South Africans could be offered the chance next year to vote for a climate justice party or candidates.
This was said by a key leadership figure in the SA climate justice movement, Prof Vishwas Satgar of Wits University’s department of international relations.
He was speaking to Off Track on Human Rights Day ahead of discussions to be held at the Climate Justice Charter Movement conference in Johannesburg, and online, on Thursday to Friday.
Three climate activist groups in SA made statements on Human Rights Day:
- Clean Creatives SA, a coalition of 22 organisations, among them the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation, Greenpeace Africa and the Centre for Environmental Rights, called on SA advertising and public relations firms to “decline future work from fossil fuel companies, industry associations and related front groups”;
- The CJCM Campaign and the Climate Justice Coalition continued their fight to #UprootDMRE under the leadership of minister Gwede Mantashe, urging the public to sign a petition, and to use social media to air their views; and
- The #UprootDMRE campaign continued to accused Mantashe and the DMRE of “holding back a rapid and just transition to renewable energy — the fastest, most affordable way to solve load-shedding”.
Clean Creatives SA stated that globally 500 agencies and more than 1,300 individual creatives had pledged to decline future work with the fossil fuel industry.
The #UprootDMRE campaign said: “Solutions to SA’s crippling energy and climate crisis exist. The DMRE is working to lock SA into an expensive, polluting and outdated energy future. They’re also ignoring the voices of mining affected communities and allowing polluting corporations to put profit above people.”
The Climate Justice Charter Movement called for an “acceleration of the deep, just transition” away from dirty energy and political tyranny to clean energy and people-based democracy.
The CJCM programme sets down a discussion on how the movement can attract 10,000 signed up members by October.
Satgar said Mantashe had aligned himself with “carbon criminal nationalists” in SA whereas the CJCM movement wanted a “people- and worker-driven climate justice deal”, and the declaration of a climate emergency.
“We want renewal of our democracy as a transformative democracy. We want a movement that could even contest elections in 2024 with a climate justice platform.”
The provincial co-ordinator of the 43-member Eastern Cape Environmental Network, Owen Sibusiso Ndidi, said they were supporting the CJCM and the #UprootDMRE activities because the state seemed determined to push for environmentally damaging projects in the province such as allowing the Karpowership deal to happen in the port of Ngqura and for the construction of a nuclear power station.
He feared the pro-fossil fuel lobby in the government would use the state of disaster to allow these projects — and the seismic blasting of the Wild Coast — to carry on.
He said Mantashe had shown his colours by trying to push ahead while portraying civil society and environmental defenders as enemies of development.
Janet Solomon, who leads 34-organisation alliance Oceans Not Oil, said SA political parties were not facing up to the truth and urgency of the climate and ecological crisis.
“We have to ask the hard questions with which none of the political parties in our country are even beginning to grapple. The Climate Justice Charter Movement (CJCM) has begun this legwork,” she said.
Setting out the problems, she said: “The ocean has already absorbed 90% of humanity’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and surface temperature is heating up 24 times faster than a few decades ago and keeps accelerating. Absorbing CO² from oil and gas, concrete construction methods and industrial animal farming emissions has made the ocean more acidic, corroding protective animal shells and corals. It is also affecting seawater circulation by slowing it down, causing less oxygen to circulate. Without oxygen even more species will die.
“Transition to goals of sustaining planetary health are non-negotiable. It is of enormous urgency that we, collectively and individually, secure a future for our seas and land that safeguards biodiversity and human survival.
“The CJCM seeks to avoid the radical upheaval of catastrophic and climate events, by developing a new governance system where impacts can be mitigated or managed so that any transition is equitable. Establishing these goals is a complex and multifaceted task compared to the reasonably clear goals of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and we invite networks with these goals to roll up their sleeves and join the dialogue. CJCM is creating a very exciting purposive transformational collective focused on climate justice and it is building momentum and hope.”
Working for climate polluters is not morally responsible nor socially acceptable
In their letter to civil society, SA campaign director of Clean Creatives, Stephen Horn, accused members of the public relations industry of taking money from the fossil fuel industry to “continue their decades-long efforts to undermine climate action.
“Working for climate polluters is not morally responsible nor socially acceptable,” said Horn.
“The continued prioritisation of fossil fuels over cheaper, cleaner alternatives is hurting the economy, the environment and human health — with poor and vulnerable communities worst affected as they are least prepared to cope with floods, heatwaves, droughts and food shortages.
“Fossil fuel air pollution causes one in five deaths globally — an astonishing 8-million deaths annually. The recent devastation caused by Cyclone Freddy in Malawi, Mozambique and other countries in the region is just the latest example of how a warmer climate is supercharging extreme weather events and affecting the rights of communities which have contributed the least to causing climate change.
“Advertising for the fossil fuel industry creates a social licence for the industry to continue polluting and slows meaningful action on climate change. This letter should be a wake-up call to companies working to improve the image of a company like Shell, which raised the ire of hundreds of thousands of South Africans with its plans to search for oil and gas off the Wild Coast.”
Horn said adverting and PR companies paid by the fossil fuel industry were “deflecting the immense harm their (fossil fuel company) activities are causing. These campaigns, which mirror those used in the tobacco industry decades ago, greenwash oil, gas and coal companies in an attempt to slow or block meaningful change.
“They drown out the voices of concerned citizens across our country and around the world, while effectively silencing communities on the frontlines of this crisis. They are inauthentic and antithetical to the purpose and mission of our organisations.
“It’s time for PR and ad agencies to come clean, end their work with the fossil fuel industry, and be a force for good, rather than part of the problem. Scientists at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have specifically called out the creative industry for hampering efforts to prevent a full-blown climate catastrophe, and we must heed those calls.
“Together, we can stand on the right side of history, and support those organisations that are genuinely working to effect meaningful change — rather than those that only pretend to.”
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