The climate crisis is upon us, and South Africans need to act urgently
Final touches are being put to a grassroots climate justice charter
● Victory in the Rugby World Cup made us all proud to be a winning nation. But SA is also a frontrunner in its development of a climate justice charter (CJC), a world first. Informing this is our experience of being a climate-change hot spot.
That we are in the throes of climate change is beyond debate. Cyclones, floods, heat waves, mud slides, tornadoes and drought are the incontrovertible signals. These emergencies, and five years of campaigning by the South African Food Sovereignty Campaign during the drought, have given birth to the charter. Various dialogues involving drought-affected communities, unions, faith-based communities, social and environmental justice organisations, youth and the media have shaped the draft charter.
In the US, the UK and Germany (all major carbon emitters) there has been a sea change in public opinion regarding the urgency of addressing the climate crisis. Such social tipping points challenge more than 20 years of failed UN climate negotiations.
A combination of factors, from climate shocks in everyday life and climate-justice activism to the rise of the children’s #FridaysForFuture movement and the mainstreaming of climate news, is all coming together. As a result, there has been a surge of support for green politics in this year’s European parliamentary elections; the general elections in the UK this week and the US elections next year are the first climate elections in Western democracies.
The $16.3-trillion (about R240-trillion) “Green New Deal” proposed by US senator Bernie Sanders is the most far-sighted in global climate politics. His plan tackles decaying infrastructure, decarbonisation through a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels (US emissions cut by 71% by 2030 and to net zero by 2050), promotion of public utilities and community-owned renewables, new smallscale agro-ecological farming systems, decarbonising the US military (one of the highest carbon emitters in the world) and generous support for developing countries to fast-track the transition. The ambition of the Sanders plan is reinforcing the green shift in US politics while recognising we face a challenge unprecedented in human history that requires citizen mobilisation in the process of system change.
In SA, the tipping point on climate-crisis awareness has not been reached. This makes us extremely unprepared.
The looting rampage by Jacob Zuma and the ANC has left us all questioning our assumptions about leadership, parties, the role of the state and economic management. We are in a state of trauma, trying to make sense of the theft of our democracy. The uninspiring policy narratives and performance of our government continue to bewilder us. A president who believes foreign direct investment is the “game-changer” that will save us is only reaffirming the globalisation dogma implicated in unemployment, inequality and the creation of an unviable society. Our environmental affairs minister is busy bagging low-hanging fruit while the government she serves continues its coal-heavy (60% until 2030) national energy mix, worsening the climate crisis.
Those involved in the CJC process refuse to surrender to fatalism. There is a strong commitment to encourage a national conversation, from below, to address historical social injustice together with new climate-related race, class and gender injustices.
The climate emergency gives us the opportunity to break with the crisis of political leadership. Our children and youth, rising under the banner of #FridaysForFuture, understand this. Through the CJC process, they are making a clarion call for decisive action now. They understand that an overshoot of 1.5°C in global warming, which the world is fast approaching over the next decade, means major tipping points will be triggered.
Moreover, they appreciate that if feedback loops such as the release of methane trapped in Arctic permafrost accelerates, then warming will increase and climate breakdown will likely lock into the Earth’s system. At global warming of 4°C, life becomes almost impossible and mass die-offs of human populations and nonhuman life are likely. For our children this is a ghastly and horrific future.
Yet some climate discourses argue an abstract “we” is responsible. Such perspectives tend to veer off in an anti-human direction, condemning present and future generations. Instead, the CJC is about the living hope of the many, while reinforcing the agency of the young.
Climate justice is about mitigating the impact of the climate crisis on those who are most vulnerable to it and bear the least responsibility for it. The wealthy can buy their way out of water shortages, food crises, heat waves and other climate calamities. But such privileged behaviour is not workable when the world’s financial or food systems collapse.
The UN has warned, in its 2019 report “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World”, that world hunger is on the increase due to climate change. Globalised and carbon-based industrial food systems, including SA’s, are extremely vulnerable and will be challenged under increased heating.
Grassroots systemic alternatives such as food sovereignty, based on the science of agro-ecology, are crucial for SA’s transition to a food system that generates less carbon and is more resilient and localised. The CJC anticipates the collapse of crucial life-supporting systems and promotes societal preparedness by affirming existing system-change alternatives. Next year it will be finalised and taken to parliament for adoption in accordance with section 234 of the constitution, which provides for charters to be adopted.
The struggle to secure a future for all of us has begun. It will not be a few activists who make the difference, but what all of us do.