Why is there such a lack of urgency about climate change on the lives of the poorest communities in the world? Is climate justice a pipe dream? Is the nexus of vested economic and political interests so powerful that they cannot see we are staring into the barrel of the gun? Are the ones that provoked the global crisis now ready to slaughter the hopes of our children and grandchildren?
Something is fundamentally wrong as I watch COP17 proceedings. The people who are most vulnerable are missing. Yet the technicians of some of the most powerful governments act as the shop stewards of powerful global interest groups peddling their influence behind the scenes and marginalising the civil society presence. It has all the hallmarks of a Shakespearian tragedy with its deceit, betrayal and murder of hope.
History reminds us that in any negotiation process the bargaining power of the people comes from the streets and ballot boxes. While global capital has recognised its power over the last decades, we are only now seeing the resurgence of outrage on the streets that has driven the seismic changes that has come from the Arab Spring and Occupy Movement.
In our own South African experience it was the struggles of massed workers, students, youth, women and communities that created the political stalemate that culminated in the miracle of 1994.
Today no one can deny that extreme weather conditions are becoming the more regular pattern. In fact “Mother Earth” sent a powerful portent as delegates arrived in one of Durban’s worst storms in living history. My guess is most delegates were not facing the brunt of that storm in the sprawling shantytowns around Durban.
I wish that those delegates who vehemently oppose a legally binding agreement had spent a week with communities living around Lake Turkana in the north of Kenya, or the slums of Mumbai, Nairobi, Darfur or Dhaka. Then they would understand the urgency in these places. They would bear witness to the devastating impact climate change has wrought and the massive migration that has compounded the desperation of billions in the world's growing urban slums.
But they will not experience the crisis of 13 million people of the Horn of Africa. The hunger there is chronic, systemic and an indictment on our humanity. Sheltered in air-conditioned conference rooms, they will not have the daily challenge of eking out a fragile existence. They will not be counted among the billion people who will go to bed hungry tonight. These are just statistics without a human face.
Africa, already burdened with its “resources’ curse” that has spawned some of the most violent conflicts in the world, now has to contend with wars over water, land and food driven by climate change.
I realise that my generation does not want to relinquish power. We are determined to maintain the status quo. Change will not come from us. We have constructed a world driven by our own material needs and want to perpetuate it irrespective of the consequences.
As we learn from history, a generation never voluntarily gives up power. The seismic shifts in power that brought down the dictators in the Arab Spring was driven by the desperation of youth battling joblessness, denial of human rights and social justice. The same exclusion is what is driving the turbulence of the developed world. The groundbreaking Occupy Movement shares the frustrations of the youth in the rest of the world. Something is happening.
The restlessness is growing. It will explode soon. The current impasse is unsustainable. The perfect storm of the global economic crisis and its intersect with the food, fuel and environmental crises have given birth to a politicised generation that does not trust the current global institutions or leadership.
We need a fresh approach. We need an inclusive approach to climate negotiations at RIO +20 with civil society organisations from those countries most affected fully represented at the main table. We need to return to the excitement of the first Earth Summit 19 years ago.
We also need an urgent global debate among civil society of our vision of a different world beyond RIO. At the core of our developmental agenda should be our determination to eradicate poverty and inequality and place the critical issues of women's empowerment and incomes, food security, water, energy and human rights.
Our demands are simple. We want a legally binding agreement to limit temperature rises and CO? emissions to prevent a vacuum when the Kyoto Prococol expires. We want the establishment of the Climate Green Fund to pay for the impact of climate change and a just transition to a green economy.
RIO must become part of the process to redefine the priorities as part of a new political narrative in the world. We need to think more ambitiously about raising the bar for the Millennium Development Goals and demanding accountability from global and national leaders in both public and private sectors. The reform of global institutions has to be part of our agenda. Civil society cannot continue to fight in the corridors propping up a sense of legitimacy to an increasingly meaningless consultation process. The people demand a seat at the main table and inclusive democratic governance.
COP17 has to ensure we establish these principles in the process to the next Earth Summit and beyond. South African leadership must forge the same determination we had in our democratic transition to place the African agenda on the map. The commitment we made to reduce our greenhouse emissions is a good start.
The “Robin Hood Tax” that we supported must be agreed and the Climate Green Fund established. But as Africa we should insist on a mechanism in its management and spending priorities through the African Development Bank.
We must break the deadlock and throw down the gauntlet to countries that still resist. We cannot ask the poorest in the world to bear the brunt of the greed of a few. If there is further dithering by the political elites that fly in for final negotiations, we need to draw the line on the floor of the International Conference Centre in Durban now. DM
For more, visit www.jaynaidoo.org.
Where will they get the funds to fill the African begging bowl?
I was right royally trashed on this forum recently for suggesting that it would be better to send condoms and DIY vasectomy kits instead of food to the starving.
@Jay: The answer to your crie de cour of "Are the ones that provoked the global crisis now ready to slaughter the hopes of our children and grandchildren?" must be yes. After all, as Anne Crotty pointed out in Business Report yesterday, shareholder interests are paramount.
Jay Naidoo is right – the people deciding on what next are not the ones who experience the threat to their lifestyle, they do not even represent those who do.
By what standing do you get to decide when anyone’s consumption is out of control?
Under Stalinist rule, central planners controlled what everyone could have and not have; how things ‘should’ work….we all know how that turned out.
Why do you think populations of ‘poor’ countries indulge in greater ‘consumption’ immediately upon such countries affording greater prosperity through ‘development?’
One of the first things previously poorest of the poor acquire, often at considerable sacrifice, is motorized personal transportation, be it a moped in South East Asia, or a barely serviceable ‘skudonk’ in Africa, where it becomes a shared resource.
The poorer the communities, the more these vehicles end up grotesquely overloaded, with the owners displaying considerable ingenuity in adaptation to transport people and their goods for which service the vehicle was never designed…all presumably because there is no ‘need’ for such.
By what standing do you get to determine what people need, and at what juncture such need ends and wanton and ‘unnecessary’ consumption begins?
Who is to determine that growth in population is fine, but growth in consumption is bad…that the sole purpose of life on the planet is to extend a ‘basic’ existence to as many as possible, while striving for a better life beyond such basics by anyone is conceited, wasteful and bears moral reproach?
Incidentally, “food, water, shelter, warmth, fuel, medicine” are all the products of energy consumption; how such is to be rolled out to the impoverished masses to some or other arbitrary level of basic need address whilst global energy consumption is to be dramatically and simultaneously reduced, remains a mystery.
The governments of nation states are responsible for securing compliance during mining operations, including those in Africa, not the ‘corporations’ based in “smug nations”
Why don't you talk about stopping the continents moving? You have about as much chance of stopping the continental drift as that of changing the climate!
Africa’s environmental problems are the result of Africa’s inability to manage themselves in a sustainable manner. The Big men of Africa with the blind allegiance of their followers has resulted in the miserable existence of the vast majority. The Horn of Africa has always been plagued by a seasonable shift that causes mayhem and starvation to the regularly overpopulated and under resourced who are governed by inept leaders.
The urban slums throughout are a direct result of failed policies by the Big Men of Africa with their penchant for extravagance and luxury from corruption, the ANC have wasted or stolen over R26 billion a year. This would have provided an additional 7 million houses, (those shanty dwellers who where effected by the flash flood could have been saved)
The slums in Kenya could in part be, because of climate shift, but the failure by the corrupt Kenyan Government over the years to utilise the financial resources available to them correctly, this includes the billions of dollars of aid, would have mitigated the problem.
Climate change is just another begging bowl opportunity for Africa and a reason to apportion blame to countries that have and are now looking after themselves after donating hundreds of billion dollars to that bottomless pit called Africa.
The ANC big wigs headed by Zuma and co are in party mode in Durban telling the world what to do about climate change but are unable to do the small things like clean up Bruma Lake, stop sewage from flowing into our rivers, manage the Northern Sewage Works which can now only process 50% of Johannesburg’s sewage (from the Northern ridge) because of failed maintenance.
Only 75 of municipalities in South Africa received a clean water audit in the last year and don’t forget the loss of blue flag status for Durban beaches. Agricultural exports to Europe are at risk because our irrigation water is so polluted that export standards cannot be met. The plastic shopping bag recycling project is a failure only 17 jobs created and now closed down.
The ANC are building over priced power stations to ensure revenue to the party via Chancellor House as a share holder of the main contractor and their leadership continue to line their pockets with impunity.(Come Jay you were in government when Mac and Co were helping themselves)
Africa’s problems have little to do with climate change and a lot to do with the inept and corrupt leadership.
"When science is manipulated to produce a predetermined outcome, it's called 'bent' science. Such science is usually directed by large commercial interest”
A simple experiment will show you that this is bull. Stand outside on a clear night it is cool because heat is radiating into space despite the CO2. Stand outside on even a mildly cloudy night and it is warmer because the water vapour and clouds reflect the heat back and act like a blanket. Should we now counteract the production of water vapour, and accuse the industrialised nations of causing clouds and rain?
There may indeed be warming, but to attribute it to a single cause (industrial CO2 and the bucolic farting of cows) is delusional balderdash. Every year volcanoes produce many times more greenhouse gasses than human activity. Perhaps we should hold conferences and legislate against them.
"Only 7.5% of municipalities received a clean water audit in the last year"
As a final slap in the face of the tax-paying, properly licensed and responsible road user, the MEC decides that the biggest abusers of the rules of the roads, 'Taxis' will be exempted from these tolls. This is in the 'public interest'. The taxi industry continues to kill its passengers and other road users on a daily basis. So far today (1 December) 18 killed.
I agree that there is something fundamentally wrong with COP17, it is not a 'Robin Hood' tax Mr Naidoo, it is just plain robbery, as is the toll system.
Climate change, Aids, Cancer... in fact, name a mainstream cause. It keeps us occupied and entertained. We are facinated by our own dysfunction. Voyeuristic, if you will.
The Elite (read: Bankers) will have their way. They have plotted and shaped the collective psychopathy which now governs us.
Only a change of heart, a radical mindshift like that as found at www.thevenusproject.com can have an impact. If it goes mainstream. Other than that, we are doomed. Doomed by our fascination with the illusionary monetary system, the fake jobs, fake causes and the fake existence it brings. Enjoy.