Focus moves to practical steps

Hundreds of companies have endorsed a 2˚C Challenge Communiqué on climate change to be launched in South Africa  later this week, which calls on governments to continue to work towards a robust, equitable, global deal at the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP 17) to be held in Durban in November/December, while simultaneously taking immediate action at the national level to prepare for and mitigate climate change.

The companies, from a range of sectors including energy, mining, banking, retail and insurance, will warn that the window to limit global warming to below 2˚C is rapidly closing and that urgent action is imperative.

The South African Renewables Initiative, or SARi, which will seek to catalyse international financing for South African renewable energy projects and industries, will also be officially launched at COP 17.

Trade and Industry Deputy Minister Thandi Tobias-Pokolo presented the SARi vision at the Global Green Growth Forum in Copenhagen, Denmark, last week, indicating that it could complement South Africa’s contribution to global negotiations with immediate and practical domestic action.

Through a combination of low-cost loans and risk guarantee instruments from international sources, the scheme could help mitigate the burden on the South African economy, fiscus and the consumers of a large-scale renewables programme, according to Engineering News.

It could also assist the country in meeting its target of reducing its emissions trajectory to 34% below business-as-usual by 2020, and to 42% by 2025.

Further, it could stimulate the upscaling of renewables in the energy mix beyond the 17 000 MW outlined in the Integrated Resource Plan 2010, while potentially creating 40 000 green-industry jobs and “decarbonise exports by up to 30%,” it was reported.

According to Ernst & Young, in a statement on COP17, Africa is seen as one of the least developed continents while African countries are likely to experience severe effects of climate change.

The energy scarcity evident in Africa poses a fundamental developmental challenge that needs to be addressed immediately. If this situation is exacerbated, those Africans living below the poverty line will experience more severe energy deprivation.

Industrialised nations are urged to assist in dealing with the energy poverty crisis in Africa. The Millennium Development Goals stipulate clearly the challenges that must be addressed in the Least Developed Countries (LDC) and Developing Nations (DN)

Globally, diminishing returns on natural resources are being experienced. Ecological scarcity is gradually increasing in Africa and there is a need to mitigate this and adapt to sustainable ways of living.

Sources of food and energy are under threat and the consequences of this imminent crisis are becoming evident in these countries.

Environmental risks can be minimised by addressing ecological scarcities. It is necessary to find equilibrium between human needs and environmental realities. This can be achieved amongst others through switching to sustainable energy sources.

The pressures by Ernst & Young, by the 2˚C Challenge Communiqué and by the South African Renewables initiative are encouraging, the question however remains: where will the finance come from and who will dispense it.

At the heart of the matter is the Green Climate Fund.

According to the Mail & Guardian Yannick Glemarec, executive co-ordinator of the global environmental facility of the United Nations Development Programme, was positive that the fund would be finalised in Durban when he spoke at a breakfast in Johannesburg at the end of August.

Hinting at his inside knowledge, he added that some negotiating parties were quite positive about the progress being made to finalising and formalising it.

He said about 100 billion dollars should be raised by 2020 to fund the challenges of climate change and that the fund should take over a significant percentage of that.

So far, $30 billion had been pledged to the fund by 2012, he claimed.

But reports from international civil society group Civicus claim that the UN had received only $12 billion for the fund.

The chief objective of the fund is to pay for developing countries to change their development trajectories to more environmentally sustainable ones while also providing mitigation where the worst effects of climate change are felt.

For South Africa, this is important given its reliance on coal. Speaking at a symposium on innovative financing for a low-carbon economy in August, minister Trevor Manuel told the Mail & Guardian the country made a mistake decades ago in adopting an almost complete reliance on coal, but that this was changing.

The lack of direction in South Africa’s green policy could create problems in attracting money from the Green Climate Fund.

The country’s green paper, released in 2010, has been criticised for its lack of specific proposals and plans on financing.

Although getting different countries to agree on it might be hard, working out who will pay the $100 billion is nigh impossible. Manuel also said that it was easier to extract teeth from chickens than to convince G20 finance ministers to part with money.

With the possibility of a second global economic recession  and Europe not out of the financial woods yet, especially in  light of the Greece debt crisis, Manuel’s words about the chicken teeth could prove prophetic in Durban.

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