Johannesburg - South African environmental group Earthlife Africa said it planned to march through Johannesburg’s central business district against climate change on Thursday, to highlight how the world was running out of time to keep temperatures down.
In a statement, Earthlife Africa researcher Bongiwe Matsoha said the lack of climate action this year in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic meant that COP26, the premiere event for understanding the global approach to the climate crisis, had been postponed by a year.
“This year has been a complete write-off for climate action and a massive knock for the people, especially the youth, of this country,” Matsoha said.
“We are in a race against time to keep temperatures well below two degrees or stabilise at 1.5°C degrees, and as it stands, current levels of warming have already resulted in human rights’ violations.”
Thursday’s march will coincide with International Human Rights Day.
Earthlife said it would be joined by hundreds of environmental defenders who would take to the streets to demand that governments introduced appropriate policies and measures, especially emerging out of the coronavirus pandemic, to help put the world on the path to a low-carbon and resilient future.
“As a young woman living in a country where around a third of its youth is unemployed, I am very concerned that the South African government has failed to intensify their efforts to ward off a global climate catastrophe,” said Matsoha.
“Not only are they ignoring the immense employment opportunities that come from switching to renewable energy, but climate scientists give us less than a decade to half our global emissions, by 2030.”
She said the failure by governments to respond to the climate crisis represented a violation of human rights, especially given that climate change would disproportionately affect the poor and most vulnerable in society.
Despite South Africa's repeated declarations to address climate change, the government was still proposing further exploitation of coal, oil and gas, Earthlife director Makoma Lekalakala noted, saying this would not only aggravate the climate situation, but also lock the country into a “treacherous” carbon-intense future.
“We need more radical action that involves the complete phasing-out of fossil fuels, supported by the uptake of low carbon technologies,” Lekalakala said.
“By hanging on to fossil fuels, many communities around South Africa remain targets for fossil fuel exploitation projects. These continue to pose a huge risk for the people who defend their communities and environment, and who do not want it.”
IOL