Committee calls on public for strategy to cut emissions

GLOBAL climate change was one catastrophe humanity had the power to stop, Nelson Mandela had said, and the South African public now have a chance to say how this should be done, environmental portfolio committee chairperson Jackson Mthembu said.

“As we go to Paris for COP21, we would like to have a broad mandate from all our people,” Mthembu said last week.

For that reason, the committee is set to hold public hearings on September 22 and 23 to get the views of people on the Department of Environmental Affairs’s discussion document on South Africa’s negotiating position for COP21.

World leaders will meet in Paris in December to negotiate a new agreement to cut carbon emissions sufficiently to keep the average global temperature increase to 2ºC, and so avoid what scientists call “dangerous” climate change.

The discussion document broadly outlines the country’s position regarding the kind of agreement that it would like to see in Paris, and outlines its “intended nationally determined contribution”, or the amount of greenhouse gas emissions it was prepared to cut.

Mthembu said at the previous climate negotiations in Lima that it had been agreed that there must be a “bottom-up” approach to determining the extent of emission cuts.

The department, with provincial governments, had already held meetings in each province to discuss the document. The parliamentary public hearings were in addition to those consultations, Mthembu said.

For further information, contact Faith Kwaza at fkwaza@ parliament.co.za