Two years ago the international community gathered in Johannesburg for the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) and drew up a plan to eradicate poverty and protect resources for the benefit of the planet. Last week the government and civil society organisations from across South Africa gathered at the Johannesburg +2 Sustainable Development Conference to assess the country’s progress in reaching these goals.
The conference was structured around thematic discussions, including water and sanitation, human settlements, energy and climate change, agriculture and food security, science and technology, natural resource management, governance for sustainable development and the role of business.
”We agreed on an ambitious set of targets at the WSSD, which are designed to take the world on a sustainable development growth path,” said Chippy Olver, Director General of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism.
”The WSSD established the very important principle that sustainability and global poverty eradication are inseparable,” he added.
”You can’t talk about conserving the environment without at the same time talking about how you are going to eliminate global poverty. That is the important policy we in South Africa have spent the past 10 years trying to implement.”
Olver said now is the time for South Africans to think critically about ”how we are doing with the targets that we agreed on. Not just globally, but particularly how we in South Africa are achieving those targets.”
The WSSD set definite targets that must be met within specific timeframes in terms of the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, which was adopted by the summit delegates.
Olver said there has been some progress globally but, overall, it is a very mixed picture. ”Many developing countries, I’m afraid to say, are not on track to meet their social delivery targets by 2015. But our own domestic experience is, I think, far more positive.” Olver believes South Africa has made good progress on most targets relating to access to services but said, ”there are still some critical sustainable development debates we need to have in this country”.
In environmental terms, the department has major challenges to overcome. The planet is facing a crisis because of loss of biodiversity, and South Africa is not exempt. But Olver said South Africa has not shied away from confronting the issue of dwindling biodiversity. ”We recently pushed through legislation on the subject of biodiversity. Our protected areas are the fastest-growing ever in South Africa’s history. But it is a race against time.”
He believes the great challenge for South Africa is to place an economic and social value on biodiversity.
”The best way to secure the future and the protection of biodiversity is for it to mean something to people.”
South Africa’s cheap electricity and its sustainability was one of the key debates at the conference. ”South Africa produces some of the cheapest electricity in the world because of our massive coalfields that underlie almost a third of the country. And, unfortunately, South Africa will be relying on coal for many decades to come. But we have to start to shift our reliance on coal to other sources.”
But Olver emphasised that the country’s options are limited because of the need to power a big industrial economy.
He said nuclear power can not be discarded at this stage if South Africa is to power its economy effectively.
”I don’t think this conference is necessarily going to resolve all the issues … but we want to provide a context within which such debates may take place.”