A field ranger on patrol at Somkhanda game reserve in northern KwaZulu- Natal — an example of how rural communities can benefit from investing in wildlife economies.
The Green Model is a strategy for making the economy sustainable and vibrant, improving food and water security, optimising national energy and creating jobs without harming the environment.
It is presented in the South African Green Economy Modelling (Sagem) report, released late last year, but lack of appropriate funding may turn it into a pipe dream.
The goal of the report was to create a scientific model of the current economy and compare it to alternatives to calculate what it will take to “green” South Africa’s economy.
The picture of the current situation painted at the beginning of the report is grim: water use will exceed its availability by 2025 and degradation of agricultural land threatens food security.
Half of the country’s wetlands are already destroyed, marine resources are over-exploited, inadequately controlled air pollution is placing the health of citizens at risk and “peak coal”, the time when it is predicted coal reserves will start running out, is only seven years away.
The alternative scenarios suggested by Sagem would see improvements in sustainability without sacrificing economic growth.
The best scenario, the report states, could be achieved with a 2% investment of gross domestic product (GDP) in the green economy.
If properly implemented, this scenario would result in a diversified energy mix, green electricity comparable to that provided by the new power station at Medupi, an energy-efficient transport system, impressive economic growth and job creation, reduced pollution as well as improved water and food security.
Testing the model
The Sagem scenarios may be used in strategic planning and policy making, said Saliem Fakir, head of the Living Planet Unit at World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) South Africa.
“The importance of modelling is to do some sort of sensitivity scenario and then you test the model against reality.
“There are a number of things to consider, such as the existing dependency on sectors such as mining and structural shifts into other sectors that are less energy intensive.”
A multidisciplinary team representing the UN, the South African government, academia and the private sector produced the report on green modelling. However, it does not prescribe how to get there.
“Modelling can describe the ideal state, but it often struggles to say how to do that in the context of a real economy. I think that is the biggest challenge,” said Fakir.
The departments of water and environmental affairs have set aside R800-million in a Green Fund for growing the green economy.
However, this represents a meagre 0.09% of GDP, which totalled R863-billion in the third quarter of 2013, and fails to cover even the first year’s funding requirement for Sagem’s best-case model.
Launching the report in August 2013, Minister Edna Molewa said the green economy is “a sustainable development path based on addressing the interdependence between economic growth, social protection and natural ecosystems”.
It is aligned to many other government strategies and plans, including the national development plan, the new growth path, the national climate change response policy and the industrial policy action plan, Molewa said.
Economist Dawie Roodt cautioned against using the Green Model as a smokescreen for job creation: “I fear that people will now jump on the green bandwagon and spend huge amounts of money on it to build some probably unproductive thing somewhere in the desert.”
He said the costs of alternative energy technologies may still be too high for the Green Model to succeed.
“It is better to invest in the green economy because it makes financial sense within the price mechanism, instead of just blindly encouraging people to invest in the green economy because it is fashionable and creates employment”.
Professor Sarah Bracking, an international researcher assessing poverty reduction models at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said while policies to conserve nature and create jobs are welcome goals, “they will not, in themselves, move South Africa on to a lower emissions pathway. This will require radical change to the energy infrastructure and dependence on mining”.
Bracking warned that one of the problems with the Green Model is that it “risks suggesting that we can have it all … without having to make any real changes in consumption patterns, global inequality or lifestyle. This hides real contradictions and choices in energy and environmental policy.”
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