In preparation for South Africa’s hosting of the global climate change negotiations in December, Water and Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa on Friday declared the “road to Durban quite open”.

This came after a two-hour long discussion at Business Unity South Africa’s (Busa’s) offices on how business and government could work together to make South Africa’s hosting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP17), a success.

National Business Initiative chairperson Cas Coovadia noted that although the gathering was a UNFCCC event, South Africa must lead in organising it, and also use it as an opportunity to showcase South African business.

The discussion centred largely on the logistics of the conference, in particular regarding the exhibition that would take place, and what business could contribute towards it.

Molewa said that contributions from business would be “contributions in kind”. For example, contributions to making the domestic climate change policy realiseable, as well as assistance with the expo in Durban, and using this to demonstrate climate change actions from business and government not only in a South African, but in an African context.

She noted that these contributions would need to be made in line with what South Africa could afford.

COP17 CONTENT
Molewa also stated that as the incoming COP president, South Africa was “now getting onto the steering wheel” and working with the Mexican presidency on ensuring continuity of the discussions.

“It is our duty to facilitate conversations to take us somewhere at COP17,” said Molewa, noting that this would require substantial hard work and conversation throughout the year.

There would need to be progress on the major developments seen in Cancun at COP16 – including the establishment of a Green Climate Fund to house the international management, deployment and accountability of long-term funds for developing country assistance; a Technology Mechanism to promote clean technologies; and an Adaptation Framework to boost international cooperation to help developing countries protect themselves from climate change impacts.

Freshly returned from the first UNFCCC meeting for the year, which took place in Bangkok, Environmental Affairs deputy director general Alf Wills told Engineering News Online that the Bankok meeting dealt with the organisation of the work for the year, to take the Cancun developments forward.

He said that there would be a dual focus in 2011, the first of which would be work on operationalising the entities agreed on in Cancun, and thrashing out the technicalities of those. The second would be to work on things not agreed on in Cancun.

These issues included weighty topics such as the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, decisions on aviation and maritime transport as well as the agricultural sector, the concerns over intellectual property rights and the continual effort to get members such as the US to increase their level of ambition.

One of the key issues at Durban, which negotiators would hope to resolve was that of the continuation or second commitment period of the Kyoto protocol. Decisions on this have been deferred year after year, however the first commitment period ends in 2012 and thus the issue could no longer be deferred.

NATIONAL CLIMATE CHANGE POLICY
Busa deputy CEO Raymond Parsons said that the meeting allowed Busa to take the cooperation with government on the national climate change policy “to the next level”, and asses the commitment to emission reduction made by the government, as well as the costs and benefits of various options to reach those commitments.

Parsons emphasised the importance of aligning the climate change policy with broader economic policies and implementing it along the lines of the New Growth Path, in the context of South Africa’s specific socio-economic challenges.

Busa VP Michael Spicer said that company by company, Busa members would be doing detailed empirical work on what it would mean to play their part to meet the targets outlined by the government, within the timetable set.

He said that business was supportive of the targets outlined in the climate change Green Paper, although they posed challenges, and agreed that they should be subject to conditionalities of financial and technology assistance from industrialised countries.