Africa, Civil Society, Climate Change, Environment, Headlines

CLIMATE CHANGE: Much Work Lies Ahead for Africa

Ann Hellman

CAPE TOWN, Feb 11 2010 (IPS) - Africa needs urgent action on global warming. The consensus position adopted by African leaders ahead of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen failed. African environmental activists are now debating their way forward.

Flooding in eastern Nigeria: climate change should be explained to the poor, to build a movement for action from below. Credit: Hilary Uguru/IRIN

Flooding in eastern Nigeria: climate change should be explained to the poor, to build a movement for action from below. Credit: Hilary Uguru/IRIN

Samantha Bailey, Africa coordinator for the 350 Campaign, said activist organising had been a success.

In the framework of the international “TckTckTck” campaign, 350 held an international day of action on Oct. 24, 2009, which it says was “the biggest single day of political action ever to happen”. It involved 5,200 actions in 181 countries demanding a fair, ambitious and binding deal.

The 350 Campaign, founded in the United States by author Bill McKibben, was established to pressure governments to agree that 350 parts per million is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere if catastrophic climate change is to be avoided.

For the day of action in October, 40 activists from across Africa attended a climate change training camp in South Africa’s economic hub Johannesburg, and photographs of the worldwide protests were delivered to South African leaders, including president Jacob Zuma and Water Affairs Minister Buyelwa Sonjica.

Bailey conceded that in Africa it was “much more difficult to get the message out”. She ascribed this to Africa not having an established climate change movement, as India and Australia do.


“In Africa it was a struggle because of the AIDS money dynamic. A lot of people have got lazy and were waiting to be paid money instead of doing things for themselves,” she said.

But in an indication of a divide between civil society movements from North and South, Bailey’s statements provoked a fierce debate.

“I don’t know whether it’s because 350 is American, but ‘tck tck’ is not easy to understand. People couldn’t relate to the messages,” said Thabang Ngcozela. “Messages that people have derived themselves would have been much more easier for them to relate to.”

Ngcozela heads several civil society projects for the group which hosted a January meeting of climate change activists in Cape Town, the Environmental Monitoring Group. He said EMG’s most successful climate change activities have taken place in poor communities like Cape Town’s Khayelitsha, and not in seminar rooms in the suburbs.

Organising using online petitions and flash mobs – groups gathered quickly to collective action via cellphone – could exclude many local communities in South Africa and elsewhere because the mobilisation is organised via a medium most people don’t access, said another participant.

“Climate change is bigger than the problem of HIV. It is not going to affect (just) a selected few those who have been exposed – it is a threat to humanity and there is nothing complex about that. We need robust political intervention in communities… not a strategy targeted at the selected few” said Nkwame Cedile from the Alternative Information and Development Centre.

He said global campaigns should avoid mobilisation “just for awareness raising, because government also does that”; he urged people not to see climate change as a scientific issue too complex to explain to the poor.

Ngcozela said the way forward after Copenhagen must be to “build democratic movements on the ground” rather than arrange isolated events.

“There is no way we can hold our government accountable in (forums like) Copenhagen if we can’t hold it accountable at home” he said.

But Tony Brutus, who works for the South African government’s Department of Water Affairs, disagreed. He told the seminar that even non-binding statements against climate change by governments are significant and can put into motion “certain processes”.

South Africa broke ranks with the rest of the continent and the Group of 77 countries pushing hard for binding emissions reduction targets and significant funding to poor countries to mitigate the already unavoidable effects of global warming, and joined 25 countries which hammered out a non-binding “Copenhagen Accord” at the end of the summit.

The accord committed South Africa to “adopt and report on national mitigation actions to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases”. Developed nations agreed to try to raise 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to help developing countries cope with climatic changes.

“South Africa was part of a small group who wanted change. President Jacob Zuma went ahead and made those statements and that got him into trouble with some of our neighbouring countries. I assume that action plans will follow,” Brutus said.

Brutus did not elaborate on what action plans the government might be working on.

But 1500 kilometres away from Cape Town, Desmond D’Sa says non-binding agreements have not worked for the people of South Durban.

D’Sa is the co-ordinator of the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance (SDCEA) and has long demanded that government enact tough laws against polluting industries.

For him, the allegedly cancer-causing pollution from three oil refineries and dozens of chemical factories in the area goes hand in hand with the deadly phenomenon of climate change.

D’Sa said industry will not clean up its act unless it is paid by government to do so. “Industry is asking for more handouts, more incentives from governments. They want more of the taxpayers’ money before they will do anything.

“We have industries which have been operating for 100 years still wanting sympathy from the people of this country, and yet masses of people are affected by their toxic emissions and continue to suffer.”

He hit out at government for allowing the industries to expand, instead of introducing new laws to restrict them, and force them to reduce their polluting emissions.

“South Durban bears the mark of apartheid, but even under the democratic government, industries are allowed to expand and their emissions are increasing rapidly,” said D’Sa.

Government’s reluctance to regulate polluting but profitable industry showed itself in South Africa’s alignment with the Copenhagen Accord’s voluntary commitments to reduce emissions. In addition to its work with people affected by the petrochemical industries, SDCEA is now mobilising communities outside the South Durban basin who are suffering the effects of climate change.

One of these is the Clairwood Ratepayers Association. Richard Singh, who represents subsistence farmers growing spinach and cabbages near the Durban airport, told IPS that climate change had led to scorching heat and frequent floods which destroy his crops.

He says in 1976, he was able to plant crops according to the four seasons. “Today I can’t do the same because you find different weather even on the same day, and more insects than ever. My money and plants go down the drain,” says Singh.

Claribel Mthembu of KwaMakhutha, near the large Durban township of Umlazi, says climate change affects her community because “there are four seasons in one week”.

Mthembu points to a killer storm that hit Molweni, near Durban in 2008. The freak storm killed five people and destroyed 400 houses.

“Residents depend on their crops for food, but all the crops were destroyed and they never got help rebuilding their houses,” she said.

Ngcozela warns that for a global anti-climate change campaign to succeed, it must veer away from seminars and internet activities that preach to the already converted, and focus on working with people like D’Sa, Mthembu and Singh.

Echoing Mthembu, he said “South Africans in the rural areas are already  aware of how the increasing sun is impacting on their mielie (maize) fields. They are aware that when there is a drought their cattle and pigs die.”

“What we need now is for grassroots activists to be trained and sent out, with the necessary support, to campaign against climate change” Ngcozela said.

 
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