- Programme Director;
- H.E. Mr Vusi Madonsela, Ambassador of South Africa to The Kingdom of The Netherlands;
- Ms Louise Oliver, Head of Portfolio, Climate Governance and Society, IKEA Foundation;
- Mr Amol Mehra, Director of Industry Transformation, Laudes Foundation;
- Academia; Civil Society; and All Present.
I would like to thank The IKEA Foundation and The Laudes Foundation for providing this platform of dialogue, sharing and exchanging views on this existential topic. Especially at a juncture in human history when the voices of those most at risk and suffering from climate change in developing nations around the world, are not only sidelined but are also in desperate need for innovative policies, inclusive technologies, and just pathways that navigate their communities to a seat at the decision-making table, within the community of nations.
Global systems of governance have long been skewed towards an imbalance that largely serves the interests of the Global North across all sectors of industry, trade, geopolitics, medicine, and indeed Carbon emissions. Negotiating shared, long-term value for people and places that have otherwise been excluded and marginalised by the challenges of the Global South, is crucial in any multilateral dialogue about progress and universal development.
As we understand it, the universe itself is an aggregate of all things, the totality of everything across space, including the earth itself and other stars. Habitable conditions for plants and animals are a complex combination of air, water, and soil: elements that blend to inspire a primordial mix that allows for life on earth.
Such phenomena are well articulated by Gordon Childe in his seminal book entitled, “Man Makes Himself: The Story of Tools”, in the following words:
“Man’s emergence on earth is indicated to the archaeologist by the tools he made. Man needs tools to supplement the deficiencies of his physiological equipment for securing food and shelter. He is enabled to make them by the delicate correlation of hand and eye rendered possible by the constitution of his brain and nervous system.”
In simple terms, the intricate survival and development of society, is a function of securing food and shelter by acting upon nature. Arguably, this is the essence of the creation and evolution of technology for productive economic activity. The story of tools in the narrative of humanity, is very much the story of the accumulative development of technology in modern terms.
This itself is a precarious balancing act that gives way to a global system of human activity that can either transform us or destroy us.
In today’s world where technology, economies, migration and conflict are a constant, we notice how the intensification of a global polycrisis entangles us all. However, the added layers of planetary change and overwhelming forces of nature, dwarfs humanity’s issues around trade, industrialisation, cultural or ideological differences, and any discord thereof.
The idea of a polycrisis, in the face of massive climate change, suddenly changes the terms of engagement to crisis-and-response, and makes the management of global resources and worldwide ecology, a universal issue.
Reimagining a system of global governance that serves all life on Earth, represents a defining challenge and aspiration of our time. It is an opportunity to decide which values are important to us and at the same time underscores an urgency to adopt an approach towards equitable and inclusive growth.
Thus, leaders and societies are called upon to address global issues and agree on policies, such as the Paris Agreement of 2015 that mitigate climate change, with a human-centred purpose that also ensures sustainability.
This convergence of multiple global risks, each amplifying the other’s impact leaves climate change as arguably the central exacerbating factor.
If one were to review the Paris Agreement policies and targets, assess implementation, identify gaps and propose action steps, then one would be best placed to do so with a view to identifying policies that require strengthening, amending or change. In other words, this intervention involves the identification of existing policies that enable the transitional agenda and the pursuit of an equitable and inclusive global governance, as well as policies that impede this goal.
The cardinal question is whether the policy output of the Paris Agreement and other international climate accords, are equal to the challenges already entrenched in the Global South?
From current observations, climate policy changes are not positioned to make a meaningful contribution to the deep inequities in the quality of life of the marginalised, nor have they made fundamental shifts in outcomes as seen in the North / South divide, poverty, famine, power imbalances, and conflict.
Thus, in some areas, society appears to be ‘progressively realising’ the inclusive vision of the Paris Agreement, while in other areas there is a need to accelerate fundamental change.
Nations must be mindful of policy redress that has the potential to deepen inequities and reproduce historical pain, enduring poverty, and the lack of access for developing nations.
Policies can have both positive and negative impacts on people’s lives, as we know from the legislative history of colonialism and apartheid in South Africa.
In focusing on positive interventions to bring about inclusive change, we must remain sensitive about the possible unintended consequences of recent policies, and the need to ‘first do no harm’, and to a further extent embracing ‘harm reduction’ as a mindset for governance.
We all have a duty to be active in finding ways to realise the benefits of these policies for both people and planet, over and above enacting instruments to reduce harm to the existing lived reality of the marginalised.
It is this context that instructs us that for a Just Transition to be fully realised, it has to happen along three axes: (i) rethinking our way of living in nature; (ii) addressing the causes of the destruction of the ecological basis of our life world – the global commons; and (iii) the importance of climate justice as the basis of a new ecological constitutionalism for the world.
- Environmental Protection and Political Ecology
The idea of the environment is inadequate and value laden in ways that do not assist us to assess the challenges we face. In South Africa, environmental protection has had a specific historical meaning. It has been associated with technocratic conservation practices. Environmental protection has amounted to having national parks, where society can go and experience nature. In everyday common-sense, environmental protection has meant having a few green spaces such as parks, trees and gardens. Environmental protection in this frame fits with the ecology of market democracies.
Market democracies, also referred to as democratic capitalism, are systems where resource allocation is influenced by both market-driven efficiency (similar to free-market capitalism) and social entitlement policies. In these systems, democratic governments create policies that strike a balance between market dynamics and social welfare concerns.
Within the ecology of market democracies, corporations have the power to transform bio-genetic materials into commodities, nature is seen as natural capital and is subject to economic valuation.
Unfortunately, it seems that in this context, the regenerative cycles and complex interconnections of eco-systems do not matter.
Such an ecology is suicidal (eco-cidal), in the sense of obliterating the conditions that sustain life. This is not how we should be living.
- The Last Great Dispossession of the Planetary Commons
Market democracies ecologies are enabling the destruction of the planetary commons. Water, land, bio-diversity, energy and the earth system are part of the life enabling commons. We are living through the last great dispossession of the planetary commons systems.
In the apt phrase of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, “we’re running out of time to make peace with nature, but we cannot give up”.
The deadly Covid pandemic is a timely reminder of humankind’s negative forays into nature, in a manner that disturbs the equilibrium resulting in devastating consequences.
Scientists predict that this is not the last pandemic and so we continue to witness the age-old struggle between microbes and human beings.
The increasing commodification of water, mono-industrial agriculture, destruction of wild spaces, fossil fuel extraction and a scramble for resources such as rare earth minerals, copper, lithium – most of which are found in the developing world and needed for the transition to a green technology – are making our planet unliveable.
All of this reinforces the need for emancipatory ecologies.
- Climate Justice and a New Ecological Constitutionalism for the World
Climate Justice, which was first highlighted by trade unions and environmental justice forces, is part of emancipatory ecology. It is a concept that is integrally connected to social justice and recognizes the class, gender and racial fault-lines of planetary heating.
Within geopolitics, this means those least responsible for carbon centric living, with the lowest per capita emissions, are now carrying the burden of climate shocks.
In Africa, this means the poorest countries are facing cyclones, droughts, desertification, heat waves and flooding. Climate justice demands an end to such injustices.
The Paris Agreement’s central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius. [1]
From a global perspective, policy reform must be rethought and guided by climate justice and emancipatory ecology, as the basis to inspire a system of global governance that ends the war with nature.
However, the retreat from globalisation into regional blocs, has resulted in less stability, uncertainty, and reinforcing a geo-political polycrisis, as well as heightened conflict and tensions.
Higher interest rates impact negatively on the ability of developing countries to borrow against the backdrop of existing debt burdens. This has severe negative effects for the just transition process and ultimately the climate emergency. The developing world is lagging behind the developed world and our socio-economic issues are becoming marginal in the increasingly zero sum geo-political game.
The politics in regions and countries matter as do global tensions as demonstrated by the strong turn towards re-industrialisation and industrial policy in the USA with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the EU Green Deal. The question is whether these new technologies will be shared with the developing world so that they can also move up the value chains and do not remain largely exporters of minerals, food, etc. The EU Green Deal, IRA and heightened global tensions will result in funds that would have gone to developing countries, remaining in Europe and America.
Moving ahead, the genesis for the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) occurred at the U.N. climate talks (COP26) in Glasgow in November 2021. This is where the first Just Energy Transition Partnership between developed countries (represented by “International Partners Group,” (IPG) and South Africa was unveiled.
The Just Energy Transition Partnership affords a platform for identifying country-specific needs at programme level, over a period and securing predictable and accessible funding for the same period.
In each instance, the goal of the Just Energy Transition Partnership is to “mobilize” finance in the form of both concessional and commercial loans to help Global South countries either move away from coal and/or accelerate the deployment of renewable energy in ways that are socially just.
In terms of the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), developed countries committed to provide financial resources to assist developing countries.
How much funds will materialize from this entity is open to question as there has been a pull-back from finance funds over the last year.
South Africa’s experience in piloting a new type of climate finance vehicle potentially offers valuable lessons for other nations into some of the Drawbacks and Challenges of funding a just transition. For instance [2]:
- Foreign Capital Bias: While the partnership could facilitate cleaner energy systems, its funding model seems to favour foreign capital interests.
- Slowness: The transition is not progressing swiftly enough, hindering South Africa’s ability to meet climate goals.
- Unjust Starting Point: Historical government decisions neglected renewable energy and privatized the fossil fuel energy system.
- Green Structural Adjustment: Concerns arise that the Just Energy Transition Partnership may serve private companies profiting from the green transition, disadvantaging the global south.
- Unequal Transition: South Africa’s extreme wealth inequality affects access to land and capital needed for renewable energy investments.
- Weak Localization Policies: Only 0.1% of the investment plan directly supports local South Africa production of green energy components.
- Slow Transition to Renewables: South Africa’s proposed transition falls short of its fair share in limiting global warming to 1.5°C, aligning more with disastrous warming scenarios.
- Fossil Fuel Lobbies: Climate activists face opposition from fossil fuel interests, complicating the transition.
The question then is, where are we since the launch of the Just Energy Transition Partnership processes?
According to latest reports, this climate financing hangs in the balance as the newly formed South African Government of National Unity seeks to renegotiate terms following a recent decision to postpone the decommissioning of several of Eskom’s coal-fired plants.
Members of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s administration are currently in talks to revise an agreement with the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) to extend deadlines for the decommissioning of three coal-fired power stations.
If negotiations prove unsuccessful with the group associated with the World Bank, this could impact the first round of approved funding by the Climate Investment Funds. [3]
Collective action and mobilising the broadest cross-section of society is the most effective way to create a new harmony between humankind and nature.
Strategically speaking, the journey always begins at the end and therefore we need to be clear about our strategic goals. Where are we heading?
Thank you.
[1] https://unfccc.int/most-requested/key-aspects-of-the-paris-agreement
[2] Lenferna, A. (2023). South Africa’s unjust climate reparations: a critique of the Just Energy Transition Partnership. Review of African Political Economy, 50(177–178), 491–501. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2023.2278953
[3] https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/780936/south-africa-wants-to-shift-the-r8-4-billion-goalposts/
