South Africa is presently responsible for about half of Africa’s emissions, with 80 percent of its estimated 400 million metric tones of CO2 coming from the energy sector alone.
Africa is expected to be disproportionately affected by climate change, with a global rise of two degrees Celsius – the acknowledged worldwide target – resulting in a possible four to five degree rise in many parts of the continent. Changes in temperature, quantity and distribution of rainfall have enormous implications for farming, compounded by weak infrastructure and the vulnerability of impoverished populations.
But going into negotiations at the U.N. Climate Conference in Cancun, it is likely that South Africa will align itself with other big developing economies, advocating an approach that priorities poverty alleviation over any binding commitment to reducing emissions.
Ahead of the last 15th Conference of Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Denmark in December 2010, South Africa announced a voluntary commitment to reduce emissions by 34 percent below “business as usual” levels by 2020. This reduction is, however, conditional upon international support that is not certain to materialize.
South Africa’s Minister for Water and Environmental Affairs, Edna Molewa, will be representing South Africa’s interests at the 16th Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Cancun, Mexico.
“We believe that it is quite important that as developing countries we also get an opportunity to allow development to happen because of poverty,” Molewa says. “We need to allow space for us to actually introduce those emissions [reductions] over time, because developed countries have gone through the processes.”
Source: Allafrica