International Relations and Cooperation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane urged organised South African labour representatives to work in partnership with government in its ambitions for the seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP 17) on climate change in Durban this year.

She urged the representatives to engage their counterparts, particularly in the developed world, to facilitate a consensus, and to put pressure on their governments to honour their responsibilities on issues where there were blockages in the global negotiations.

Nkoana-Mashabane noted that there were difficult political issues that did not get attention at previous COP meetings, which the Durban gathering had to deal with.

She hoped that labour would support the government’s approach to find a ‘just transition’ to climate change-related issues. This ‘just transition’ sought to attempt to reconcile the labour union movement’s efforts to provide workers with decent jobs and the need to protect the environment.

She noted that domestically, South Africa should continue on a new low-carbon growth path, in such a way that advanced economic growth and the creation of jobs. It was essential that these adjustments to the economy be managed in a way that was fair and provided new opportunities for skills development and employment.

The Minister drew attention to issues of adaptation to climate change as she addressed organised labour representatives, stating that adaptation was the most important issue within the African context, because African nations were the most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

“We are however concerned that adaptation is not receiving the priority attention that it deserves,” Nkoana-Mashabane said, adding that the global negotiations ad-hoc working group was said to be only considering issues related to the institutional arrangements for the Adaptation Committee with no processes for elaborating implementation of concrete adaptation actions.

She explained that there were two kinds of adaptation policies in terms of their effects on employment, namely, policies that avoided job losses by changing the element in production affected by climate change (for example changing crops to more drought resistant varieties), and policies that created jobs by preparing the country for climate change, for example through engaging in large labour-intensive infrastructure projects.

“Adaptation could provide positive opportunities for sectors at risk and might even help to improve workers’ education and income. The outcome should therefore be what Africa wants within the limitations. It is therefore clear that what Africa wants will be beneficial for labour as well which has at its root survival,” she reiterated.

The Minister also said that concern existed among developing countries that that they would be required to curtail their growing industrial activities, because there would be no other choice.

“At the heart of the climate change discussion lies the issue of the need for sustainable development and economics and those environmental concerns sometimes occupy a secondary position. If it was purely an environmental issue, I believe we would have been able to solve the issue a long time ago. But when it comes to development, national interests become critical and it has changed the whole dimension of climate change negotiations,” she said.

Developing countries were fearful that their growth and advancement were being hampered by countries with a historical responsibility for polluting unchecked, to reach the level of development they have today.

It was also recognised that the share of global emissions of greenhouse gases originating in developing countries was growing as developing countries expand industries to improve social and economic conditions for their citizens, and will soon overtake the emissions of developed nations.

As the incoming COP president, Nkoana-Mashabane emphasised that South Africa, through the Department of International Relations and Cooperation, would have to facilitate a credible outcome in Durban.

“It also appears that many developed parties argue that with the current state of play, the politics cannot deliver on what the science requires, namely a reduction of emissions to keep the global temperature rise below 2 ºC. What can be done in their view is for the Cancun decisions to be operationalised and for the other issues to be developed over time and for mitigation pledges to be incrementally improved without any timeframe or process,” she said.

“Climate change in general and the climate change negotiations in particular have reached a point where Durban has become a critical point for finding a lasting solution and to minimise the devastating effects on the environment and our world,” Nkoana-Mashabane emphasised.