By Tristen Taylor
Hordes of interested parties will descend upon Copenhagen in December 2009 for what has been billed the best (and last) chance to fix the climate, to reduce the world's emissions and save the planet from the worst effects of global warming. Good luck to them, for the science is looking grim. The British Meteorological Office is now predicting a ten degree warming in the interior of Southern Africa.
There will be much hand-wringing about the plight of Africa's poor in Copenhagen; there will be talk about saving the poor from a decaying environment; there may even be the occasional mention of the Millennium Development Goals. What there won't be much of (or none at all) is South Africa's disadvantaged poor speaking for themselves. Representatives of grassroots communities won't be at COP 15.
Why? After all, we know that poor communities across Southern Africa will bear the brunt of the effects of global warming. They will feel the pinch of reduced food supply and rising energy prices. Their houses are already located in floodplains and health care systems are already overburdened, unable to cope with today's diseases let alone malaria moving into the Highveld. Surely, the world should be interested in what those at the front line, those staring down the barrel of a loaded gun, have to say? Sure....
It is not that there is an insidious plot hatched in the dark corridors of power to stop grassroots communities from attending. Rather, the causes of this perverse situation are far more subtle and are, thus, harder to deal with. Events like COP15 and the general climate debate have scaled the summits of technical language to raise the flag of incomprehensibility. The message that filters down to the street is that we, as ordinary people, have to reduce our carbon footprint.
We are told to turn off our lights for an hour, fly less, buy organic food, drive less, buy an electric car, get solar heaters for our swimming pools, recycle our plastic, turn off air conditioners, and put insulation in ceilings. Imagine for a second (or an hour, if you must) what this message sends to the residents of a back room shack in Alexandra or an overcrowded and decaying flat in Hillbrow.
Such a message ultimately conveys the point that the poor are irrelevant. Turn off what lights? Should I blow out the candle? Forget about organic food from some fancy retailer, I'd like to buy some food, any food. Driving and flying less, no problem I rather enjoy my 15 kilometre walk to school, work or the nearest clinic. And as for insulation in my ceiling, with pleasure, if only RDP houses came with ceilings.
As for solar water heating for the swimming pool: You can drain the blasted thing, I'm tired of the Valium-addled madam yelling at me to clean every last leaf out of it so that her precious daarrlings won't have to come into contact with nature.
Not only does this message state that grassroots communities have no part whatsoever in the solution of climate change (i.e. they are both literally and metaphorically powerless), it also does not speak to them and their needs. Further, this message from the top is an insult to poor communities' hundred year struggles to obtain a fair and equitable distribution of South Africa's wealth. The marginalised and dispossessed have become even more marginalised and dispossessed.
There's one other thing about this message. In the South African context it is plain, straight-up, no doubt wrong. Simply put, it is not people that are causing South Africa's high emissions. Two companies, Sasol and Eskom, are responsible for nearly three-quarters of the entire country's total emissions. Through burning coal to generate electricity and using coal and natural gas to produce petroleum, these companies spew out huge amounts of greenhouses gases and will increase their emissions even further; Eskom is building new coal-fired power stations (some of the biggest in the world) and Sasol is aiming to construct a new coal-to-liquids plant in Limpopo. These high-carbon business plans are making a mockery of any attempt by any individual to reduce their carbon footprint.
This is not to say that poor communities do not have concerns related to climate change. They do have concerns, especially in the realm of service delivery. For a decade and a half, grassroots communities have been struggling for housing, access to water, health care, electricity, basic income grants, and education. These are precisely the elements required for poor communities to adapt to global warming. Yet these adaptation concerns are not at the top of the global or local agenda. Instead, governments all over the world are seeking to protect their carbon intensive industries and wasteful consumption by elites, using mechanisms such as carbon offsetting and trading.
At a climate change conference in South Africa in March 2009, poor communities and environmental justice NGOs protested at the gates of the swank conference venue demanding that South Africa embark on a low-carbon, pro-poor development path that fulfilled their basic socio-economic rights. Were these protesters demands discussed or even recognised as legitimate? The then Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) rejected the protesters memorandum, stating that it was out of the bounds of its remit, and a video of the protest was taken off the DEAT website. Inside the same conference, Sasol and Eskom spun the theory of carbon capture and storage as if it were a practical reality.
In response to this marginalisation and the traditional middle class bias of climate change activism, South African grassroots communities have begun to organise themselves into a national coalition to force pro-poor mitigation and adaptation measures. If those in power won't listen and then act, then communities have decided to work together to force change.
On the 29th of October 2009, this coalition formally launched itself as Climate Justice Now! South Africa (CJN!SA). Linked to the global climate justice movement, this coalition has correctly identified the primary role of industrial capital in causing climate change, has rejected the false solutions of carbon offsetting and trading, and has embraced the link between environmental and economic justice.
Currently, CJN!SA is determining a response to COP15 and has already decided on a series of actions within South Africa in December 2009. These include a rally in central Johannesburg on the 12th of December. This rally aims to highlight the role of Eskom and Sasol in causing climate change and the urgent need for adaptation measures. Through CJN!SA, grassroots communities will be standing up to the industrial, financial and political might of Sasol and Eskom and attempting to stare them down.
In a very real way, the politics of global warming in South Africa are changing. If South Africa is to tackle mitigation effectively and provide meaningful adaptation measures, a titanic struggle between the ideologies of profit versus environmental and economic justice will have to be waged. The outcome of this is far from certain, but with organisations like CJN!SA at least poor communities will have a fighting chance.
Tristen Taylor is a social movement activist and is the current Project Coordinator of the Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Project of Earthlife Africa Jhb. In addition, he is attempting a PhD at the University of Johannesburg in Philosophy.