No one can escape weather changes
On April 10, I received a frantic call from a colleague wanting to know if I was safe, as our attractive small Wild Coast town of Port St Johns and surrounding villages were experiencing floods.
Coincidentally in 2020 extreme heat dried the natural water sources. Residents were forced to buy drinking water.
Yet in April this year, water was gushing out of hill slopes, damaging private property and infrastructure.
KwaNonyevu, Greens Farm, and Mthumbane villages were among those hardest hit and were full of panic-stricken residents.
The dumping of solid waste and the proliferation of alien invasive plants have radically increased our vulnerability to climate change, both because of how they caused the water channels to recede and how they can overflow when the rains are heavy, worsening floods.
Over the years, our arable land has become less productive, as drainage systems poisoned our soil with effluent and other contaminants, such as nappies dumped upstream.
Climate change is the direct cause of this wealth deterioration: our polluted, drying, and eroding land cannot sustain as many animals as it used to. When this happens, local communities have fewer options on which plants to cultivate. Because of increasing crop failures during droughts and floods, there is food insecurity and increased reliance on government social grants.
As I listened to the stories of other festival participants at the recent Rural Action for Climate Resilience learning festival in Cape Town, I realised that millions of people were already battling for survival. No society has been left unscathed by more frequent and intense droughts, wildfires, storms and floods resulting from three factors, all caused by humans.
First, global warming has caused the seas to rise.
Second, SA’s heavy reliance on fossil fuels mined on land and offshore, results in carbon emissions and the destruction of the environment.
Third, the rapid destruction of indigenous vegetation and land pollution have negatively altered the flow of fresh water, exposing the land to rapid degradation.
The UN Climate Change Conference — to be held at Sharm elsheikh, Egypt, from November 6 to 18 — must develop an approach of mitigation and adaptation based on justice and equity, reflective of local community realities. COP27 represents a unique and timely opportunity for the world’s citizens to come together, recognise our common interests and restore multilateral co-operation.
Local communities call for meaningful engagement in climate change negotiations and decision-making of small-scale food producers and indigenous communities, including women and youth.
We must be concerned about the South African government’s seemingly wavering in its commitment to switch to green energy. Some examples are its retrogressive issuance of licences to mine in the Wild Coast and the West Coast and its repeated calls for investment in fossil fuel infrastructure.
It is hard to believe politicians, who insist that their worrisome stopgap measures necessitated by immediate energy supply problems, should not be mistaken for long-term strategies.
Yet their stubborn promotion of oil and gas mining along our coastal waters and their intention to enter into a 20-year agreement with Turkish company Karpowership, cast doubt on the sincerity of their commitment to embark on the greener road ahead.
As citizens of the developing world, we are increasingly frustrated with rich countries’ refusal to pay their fair share for a crisis for which they bear overwhelming responsibility.
To date, a disproportionate share of climate finance has been directed toward mitigation, leaving us in developing countries largely to fend for ourselves in financing adaptation investment.
I was surprised to learn that many of us at the festival had taken precautions before leaving our homes — we were in fear of what could happen should unpredictable heavy rains fall during our absence. This experience shows that we all struggle with the same forces, from Wild Coast to West Coast. My local community is connected to yours wherever you read these words.
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