Climate Change Crisis: Confronting Development Aspirations
In the past week the South African government made statements pledging its commitment to a fair deal being signed at the UN climate talks in Copenhagen this December. This has however done little to inspire confidence given the apparently contradictory government statements on the subject.
Trusha Reddy is a Senior Researcher in the ISS Corruption & Governance Programme, based in Cape Town
In the past week the South African government made statements
pledging its commitment to a fair deal being signed at the UN climate
talks in Copenhagen this December. This has however done little to
inspire confidence given the apparently contradictory government
statements on the subject. The government statements were preceded by
an affirmation by government spokesperson Themba Maseko saying that
coal-powered electricity was the only viable source of energy. This
came at the same time as the cabinet recognised South Africa’s high
emission of greenhouse gas due to an over-reliance of coal and made a
stated commitment to taking responsible corrective action. The
confusing and somewhat contradictory rhetoric offers us with an
opportunity to reflect on important concerns around development that
must now be addressed if South Africa is to present a coherent policy
position on how it plans to tackle climate change.
In general, the intransigence on continuing along
an unsustainable development path should be vigorously challenged. But
South Africa is not only to blame in this respect. This thinking
infects both developed and developing countries alike, which have
pitted climate imperatives against a notion of development that is
conceived as short-term economic growth, focusing on increasing Gross
Domestic Product. However, in the case of South Africa, “If you plot
the human development index versus electricity use per capita for all
countries, it is clear that by comparison to other countries,
electricity production in South Africa is not contributing to human
development in the same way that it does in other countries. So we would
be using vast amounts of electricity but there would not be a
significant beneficial impact on human development,” claimed Andrew
Marquard of the Energy Research Centre at a recent South African civil
society Energy Caucus meeting in Cape Town.
Moreover, there is a need to challenge our aspirations for highly
materialistic, highly consumptive lifestyles that mirror those of
developed countries. At the same meeting, Saliem Fakir of the World
Wildlife Fund –South Africa raised questions about whether we should
rather be working towards a dematerialised structure. “Do we want
everyone to drive a car or do we want better transport systems? Do we
want to reduce our dependence on oil and other high carbon intensive
sources?” The questions raised are no doubt of a highly philosophical
nature and link to fundamental causative factors of climate change. On
the other hand is our adoption of market-based mechanisms like carbon
trading, which involves the buying and selling of pollution credits,
which only seek to address symptoms of our development dilemmas and
climate woes. Of course they do more than this – carbon trading
manifests the stark nature of unequal power relations in society as
attempts to deal with the global environmental crises are at risk of
being captured by corporate interests.
If we cascade into issues around technological alternatives we also
start to demystify the nature and impact of development planning.
Marquard again argues that we need to be certain about the
technological pathway we embark on now because this is difficult to
change. Thus when government refers to a “gradual shift to
non-fossil fuel energy sources” they are not taking into cognisance the
significance of new build programmes on coal (and nuclear) which will
lock us into an high emission, energy intensive path. Of course it also
belies the urgency of action required. Whilst the development of a
strategic policy framework as suggested by government is an important
step in the right direction it must not underestimate the impact of
current actions in circumscribing long-term low-carbon development.
We must also face up to the myth of ‘clean coal’ through
technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a means to
purge us of our fossil-fuel sins. CCS (and nuclear) are more or less
within our current technological framework, which is why they are so
appealing. Marquard is instructive again: Technologies like CCS have no
co-benefits other than reducing climate change impacts, and they
effectively increase costs of production by a third to a half. The
viability of CCS in South Africa is still unknown but remain
unchallenged as South African petro-chemicals giant SASOL launches the
country’s CCS Centre at the end of this month. Even if viability is
proven, the non‐climate impacts of coal production, for example acid
mine drainage, would still occur. The state’s resistance to exploring
alternative technologies means that we have much untapped potential in
renewable energy, especially through solar and wind sources, which is
not getting the investment now that it deserves. The impact of this is
that we “remain stuck in economic development strategies that remain
energy consumptive and capital intensive” as Patrick Bond of the Centre
for Civil Society contends.
Once again, Minister of Water & Environmental Affairs, Buyelwa
Sonjica confirms that: “The only way for South Africa to realistically
deal with its immediate energy supply problem, apart from demand-side
management, was through the building of carbon efficient coal
technology, in the medium term." In fact apparent throw-away concerns
about reducing energy demand must be reflected on. If we carry on with
business as usual our increase in greenhouse gas emissions coming from
electricity production will have a staggering impact on the climate.
Even the most ambitious scenario in the Long Term Mitigation Scenarios
(LTMS) endorsed by cabinet last year describes a pathway of greenhouse
gas emissions that keeps emissions to more or less what they are today.
Our addiction to cheap energy has led to a massive misallocation of
societal resources for decades and yet demand‐side management is one of
the cheapest ways to save electricity. Eskom’s demand side management
thus far and in the wake of the energy crisis of last year pales in
comparison to the efforts on supply. More importantly, reducing demand,
by drastically changing consumption patterns as alluded to above, is an
effective way to reduce inequality in access to energy and in
mitigating climate change.
These kind of fundamental shifts in approach also have implications for the way in which state enterprises are run. In this respect, the corporatist
model of Eskom must change to a developmental one. Pressures to
commercialise Eskom lead to other insidious by-products where the board
grants CEO Jacob Maroga a 26,7% salary increase (an increment value at
R5-million) even amidst a R9-billion revenue loss suffered by Eskom, a
move which trade unions have described as “disgusting”. Public engagement on the models of state enterprises, large expenditure
on public infrastructure, and on energy planning need broad and
inclusive public debates and discussion. We simply cannot have a
situation where Eskom unilaterally decides our energy future and the
Department of Energy simply gets drawn into it, as Liziwe McDaid of the
Green Connection argues.
Perhaps a more serious introspective exercise which accommodates
comprehensive, integrated planning and processes will provide both
policy coherence and put us on a path of development that is in harmony
with our natural environment.
