Environment     

S Africa to reveal new climate plan ahead of UN summit

Xinhua, October 13, 2011

• South Africa's water and environmental affairs minister Edna Molewa is due to gazette new proposals on how South Africa can meet its climate-change mitigation pledge that will see the country's greenhouse gas emission drop by 2020, Business Day newspaper in Johannesburg reported on Wednesday.

  South Africa will host a United Nations' climate change summit in Durban from Nov. 28 to Dec.9.

  The newspaper said Molewa presented South Africa's Climate Change Response Policy White Paper to the South African cabinet on Wednesday.

  In 2009 South Africa pledged to reduce its domestic greenhouse gas emissions trajectory by 34 percent before 2020, and 42 percent by 2025, subject to "adequate financial and technical support".

  Molewa said the South African government's plan "is a call to action, sector by sector... It will lead to regulatory reform."

  She reiterated that the policy is dependent on South Africa receiving adequate financial and technical support, and is based on science.

  South Africa's policy takes into account the country's Integrated Resource Plan for energy, in addition to the country's plans for transport infrastructure and agriculture, and comprised mitigation and adaptation, she said.

  Alf Wills, South Africa's chief Conference of the Parties (COP) negotiator, said South Africa's White Paper set up a process that will define "desired mitigation outcomes" for each sector.

  Once the paper is published the South African department of water and environmental affairs will conduct in-depth analyses, sector by sector, to determine what each could and should contribute.

  Wills said that preliminary research shows, for example, that South Africa could reduce its heavy dependence on coal (more than 90 percent), which pushes up greenhouse gas emissions.

  South Africa has "a moral obligation in the context of Africa", as the continent's largest greenhouse gas emitter, to reduce emissions, he said

  Molewa said South Africa has an obligation to "do something" to perpetuate the Kyoto Protocol, in some form.

  The 1997 Kyoto protocol is the first and only international agreement on the stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

  Molwea heads South Africa's team at the Durban summit, known as COP17. South Africa's international relations and cooperation minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane is this year's COP president.

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