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Polity
Article by: Amy Witherden
Published: 03 Aug 2010
Daily podcast - August 3, 2010
Tuesday, August 3, 2010


From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Amy Witherden.


Making headlines:


The Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) is looking to identify potential projects that could contribute to ‘green growth' in South Africa, and has invited industry to submit expressions of interest.
This is in response to the Green Economy Summit, held in May, where government, business, civil society and nongovernmental organisations committed to ensuring that South Africa moves towards a resource-efficient, low carbon and proemployment growth path. The DEA is coordinating the development of a green-economy strategy and said that it needs to identify potential projects to draw up a practical action plan to support the strategy.
The DEA explained that the expression of interest would be carefully assessed to determine the potential and readiness to implement a project in the short term, with large job creation and/or job protection potential or the creation of sustainable livelihoods.

 

United Nations (UN) climate talks this week urgently need to focus and speed up as time runs out to secure a global deal to combat climate change by the end of the year. UN climate chief Christiana Figueres said that "there is a lot of interest to pick up the pace and move with resolution towards Cancun."
There are only 11 working days of talks left until a UN summit in Cancun this November to agree on extending or replacing the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The existing agreement caps the carbon dioxide emissions of almost 40 developed countries from 2008 to 2012. However, new targets need the agreement of at least 143 countries - or three-quarters of the pact's parties. China's special representative for climate change talks Huikang Huang says that "general debate is not sufficient. We are running out of time."
In an attempt to break the deadlock, the chair of a UN working group will be consulting with governments this week on whether to use the protocol's current text as a negotiating document going forward.

 

South African President Jacob Zuma travels to Russia and China this month, as part of a push to open new trade and investment routes to the fast-growing emerging economies and to replace traditional markets in Europe.
The trips come on the heels of a State visit to South Africa by Brazilian President Luis Inazio Lula da Silva during last month's FIFA World Cup, which underscored the importance that emerging countries are placing on boosting mutual trade. The trip also means that Zuma will have visited all four of the Brics countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - in a little over a year after taking office. Frontier Advisory consultant Martyn Davies says that this is "very telling."
However, with a forecast expansion of just 2,3% this year, South Africa compares unfavourably with China and India - a prime reason that BRICs is just Brics, and not Bricsa, as many policymakers in Pretoria would wish.


Also making headlines:


Three farmers whose farms were seized by the Zimbabwean government will apply for a special order to recover legal costs in the High Court in Pretoria.
South Africa's new environmental-impact assessment (EIA) regulations came into effect on Monday, which the Department of Environmental Affairs said starts the official implementation process of a new regime aimed at improving the efficiency and effectiveness of EIAs.
Kenya's new constitution is expected to pass in a referendum next Wednesday, but implementing it will be a bigger hurdle because of the bitter divisions that the debate over the law has exposed.
And, US trade representative Ron Kirk says that "real progress" could be made in the long-stalled Doha Round of world trade talks by the end of 2010.


That's a roundup of news making headlines today.