With just over a week to go before the start of the 26th Conference of Parties COP26 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow, the minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Ms Barbara Creecy briefed the media on South Africa’s expectations.
The minister said that the most recent governing body meeting of the Climate Investments Funds made a decision to invite South Africa together with three other countries, to participate in the Accelerating Coal Transition Investment Program.
“Accordingly, we have been asked to develop an investment plan commensurate to an indicative allocation of between two and five hundred million US dollars from the Clean Technology Fund. This allocation includes a one-million-dollar Investment Plan Preparation Grant so we can develop the plan, “She continued.
According to her and based on previous experience of allocations from this Fund, this initial amount can leverage additional blended finance from one of the multi -lateral development banks with a multiplier of three or four to one.
The South African government is in the process of setting up a high-powered Finance Workstream focusing on their Just Transition, which will develop this investment plan.
“We see the decision by the CIF as a small, but important first step towards laying the foundation work for the broader financing programme of our Just Transition. The focus of this investment plan be the Eskom energy transition, including repowering and repurposing of retiring coal plants and investment in new low carbon generation capacity.
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“We hope to use the informal side meetings that take place at COP26 to generate further interest in supporting the country’s Just Transition to a low carbon economy and climate resilient society,” She explained
South Africa plans to go to Glasgow with a clear mandate to negotiate for the full implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement, including the global goals on mitigation, adaptation and support for developing countries, to avoid the worst impacts of climate change on our people and the environment.
The recently released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report states that in order to limit the impacts of climate change, the international community needs to collectively halve global greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and achieve global net zero CO2 emissions by 2050, while strongly reducing other greenhouse gas emissions.
South Africa, according to minister Creecy, as signatory to the Paris Agreement, re-emphasises its firm commitment to contributing our best effort toward the global cause of addressing climate change.
“Not only have we very significantly increased the ambition of our mitigation targets, but we have also brought forward the year in which emissions are due to decline from 2035 in the initial NDC, to 2025 in the updated NDC.”
The country’s mitigation target range for 2030 has been updated placing the top of the range of our revised NDC in line with the Paris Agreement’s temperature limit of “well below 2 degrees”, and the bottom of the range with the 1.5-degree temperature limit.
South Africa will be encouraging all Parties to submit their updated NDCs as soon as possible. The government will also be encouraging countries who have not yet done so, to voluntarily submit their Low Emissions Development Strategies (LEDs) under Article 4.19. Developing countries generally, and SA in particular, cannot implement ambitious mitigation targets unless there is sustainable, cost-effective financing from the developed countries and other multilateral and philanthropic institutions. Read her full speech here
