An Eastern Cape Parks Board dictum reads: ”We promise the Earth.” As the ruling party’s delegates pack their bags for Polokwane, the daunting question stares us in the face: what promise, if any, does the ANC hold for the Earth?
Writing for Mayibuye almost 10 years ago, Pallo Jordan observed that ”while the market can very easily assess and weight the value of a host of other commodities, it finds it difficult or underestimates the value of things we cannot buy and sell: such as clean fresh air, the beauty of a landscape, the diversity of life and the quality of the biosphere we will leave for generations to come”.
The ANC would do well not to emulate the market’s approach. Fortunately, the policy conference in June made a commitment to refine the ANC’s focus on these issues. To what extent these matters will be considered remains to be seen. But this conference must act to avoid the fate predicted by an old Indian prophecy, which says: ”Only when the last river runs dry, the last fish drops dead, the last tree is cut down, will we discover that money cannot be eaten.”
Granted, the correct questions were posed at the policy conference. What is the appropriate energy mix for South Africa? Should we commit to nuclear energy? Will a biofuels strategy undermine food security? How do we respond to the challenges posed by climate change?
We have already experienced painful energy shortages, which affect everyone. Talk is cheap about the dangers of a nuclear future. The juxtaposition of biofuels and food security has left many speaking with forked tongues. Climate change has the potential to massively affect the availability of water, and although the ANC cannot guarantee rainfall, the challenge of water supply and access needs serious attention.
As do many other questions relating to the integrity of the Earth and livelihoods. Is it true, for instance, that environmental impact assessments are obstacles to development? Is this true despite the fact that for 35 years all the global environmental platforms have been pointing to the link between the environment and development?
Is it true that our environmental agenda is a luxury of the rich and an inconvenience the poor cannot afford? At the dawn of democracy in 1994, the ANC issued a statement in which it said: ”Environmental issues must spread beyond wildlife management and include the townships and rural areas”. Thirteen years on, has the country in general, and the ANC in particular, translated this message into practice?
The more we degrade the environment, the more we contribute to poverty. When we lose biodiversity, it has an impact on water systems, on climate conditions and the atmosphere, on agriculture and arable land. It is a fact that a majority of poor people in South Africa and indeed the world depend on these very important things.
Jeffrey Sachs, a United Nations advisor on the Millennium Development Goals, says that ”when the environment gets degraded, the rich get inconvenienced and the poor die”.
The ANC cannot preside over a land of dead poor people.
Mava Scott, director of communi-cations in the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, writes in his personal capacity