Africa can secure a better future
• Sustainability is about the world we want to live in and the legacy we want to leave
Our efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change have been met with differing but powerful responses from various affected sections of society.
It isn’t just climate change we are facing, but changes in our economic structure, including the way we work and do business. With all these changes, is it possible that our efforts related to climate change could support growth, improve incomes and provide new opportunities for business and workers displaced by competition and globalisation?
The latest Stats SA figures show that the structure of the economy has changed, and it is not delivering in the ways we had hoped or generally expected it would. Despite the 1.3% contraction in 2022’s last quarter, the economy remains above its pre-Covid level. It made a full recovery, yet employment remains below the pre-crisis level, with 450,000 fewer jobs than before the devastating lockdowns.
Two of SA’s largest economic industries demonstrate these trends. The trade sector grew 160% from 2008 to 2022 but employs 38% fewer people. At the same time, the manufacturing sector grew 96%, but has lost 1.9-million jobs. This suggests that the way we do things is changing, as are outcomes.
In a 2019 article, “Climate Change is Causing Disruptions to Agriculture”, agricultural economist Wandile Sihlobo said that the key driver of the contraction in our domestic agricultural fortunes was erratic summer weather, which led to a drop in summer crop plantings and poor yield expectations. He highlighted climate change’s effect on our food systems. Agriculture is a key economic industry, which government has prioritised not just for food security but to create jobs. This suggests collaborative efforts must be made for its viability and sustainability as a key economic sector.
The Covid-19 experience highlighted our economic and social vulnerabilities, and revealed an unprecedented social solidarity. As we reflect on the post-Covid period, we have to ask: what kind of society do we want to be? This is an important question because we can expect further changes to our economy and social lives, particularly caused by changes in the environment. It is up to us to decide whether these will be on balance good, or mostly bad. Of course, since the Covid-19 lockdowns we have suffered many disruptions, from devastating floods to social instability and energy challenges.
The African Development Bank has argued that “countries, companies and communities around the world are looking to put in place policies needed to catalyse a transition to a green economy, an economy that can realise development for all but in a way that keeps humanity’s footprint within planetary boundaries while delivering significant social benefits from eradicating poverty to generating decent jobs.
“As the continent arguably most affected by climate change, it is heartening to see there is an opportunity, by tapping into Africa’s abundant natural or renewable sources for more sustainable energy, to derive economic and developmental benefit from the global drivers behind it.”
Over the past decade, Africa has been leading important projects that meet developmental needs and deliver incomes as well as protect our future.
As documented by the UN, these include a landfill gas-toenergy project in KwaZuluNatal that provided 3MW of electricity in its first phase. In Kenya, a geothermal project, the first Clean Development Mechanism project to issue certified emissions reduction, helped add 35MW of electricity to the Kenyan national grid and issued more than 230,000 carbon credits.
Also in Kenya, a land management project led to tripling of maize yields for Kenyan farmers and trained more than 300,000 smallholder farmers on sustainable land management practices. In Egypt, a vehiclescrapping and recycling project that led to replacing more than 40,000 old taxis in Cairo helped avoid the equivalent of 130,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2013 and 2014.
These interventions are important as they speak to demonstrable efforts by business and governments to work towards using sustainability as a tool for economic development and business opportunity. About 46% of Sub-Saharan African business leaders surveyed by PwC expected their companies to face moderate, high or extremely high exposure to threats stemming from social inequality — including income, gender, race and ethnicity issues — over the next 12 months, compared with only 26% globally. This includes concern about social and political instability.
Some of these will be worsened by the effects of climate change and our changing economic structure: negative effects on economic sectors such as agriculture; tourism and fisheries (affecting livelihoods); risks to health resulting from flood waters; changes in seasons making income unpredictable; worsening rural and urban migration; and effects in living conditions, areas and building materials.
Well understood, sustainability refers to the kind of world we want to live in, and the legacy we want to leave behind. A more tempered system of corporate governance would still provide robust accountability to investors, while giving corporations some reasonable space to balance the needs of all stakeholders and carry out a sustainable plan of long-term growth.
While many companies think about sustainability in terms of how they would like to be seen, a better approach is how they can help create a world where they want to live and prosper, and then leave behind.