Future-proof climate commitments: is South Africa ambitious enough?
15 Apr 2021
SACAN (South Africa Climate Action Network) and Greenpeace Africa brought together a webinar hosted by the
Mail & Guardian to examine where we stand as parties of the UNFCCC’s COP submit their revised commitments to reversing anthropogenic climate change. Panellists were: Claire Stockwell, Senior Climate Policy Analyst, Climate Action Tracker (CAT); John Wade-Smith, Head of Climate Change and Energy, British High Commission South Africa; Mkhuthazi Steleki, Director of Department of Fisheries Forestry and Environment (DFFE), Climate Change Development and International Mechanisms; and Thandile Chinyavanhu, Greenpeace Africa Climate and Energy Campaigner. The webinar was moderated by Ndoni Mcunu, Climate Scientist and Entrepreneur.
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South Africa to get another commission, this one to tackle the climate crisis
The cabinet has plans to establish a presidential commission that will examine the country’s climate crisis, according to Dr Thuli Khumalo, the deputy director general for climate change and air-quality management at the department for the environment, forestry and fisheries.
Climate change poses a health risk to our society. This risk may come from extreme weather conditions like droughts and storms, such as the recent cyclone Eloise, which claimed 21 lives in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, eSwatini and South Africa.
“The cabinet approved the establishment of the Presidential Climate Change Co-ordinating Commission (PCCC). The commission’s overall objective is to advise on South Africa’s climate-change response to ensure the realisation of the vision for effective climate-change response and the long-term just transition to a climate-resilient and low-carbon economy and society,” Khumalo
Footage taken by UNICEF on 24 January shows widespread flooding in the Buzi area of Mozambique after the landfall of Cyclone Eloise. (Screengrab, AFP)
A better and more mainstreamed understanding of the climate transition risk our historical growth trajectory poses to the long-term sustainability of our economy and society is needed, writes
Barbara Creecy.
The risks of climate change to building a post Covid-19 Green Economy need to be expanded as the country emerges from the challenges created by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Our Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan prioritises the need to overcome abiding constraints and provide sustainable solutions to intractable problems of poverty, inequality and unemployment.
Barbara Creecy has conceded that traders in some of the largest economies in the world are unlikely to prioritise trade with SA because of its high carbon-intensive production processes.