Explore the overlooked parliamentary sessions that shape South Africa's climate change policies and discover how we can ensure effective implementation of the Climate Change Act.
Image: Armand Hough/Independent Newspapers
There is a space in the life of our parliamentary processes that we have left unwatched - that is the annual series of mini-plenaries sessions in our Parliament, to outline and broadly approve the government’s annual programme of action and the departmental business plans– these plenaries are known as Budget Votes, and have over time fazed off our discourse as policy pronouncements and spaces to watch.
During these votes, various Ministers and their Deputies highlight several priorities for the new fiscal year, and as a Commission we stand with bated breath expecting policy announcements and programmatic response to tackling climate change.
This expectation is informed by need to give our climate commitments a helping hand and ensure the implementation of the Climate Change Act (the “Act”), which aims to enable South Africa to meet its emissions reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement and provides for a legal framework for the adaptation of climate change and mitigation response.
All these requirements of the Act, put every government department at the center of climate change.
That is said, the recent Department Budget Votes were faint and the climate change agenda remains on the margins of their “core” mandates.
The Act also requires government departments to develop and implement climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, and to integrate climate change considerations into their planning and decision-making processes.
The Act which covers a myriad of areas necessary to address the challenges provides for the determination of the national greenhouse gas emissions trajectory; determination of sectoral emissions targets for emitting sectors and subsectors; and allocation of carbon budgets.
As South Africa moves into the implementation phase of its climate response as articulated in our National Determined Contribution (NDCs), the PPC’s advisory role to government will continue to evolve as a convener of diverse stakeholders, and a bridge between global climate commitments and local realities towards supporting implementation.
To this end, as the Presidential Climate Commission’s work into the future takes shape, we have pledged to nudge government at all levels to focus on climate action and improving implementation on adaptation and resilience readiness across the various sectors and importantly on interventions in governance; finance, technology, and innovation; infrastructure and behavior change.
Our legislators, in writing our climate law, appreciated that we needed to address the challenge at the coalface of our development challenges and opportunity.
The Act therefore underpins that sub-national governments are integral to tackling the global challenge of climate change, as both a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and a major source of innovative climate solutions.
As part of their contribution in the attainment of the country’s NDC targets, sub-national governments are required to develop their own climate change mitigation targets in the form of Provincial Emission Targets (PETs) and local government emissions targets (LGETs), as well as to conduct climate change needs and response assessment and develop, implement and report on climate change action.
Whilst this mandate is constitutional, in reality the resources and capacity constraints will require investments in local and provincial climate data management system aimed at improving greenhouse gas emissions tracking, climate data collection, reporting, and monitoring to support evidence-based climate planning and compliance.
What should be a quick win is the development of a climate governance work programme that aimed at strengthening provincial and district readiness for implementation of the Climate Change Act through MRV system enhancement, greenhouse gas inventory development, climate planning support, stakeholder engagement, capacity building, and climate finance mobilisation.
As the clock ticks , we need to scale up ecosystem-based approaches to managing climate-intensified disaster risks in vulnerable regions of South Africa and to improve the resilience of communities that are vulnerable to climate change exacerbated floods, droughts, and wildfires.
What every government department should at least do is build resilience and reduce climate vulnerability by focusing on critical sectors such as water and ecosystem resource, energy, and agriculture, to reduce the negative impacts of climate change and improve the resilience of these communities.
On our degenerating urban spaces, we need climate resilience programmes focused on reducing flood risks, rehabilitating river systems, improving waste management, and strengthening environmental resilience.
Such will promote transformative urban management, in partnership with all affected stakeholders to rehabilitate and sustainably manage all infrastructure nodes and corridors in a manner that (i) promotes resilience to the impacts of climate change, (ii) transom our human settlement into corridors into clean, safe, healthy, valuable and pleasant open spaces, and (iii) generates social and economic opportunities through employment creation for local people.
To make our climate change law everyone business- As one of the most resourced network for outreach, communications, research, communities of practice and a global network of country representation, government needs to effectively communicate the country’s climate change response measures in a clear, accessible manner that empowers and invites all stakeholders into the conversation on South Africa’s transition towards a more climate resilient society.
Blessing Manale, Executive Manager, Consensus Building and Stakeholder Relations.
Blessing Manale, Executive Manager, Consensus Building and Stakeholder Relations.
Image: Supplied.
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