South African parliamentarians are positioning themselves to take on the climate challenge at home. Sixteen South African delegates attended a climate-change forum for legislators held in Copenhagen, Denmark. This was by far the largest delegation to represent a country at the forum, which is hosted by the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment (Globe). The last time Globe held a forum for legislators, South Africa sent only one representative.
In addition, Max Sisulu, speaker of the national assembly, addressed the forum during the opening session. This is the first time a speaker of Parliament addressed the forum, which supports greater political leadership on environmental issues and seeks to capacitate lawmakers to deal with climate-change policy.
Sisulu said the extent to which climate-change issues were considered and integrated into existing policy fields was a key issue to be tackled.
‘Environment mustn’t be seen as an add-on. It must be central to all of the policies. As parliamentarians, there’s a lot we can do in terms of legislation that is environmentally friendly and also to oversee the actions of government to bring about a reduction of carbon emissions and greenhouse gases,” he told the M&G.
Adam Matthews, secretary general of Globe International, said the organisation was ‘delighted” by the renewed involvement of the South African parliamentarians. He said legislators and parliamentarians had an important role to play and that they should be ‘at the centre of action” on climate change. ‘We’ve learnt from the mistake of not having engaged parliamentarians before,” said Matthews. ‘Kyoto wasn’t ratified by the senate and that’s why the United States never joined [the protocol].”
Dr Eugene Ngcobo, chairperson of the portfolio committee on minerals and energy, who represented South Africa at the last Globe forum said that at the time certain people in Parliament considered Globe to be a ‘lobby group of environmentalists”, and this was why there had been such poor representation. But the DA’s environmental affairs spokesperson Gareth Morgan, a member of the delegation, said he believed a lack of organisation was partly to blame; the last Globe forum took place in the aftermath of the national elections.
Following that forum, Ngcobo lobbied for greater involvement in Globe by engaging with MPs, caucuses and the deputy president. But he credited President Jacob Zuma for emphasising the importance of taking on climate-change issues in Parliament. Ngcobo said that when Zuma attended a heads of state summit in Rome earlier this year, the number one issue on the agenda was the financial crisis, followed by the climate-change crisis.
Ngcobo said it was imperative that parliamentarians throughout Africa come up to speed with climate-change issues. He pointed out that even though African countries were heavily involved in international climate negotiations, their members of Parliament were often unaware of the positions taken by their environment departments.
‘Ministers of environment are supposed to be articulating their positions. Unfortunately, at certain negotiating platforms, there is not as much consensus [among parliamentarians] as we have at these high level meetings of the Globe countries,” he said.
The climate treaty, which will be agreed at a UN conference to be held in Copenhagen this December, is frequently referred to as the most important treaty to be negotiated.
Morgan, who has attended all except one of the Globe forums since 2006, said he was pleased that South African parliamentarians were engaging more seriously with the climate issue. ‘At some point in 2011 South Africa’s climate Bill will land on our desks in Parliament. Our challenge is to make sure that by the time we get to that point, MPs are capacitated, that they understand the importance of the issue and the science, and that this matter is elevated within parliament,” he said. Morgan said that although the South African Parliament has not adequately capacitated itself to tackle climate change, it was now ‘making the right move”.