Gustav Thiel
South Africa was among international environmental authorities converging on Kyoto, Japan, this week to decide the future regulation of global greenhouse emissions. But while the South African delegation is taking an environmentally conscious stand at the conference, South Africa is described as the most ill- prepared country in the world to face the challenges of reducing emissions.
The third United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference started on Monday and ends on December 10, and South Africa narrowly avoided having only observer status at the conference by being the last country to officially ratify the convention in Parliament at the end of August. The conference is the biggest ever in Japan, with 10 000 delegates from 168 countries attending.
Experts at Kyoto, including several members of the South African delegation, say one of the thorniest issues is to decide how big a burden Third-World countries should bear in trying to reduce emissions in future, an extremely expensive exercise for industries. The first conference held in Berlin in 1995 stipulated that no binding decisions should be made for developing countries, but pressure from the United States might change this.
Poor nations have occupied the moral high ground in recent years, insisting that rich countries achieved prosperity largely by burning the coal and oil that produce greenhouse gases. Since they are responsible for the most emissions to date, it is believed they should be the first ones to take legally binding steps to reduce them. They are also wealthier and so better able to afford the technology needed to reduce greenhouse gases.
Cornelis van der Lugt, a member of the South African delegation, who works for the Department of Foreign Affairs’s multilateral affairs division, said from Kyoto this week that the delegation was painfully aware of the importance of their mission and the fight on their hands to ensure that Third-World countries are not stuck with a raw deal. “Whatever the feelings about our environmental policies back home, this conference will shape the future regulation of greenhouse emissions and we must make it clear that we have an enormous stake in the process,” he said.
Van der Lugt is confident that a compromise could be reached between First and Third- World countries at the conference. “We now have more than observer status and can influence agreements reached at the conference. In fact, that is what we are doing already and it shows that we can influence the eventual agreement reached here.” Hank Roodt, foreign affairs’s deputy director of environment and a member of the delegation, says the targets set for developing countries like South Africa at Kyoto will have a big impact on our economy.
South Africa is responsible for about 1,6% of global greenhouse emissions, making the country the largest source of emissions in Africa and the 18th largest in the world.
Proposals on how to reduce emissions vary, from the European Union’s suggestion of a reduction of 7,5% by 2005, Japan’s 5% between 2008 and 2012 and the US suggestion that 1990 levels should be achieved again between 2008 and 2012.
South Africa is allied with Germany, Brazil and Singapore in suggesting a 15% reduction by 2010. Van der Lugt says South Africa’s position is flexible and a final formulation will depend on discussions during the conference. “The feeling here is, however, that it is in the interests of all countries to find a workable solution. Hopefully we can achieve this, but we have a skillful delegation who can lobby well for our preferred position without compromising the environment.”.
A source at the Department of Environmental Affairs, however, described South Africa’s environmental policy as “chaotic” and predicted that the country would become one of the major contributors to global greenhouse emissions in the next century, in spite of what transpires at Kyoto.
He added that the department regarded a sound environmental policy as secondary to the more immediate challenges facing the country. This, he said, could have disastrous consequences for the future economic viability of South Africa because he believed the reduction of greenhouse emissions would become unbearably expensive in the next century.
Mike Laing, a director of climatology at the South African Weather Bureau, says: “Internationally people are very sceptical about our failure to act and this has already meant that we have been marginalised.”
He says all South African industries generate greenhouse emissions, and a willingness on their part to reduce their contributions could only benefit the country.
Robben Penny from the Environmental Monitoring Group said a major thrust at Kyoto would be to ensure that people who already suffered from the effects of greenhouse emissions would be able to live in healthy circumstances in the future. Industries, she said, are reluctant to admit their responsibility in affecting people’s lives.
“Although the reduction of greenhouse emissions is an important issue, I believe there are scores of people living in South Africa who suffer from the emissions of cheap coal that they buy in Gauteng.
“While it is difficult to say how many people are affected, it is safe to say that the numbers are already too great. I am not always sure that government is doing enough to make it clear that they realise how important these environmental issues are.”
Penny’s concern for ordinary folk is a self-admitted struggle against international pressure by corporate lobbies to undermine cuts in greenhouse gasses. In South Africa, the power giant Eskom says their environmental policies are “very sound”. Their head environmental man who is also in Kyoto, Dr Steve Lennon, says the company does all in its power to keep emissions to a minimum.
But sources at the departments of environmental and foreign affairs say Eskom is trying to protect its vested interests in coal-produced energy.
US president Bill Clinton’s announcement that timetables for cutting emissions should be put off for 20 years was seen by many experts as fodder for corporate lobbies to sustain levels of emissions in their favour. The South African delegation in Kyoto say these concerns will not influence their support of a 15% reduction by 2010, in spite of the fact that the corporate lobby on the South African delegation, four out of 11, is the strongest of all the delegations.