Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk has rejected a claim he is doing nothing concrete about climate change, saying plans by the government to deal with the threat of global warming are well in hand.
Earlier on Wednesday, Democratic Alliance (DA) environment spokesperson Rafeek Shah claimed the minister had ”dropped the ball” and was not doing his job in this regard.
”As the lead minister on climate change, Van Schalkwyk spends a lot of time talking at international conferences on the need for ‘serious and immediate’ action. But he has yet to actually produce anything concrete,” Shah said in a statement.
Despite warnings contained in numerous reports about the implications of climate change for South Africa — the most recent being the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fourth assessment — South Africa does not even have a climate-change strategy, he said.
”Van Schalkwyk needs to urgently explain what his plan is to, firstly, mitigate the consequences of South Africa’s industrial development on the environment and, secondly, minimise the effects of predicted climate change,” Shah said.
Van Schalkwyk’s office said in a statement the DA needs to do its homework before issuing statements.
It repeated details of a ”climate road map”, unveiled by the minister last month, and said plans currently in hand to deal with climate change include:
An inter-ministerial committee overseeing a ”long-term mitigation scenario process”. Excellent progress is being made on this, and once completed a ”high-level roundtable of government, civil society and captains of industry” will be held to consider a national response to climate change;
Leading researchers finalising the fourth assessment report of the IPCC, which will result in a special report-back seminar ”to analyse the regional and national implications”;
The Department of Science and Technology finalising a climate-change technology needs assessment, and a national climate-change research and development strategy, ”in the next few months”;
The Department of Minerals and Energy making ”strong headway” in implementing a national energy-efficiency accord; and
The Department of Agriculture and Land Affairs developing a climate-change response plan.
— Sapa