to Ukraine, but also the whole environmental clean-up operations (including Chernobyl) that their leaders actions have caused, and we need to properly investigate the root-cause of Covid-19 that did so much to decimate the global economy and thus made it so much harder for us all collectively to tackle climate change. And most of all, we need action – collective action – and a new way of doing, being and interacting, all around the World.
Well said Jon Quirk
Eskom and Sasol are two of the world’s largest contributors to atmospheric pollution and atmospheric carbon build-up. There has been minimal attention by the government to the fact that it has allowed these two entities,amongst others, to get away with non-compliance with RSA’s anti-pollution regulations. At the same time, senior members of the government have over the years impeded the development of green energy, and even today we hear them praise-singing in favour of the myth of “clean coal” and gas. This is despite the fact that African countries, and South Africa in particular, are particularly well endowed with wind, solar energy and the minerals required for a green transition. The present and looming disaster brought about by our energy trajectory cannot be ignored.
Anyone who has been in Europe over the past fifty years cannot, not be impressed by the way that the air quality has dramatically improved as the continent gave up on coal. Yet, as Europe has cleaned up it’s act, globally the situation, over the same period, has got markedly worse, as indicated by increasingly more and more severe weather patterns strike.
All countries need to think and plan for these changing circumstances – for example, what sort of dimwit governments allowed and encouraged the population of the Horn of Africa to increase fivefold in just a few decades and since Bob Geldorf’s extortion to the World to give aid to fight the last famine. Do they think they are all there in some water-rich region? Where is the leadership?
And the same comment can be made for pretty much the whole of sub-Saharan Africa. EVERY country needs to get it’s house in order – finger-pointing and blaming “them” for either ideological reasons or because they both have deep pockets and a conscience, gets nowhere.