- Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Barbara Creecy reports that the Climate Change Response Fund announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa in his State of the Nation Address (SoNA) has been established.
- The fund will support the development of early-warning systems, as well as for adaptation projects to improve the climate resiliency of infrastructure amid the growing threats posed by extreme weather events.
- The minister did not give a start date for the implementation of the fund.
Creecy, who made the announcement in her address to the Presidential Climate Commission, said that the fund could be a model which other countries could follow. Creecy said that the Development Bank of Southern Africa or the Industrial Development Corporation could host the fund. She also confirmed that government would set aside some resources to capitalise the fund but indicated that the intention was a public/private partnership in a manner similar to the Solidarity Fund that was set up during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Over the past few years, parts of South Africa have been ravaged by floods – particularly in KwaZulu-Natal – as well as fires in other parts of the country and drought.
South Africa’s state owned and state run energy utility, Eskom, is by far the largest emitter of the pollutants sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides and the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in South Africa due to its reliance on coal. It could be argued that Eskom poses the biggest threat to climate change in the Southern Africa region. The utility, which is unable to meet the country’s energy demand, has unsustainable debt of over R420 billion mainly due to poor planning, incompetence, unqualified cadre deployment, corruption, fraud, theft and sabotage.
The South African government is currently pushing ahead with the procurement of over 6000MW of new generation capacity production from gas power, another major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Read more
Author: Bryan Groenendaal
