Melanie Gosling
Environment Writer
GOVERNMENT on all levels must introduce green procurement policies in the same way that it had insisted on local content and black economic empowerment when awarding tenders, delegates said at a climate change workshop this week.
As government spending made up 29 percent of the GDP, insisting on a green procurement policy would be an important way of reducing the country’s high greenhouse gas emissions.
This was one of the points made by delegates at the Department of Environmental Affairs’ workshop in the city, to gain input from civil society and officials in the Western Cape into South Africa’s targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The targets – known as intended nationally determined contributions – will be tabled prior to the COP 21 climate negotiations in Paris in December.
The department has run similar workshops in all provinces.
Although the purpose of the workshop was to gain input into the government’s proposed greenhouse gas reduction targets, many delegates said South Africa needed to have a “plan B” if the Paris talks failed to come up with a legally-binding deal on how the world would tackle climate change once the Kyoto Protocol finally ended in 2020.
They said the government’s responsibility was to cut greenhouse gas emissions regardless of what happened at COP21.
Several groups raised the point that municipalities were pivotal in tackling climate change and that national government needed to involve local authorities.
They said 60 percent of South Africa was urbanised, so the role of municipalities was crucial.
Delegates dismissed Environmental Affairs’ view of having to balance the country’s environmental and developmental imperatives when tackling climate change, as this was not an “either or”. They said good development was low carbon development, so it served both.
They also urged Environmental Affairs to take ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets to COP21.
Judy Beaumont, deputy director general at Environmental Affairs, said she understood the need to table ambitious targets at the international talks; South Africa has to be able to measure up to the commitments it made in the international arena.
“The reality is money is tight, for business, government, local authorities, so we have to make sure what we put into the international space is what we can measure up to.”
Beaumont agreed that there was a need to change how the Environmental Affairs viewed development versus environment protection and tackling climate change.
The UN said 50 percent of countries, which accounted for almost 70 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, had already submitted their national climate plans in preparation for COP21.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change, said these emission reduction targets on their own would not keep the temperature increase below 2ºC.
“But they underline a sharp and positive departure from business as usual and will form the essential foundation to reach that ultimate goal if governments agree to clearly ramp up ambition over time,” she said.