*Are our political parties addressing the bedrock issues of survival, or are they only interested in the short-term goal of re-election? Mandi Smallhorne investigates*
What issues persuade you to favour one party over another – jobs, corruption, service delivery, land policies?
There are more crucial and bedrock issues than these.
We’ve been feeling the possible impacts of the climate crisis in South Africa – extensive, crippling drought, several massive wildfires, extreme weather events – and seeing the news from the rest of the world of melting glaciers and permafrost, of huge reductions in insect and worm life, of Adelaide in Australia experiencing a record temperature of 46.6°C in January, followed by hundreds of thousands of Australian cattle dying in massive floods a few weeks later.
Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe are still reeling from a deadly cyclone.
Our world is built on four pillars of life: air, water, soil and biodiversity (a rich mix of flora and fauna, including birds and insects and grasses and trees).
If we do not make these our first priority at this critical stage, we risk a terrible fate.
In this country, with water constraints and fragile soil, we need to be very diligent about protecting these four precious things, and about fighting climate change to ensure our own and our children’s futures.
You could do worse than choose who you vote for on these issues – not only for their own sake, but also as a weapon against social evils.
Noëlle Garcin, Action 24 project manager with the African Climate Reality Project, says: “Climate and environmental issues are intrinsically linked to key concerns such as economic and social inequality, health, housing and energy access, as well as governance and corruption. You’ll find that what drives climate change is often the source of other social, economic and environmental ills.”
Contrary to the way climate and environment issues are often portrayed, they are far from being a “rich people’s problem”, she says.
“The solutions for reducing and adapting to climate change just happen to give us the opportunity to achieve social and economic justice. Well-designed environmental and climate policies do not undermine socioeconomic welfare; quite the opposite, they stand to benefit the people, the environment and the economy at the same time. As an example, there is empirical evidence that shifting to renewable energy would deliver more and better jobs.”
*All fall down*
A look at the manifestos presented by the ANC, the DA, the EFF, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the United Democratic Movement (UDM) shows that they have one thing in common – while they all include a section on “the environment” or, in the ANC’s case “renewable energy”, they do not have the kind of coherent and inclusive approach to the climate and the environment that is needed.
“All this green stuff” is largely seen as something that is apart from important areas such as trade and industry, agriculture, land issues and mining, when, in fact, says Garcin, “climate change cuts across almost all sectors of governance, either because they contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, or because they are affected by the changing climatic conditions – or both, as is the case in the agriculture sector. We need simultaneous and coherent policies in multiple areas, something the draft Climate Change Bill published in 2018 clearly emphasised.”
In other words, “the environment” should be a golden thread that runs right through any and all policies.
