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BY ALEX LENFERNA, 18 SEPTEMBER 2013


We have the ability to limit climate change's negative effects but only if we act, only if we change, only if we critically revisit and redefine what it is that drives us. We must revisit the goals that motivate us and between ourselves and our environment

In December 2012 in Doha Qatar, something significant shifted in the world of climate change politics: the collection of national governments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the body responsible for global climate governance, officially admitted our collective failure to protect the climate and ushered in what is being referred to as the third era of climate change: 'loss and damage'.

Thus whether or not you are person concerned with climate change, officially you are a person living in a dangerously changing climate. The question facing us now, collectively, is not if we can stop climate change but, rather, how bad will we let it get, and just how we answer that question may well define our generation.

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Alas, another ten years down the line the UN once again conceded failure, as we realized that both our mitigation and adaptation measures were insufficient and that we are set to suffer significant losses as a result of human-caused climate change or global warming. So, on the back of humanity's collective disappointment, we heralded in the third era of climate change: loss and damage.

Indeed, as the results of cutting edge climate science show, the impacts of our negative contributions are already being felt the world over in the form of more intense and more numerous droughts, floods, hurricanes and many other extreme weather events definitive of a world changed by global warming.

As unpleasant as this may sound, and as frustrating as it has been to watch year after year of missed opportunities for change, this is the reality that this generation faces, and future generations will inherit.

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Realizing the limitations of global environmental governance, we need to take a more active role in tackling this problem ourselves in order to avoid looking back and blaming a faulty international governance system, when the true power for change lay within our own hands.

As Theodore Roszak may have pointed out, our complete world economy is not made up of the UN, but rather it "is built upon millions [now billions] of small private acts of psychological surrender, the willingness of people to acquiesce in playing their assigned parts as cogs in the great [and in our case destructive] social machine".

Yes, the challenge is ours as individuals, as citizens, as leaders, to create the world we want, or at least the best world we can given the cards we've been dealt.

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It is true that South Africa cannot continue to fuel the current industrial economy without mega energy projects, but what products of our current economy are so valuable that they obligate us to do so? Top-down, unequal industrial development often benefits a few at the expense of many. Are we getting the economic and social results we want? For the majority of South Africans, I am not so sure.

We in South Africa need to question and rethink the development paradigm that has allowed us to become one of the biggest greenhouse gas emitters and resource-intense economies in the world, while still allowing for such great poverty and inequality, represented by growing urban sprawl with elite pockets of wealth surrounded by burgeoning squatter camps or slums, coupled with environmentally insensitive and often degrading development.

South Africa is now 128th of 132 countries on the environmental performance index, and one of the most unequal societies in the world. Of course, we must not throw the baby out with the bath water and forsake the benefits such development has brought, but we must ask ourselves what further costs we are willing to pay to pursue such a destructive idea of 'development'?

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REGAINING AFRICA'S AGENCY

Make no mistake - Africa will be hard hit by the ravages of a changing climate, which has great potential to further exacerbate existing environmental and social ills. For this reason, we must learn to stand together, to help each other in times of need, to work together to create prosperity in the face of increased adversity, and to adapt.

Yes, it is a gross injustice that we in Africa will be hardest hit by a problem we contributed the least to, and we must fight for climate justice and ensure that those most responsible are held accountable.

However, fellow Africans, we must be wary of playing the blame game. For we and our politicians are often too ready to blame our problems on (Western) others in order to excuse ourselves from our own inaction and failures. As Fayiso Stevens points out, "if Africans spent half as much of their time trying to solve their problems as they did working out who is responsible for them, they wouldn't have any... "

Blaming problems on external agents or forces, regardless of the legitimacy of the blame, can lead to a severe diminishment in perceived agency, and the ability to act to solve one's own problems.

Indeed, a rising a sense of agency across the African continent combatting the discourse of disempowerment will be needed to face this crisis, and so our task, to empower Africa, rings out with an increased sense of urgency in the face of a changing climate.

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Whether we will grasp this opportunity for change and enter a new paradigm of growth and development is not a question that can be answered in the air-conditioned boardrooms of the UN. Rather it is up to each and every one of us - by a growing global movement willing to speak truth to power and shift the disastrous course we are on.

Already I have met and read the thoughts of great thinkers, and seen and heard of many powerful actions which are building towards a new paradigm. Having had a glimpse of what this new paradigm could mean I aim to continue to play my part in the fight for social and environmental justice in order to help create a better future. Will you heed the call for climate and social justice and do the same?

Because we the people of Africa, the rich and especially the poor, the vulnerable and secure, the present and the future, because a just future needs you and everyone. I hope that you will.

- Alex Lenferna

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