“Last year’s words”: South Africa’s Response to Climate Change is Outdated

"Group Photo 3 - Earth Relay for Climate Action Brunswick" by John Englart (Takver) is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language.

And next year’s words await another voice.

And to make an end is to make a beginning.”

– T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

At a recent Venice Biennale press conference, Lesley Lokko, the event’s 2023 curator, called Africa ‘the laboratory of the future’. And certainly, South Africa has not shied away from an opportunity to be such a laboratory: recall that our Constitution is frequently celebrated for being one of the most progressive in the world, or that the Benguela Current Convention, concluded with both Namibia and Angola, is fêted for its innovative eco-centric approach to marine governance.

With this in mind, the South African government’s response to climate change has been somewhat remarkable – perhaps even entirely disappointing – in how it fails to seize the obvious opportunity to use a bit of our Mzansi creativity in responding to the most wicked of problems. In fact, the country’s suite of climate policies and laws is arguably retrogressive. This is clear in their central concern for a brand of development that is premised on the historical development trajectories of the Global North. 

To wit, a perusal of the most recently released national climate documents reveals that South Africa’s response to climate change is predicated on two organising frameworks. The first is sustainable development, which attempts to integrate environmental concerns into the development paradigm. The second, the just transition, is primarily focused on a fair transition for workers as we move towards a low-carbon economy.

Consider, for example, the central purpose of the Climate Change Bill: “to enable the development of an effective climate change response and a long-term, just transition to a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy and society for South Africa in the context of sustainable development”.

Likewise, South Africa’s official international climate response – its updated Intended Nationally Determined Contribution – is replete with references to the two concepts and frequently underlines that South Africa’s climate goals cannot impede its march towards development nor its focus on job creation.

Despite this, neither of these two concepts – i.e., sustainable development nor just transition - is endemic to South Africa. Instead, they are part of a received (predominantly Western) set of ideas concerning what it means to be a developed nation and the well-trodden path to arrive at this ‘destination’. Legally, sustainable development originated in the realm of international environmental law in the 1970s. The just transition movement began life in the same decade but in the context of the U.S. labour movement.

It is less their foreignness that should make us pause than the fact that both ultimately prize economic growth at the expense of the environment. The environment is considered, to be sure, but only so far. The sustainable development narrative has a long history of attracting criticism for prioritising economic growth.

Indeed, a recent paper suggests that the sustainable development goals – the premier iteration of sustainable development globally – have done little to prevent a preference for economic growth over sustainable resource use. As for the just transition movement, well, the “jobs argument [has been] placed at the center of the […] concept”. In other words, neither sustainable development nor just transition prioritise addressing climate change nor, more broadly, issues related to the environment.

Still, this is in line with South Africa’s post-Apartheid development policy. The main aim of the government’s approach has been to replicate the historic development trajectories of the industrialised Global North. These historic trajectories, and the prevailing global neoliberal order, are premised upon the prioritisation of economic growth as a means of ensuring societal development. If, however, it has been our development policy for more than two decades, what is the issue with it being the foundation of our climate response?

The concerns are manifold, but I will briefly mention two. First is that we are, in essence, merely tweaking the system’s existing policies to accommodate for the ‘inconvenience’ of climate change. Thus, climate change is not an existential threat but one of a suite of challenges faced by the developmental state.

Second, and relatedly, both the sustainable development and just transition narratives are premised on the (predominantly Western) Cartesian dualism between humanity and the environment. South African law sees the environment as that which ‘surrounds’ humanity; and in so doing, it reduces nature to “the inferior “other”, merely raw material for economic-technological progress.” This reiterates the above: the environment must always come second to the socio-economic.

To see humankind as separate from nature, however, is flawed. This ‘narrowing of vision’ means that we miss the complexity of ecosystems and natural processes, as well as the fact that our society and our institutions are embedded within the biosphere. In short, it means that we risk failing to respond to the multifaceted threats posed by  climate change if we assume that tweaking this business-as-usual approach will be enough to keep us within the requisite temperature range.

The form of ‘development’ that South Africa has doggedly pursued is premised on the organisation of a society based on exclusion and the extraction of natural resources by an elite. The question that must arise is whether – particularly in a country with a history of exclusion and elitism – this type of society is the sort of ideal for which South Africa should be striving. Alternative conceptions of our future are available: from Kate Raworth’s doughnut economics to the degrowth agenda suggested by Jason Hickel (our neighbour from Eswatini).

What is more interesting to me, however, is the galvanising of the optimistic and future facing nation that once wrote our Constitution, a document of great beauty in its capacity for hope. It is time for us to write our own story of an African response to climate change, which is progressive, decolonial and inherently inclusive.  Out with borrowed and outdated ideas of development, let’s face climate change with a bit of Mzansi magic.•

• With apologies to MNet.