Climate change goals must ‘respond to evidence’

THE world would miss an historic opportunity at the Paris climate talks if governments failed to cut greenhouse gas emissions to the level that science had indicated was necessary, Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa said.

Speaking in Johannesburg on what South Africa hoped to see in Paris in December, Molewa said the negotiations needed to recognise that a solution to global climate change was relevant only if it were responsive to the scientific evidence.

Scientists had confirmed that each of the past three decades was successively warmer than the preceding ones, a process that started with the Industrial Revolution. Although nations had made commitments to cut emissions, scientists said these were not enough.

Molewa said while South Africa had made a commitment at the climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009 to cut emissions by 34 percent below “business as usual” by 2020, and by 42 percent by 2025, success depended on the help from developed countries to poorer countries financially and technically.

This obligation was also set out by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

“Climate change poses one of the most serious threats to Africa’s long-term sustainable development, economic growth and qualify of life,” Molewa said.

South Africa is already experiencing the effects of climate change, with the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather around the country. Parts of the country have been in the grip of drought, while others experienced flash floods.

The climate talks at Cop 17 in Durban set the path for a new legally binding agreement to be clinched at Cop 21 in Paris. The agreement, under the Kyoto Protocol, would end in 2020, after which the world would need a new one.

This would need to address not only cuts in greenhouse gases, but also issues of how the world would adapt to the levels of the inevitable climate change.