Monwabisi Booi used to believe that the environment was a liberal issue, irrelevant to basic needs. “It was an academic debate,” he says, “all about the saving of the white rhino.” But factors in his life collaborated to pull him into the debate, converting him from political activist to energy champion.
At home in East London Booi helped to lay bricks to raise money for his development studies at the University of the Western Cape. Later, from his service shack in Khayelitsha, he realised the link between community needs and sustainable energy. After two years in development work, he joined a force of young, black energy activists placed at local level to introduce cutting-edge initiatives into communities.
Booi and his peers, says Sarah Ward, manager of Urban Sustainable Energy for Environment and Development (Seed), are of necessity humanists as well as political animals — selling environmental urgency to national ministers, political councillors and local residents. They shine in contrast to South Africa’s traditional environmentalists, white engineers with “technical know-how and a narrow field of vision”.
Seed plants its energy champions in local structures — local municipalities, government departments and NGOs — to tackle the “hidden part of poverty”. Energy burns up more than a quarter of the income of the urban poor, but the pressure to deliver houses tends to override this critical detail. Seed, which targets low-income housing and public development, is a Sustainable Energy Africa programme, funded by Danish development funders Danida.
Seed pays for the training and wages of its nine advisers, and covers network meetings and computer expenses. The partner organisations cover the rest of the expenses.
The “infiltration” of these activists into local structures makes a big change, says Ward, to NGOs “scratching on the outside of local authorities, often in opposition to them”. Their placement “inside” also cancels out the temptation to blame local authorities.
Partners include the South African Local Government Association, the Ethekwini Municipality and NGOs such as the Development Action Group. Seed also supports “links” (designated staff) in the Department of Minerals and Energy Affairs and the Department of Housing.
In between sitting on the caucus of the Environmental Justice Network Forum, which trains community- based organisations in energy issues, Booi makes presentations to local politicians and national portfolio committees on the environment and energy.
Within their stations the advisers are connected to people with power, people who have sufficient charge to introduce new policies. Booi’s connection is Ossie Asmal, environmental coordinator at Tygerberg Administration — City of Cape Town.
Starting with a master’s in environmental management and experience in community development in Hanover Park on the Cape Flats, Asmal became a key founder of the Local Agenda 21 group. This group translates sustainable development resolutions made at the 1992 Rio world conference into local action. Booi is one of Asmal’s vital conduits in his job of overseeing different strategies to manage the local environment.
Booi’s initial mandate was the Build and Live Safe project in Khayelitsha. He trained building inspectors, helping them stretch their role beyond the settling of boundary disputes and the enforcement of building regulations to giving advice to residents about layout planning, insulation and placement on sites.
The Build and Live Safe project includes a schools energy programme aimed at conscientising children about energy. High school children, for example, are required to do energy audits of their school, says Booi.
The project amplified into the Kuyasa Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) pilot project, aimed at mitigating climate change. This is one of the country’s four efforts to “package” projects compatible with the 1990 Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement to mitigate 5,2% of the world’s carbon emissions by between 2008 and 2012. The world’s northern countries gain points for paying for such projects in developing countries. “Pollution knows no boundaries,” says Booi, and the northern countries are “buying” projects in places such as South Africa, Bolivia and Mozambique.
South South North, funded by the Dutch government, is helping to “package” the CDM pilot. Ten “demo houses” in Khayelitsha have been fitted with ceilings by local artisans. Solar water heaters and incandescent light bulbs have also been installed. A baseline study calculating the savings in terms of potential carbon emissions from the burning of paraffin for warmth or coal for electrical geysers must be done before the package is ready for sale. The country that takes it will ultimately pay for identical additions to 2309 houses in Kuyasa, Khayelitsha.
Booi is involved in a second CDM project in which methane will be recovered from decomposing organic matter in a closed landfill site in Bellville. Methane can be burned to create electricity, replacing coal as a much cleaner source of fuel.
A critical requirement for these projects, says Booi, is that they contribute to the sustainable development of the country as a whole.