CO-OPERATIVE AND POLICY ALTERNATIVE
CENTRE
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COPAC
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Media Breakfast
10 May 2016
Press Statement
South
Africa’s drought, food crisis, democracy deficits, greenhouse gas pollution and
deepening inequalities demand an urgent response from below about new ways of
thinking about crisis, new solutions and alternative ways forward for the
country. The coming together of campaigns championing food sovereignty,
break-free from coal, against carbon pollution, in defense of communities from
the destructiveness of mining and for greater transparency to empower citizenship
heralds the beginning of a historical and important convergence of social
forces in South Africa.
A Call To Rethink Everything
Underpinning
this convergence is a realisation that human civilisation is facing a serious
crossroads. The industrialisation of nature has revealed the limits of
planetary resources, ecological limits, inequality and the crisis of
modernising capitalist development. Linear modern progress and development has
produced deep systemic crises which can only be solved through system change.
Green capitalism, green neoliberalism and other techno-fixes are false
solutions that reproduce the same pattern. South Africa’s policy discourse,
policy makers and public conversations needs to face these realities. We need a
more open, critical and engaged societal conversation about a new paradigm of
co-existence between humans and with nature. We need to supplant growth with a new index:
sustaining life. South Africa needs to start having this conversation urgently
if it is going to survive as a country and give its citizens hope.
The Failure of COP21
The
UN-led climate change negotiations has failed the world and for the past twenty
years the biggest existential challenge facing the human race has been treated
as a market problem. As a result we have crossed the 1 degree increase in
planetary temperature since pre-industrial levels, we have gone beyond 400ppm concentration of carbon in the
atmosphere, are living through extreme weather changes and inducing dangerous
feedback loops into global warming. Current commitments from COP21 take us into
a zone of 3-4 degree increases in planetary temperatures. Most of us and future
generations will not survive. The ratchet up mechanism in the COP21 agreement
is fraught with uncertainties least of which the vicissitudes of domestic
political economy conditions of countries, geopolitical calculations of fossil
fuel producers and a lack of resourcing
to address climate debt by rich countries. COP21 is a palliative that has not
even confronted the curtailing of fossil fuel extraction and use, the source of
the problem. COP21 is not about systemic change. The discourse of COP
negotiations further hides the disproportionate responsibilities and impacts of
climate change within the idea of the Anthropocene, the age of humans. COP
discourse is suffused with ‘Anthropogenic’ language that fails to appreciate
that rich countries, powerful corporations and ruling classes are the problem
but yet poor countries, the hungry,
landless and working class will suffer the most. COP 21 reproduces a power
framework that is the problem and it fails to address corporate and ultimately
capitalist induced climate change. We need democratic and people-led solutions
for systemic change now if we are to survive as a species.
The Failure of South Africa’s Food
System
South
Africa’s globalised and corporate controlled food system is destructive to the
environment, uses about 63% of our water resources, fails to feed 14 million
South Africans and keeps almost 50% of the population food insecure. Children
are also victims of food profiteering with
1 in 5 malnourished and increasingly our youth are victims of unhealthy
fast food diets but yet some estimates suggest almost 50% of fresh fruit and
vegetables are wasted in our corporate
controlled food system. The corporate controlled industrial food system is
broken and not working for South Africa. It is an unjust, unfair, unethical,
unsustainable and an unhealthy system. It needs systemic transformation for
these reasons alone.
But
yet South Africa’s El Niño induced
drought is revealing further systemic failures. South Africa is experiencing a
third (the first 2006-2008 and then 2010-2011) food price shock because of its
globalised industrial food system. This food system is locked into fossil
fuels, global markets, industrial farming and productivist methods that are not able to
adapt in the context of climate change and passes on the problem to workers,
the poor and consumers. Increasing food prices are all about keeping profits
high, particularly through increasing the price of staples, and in the context
of maintaining multi-billion rand businesses. It is not about factor costs nor
import costs. This is simply a food system that would sacrifice human life to
make profits. South Africa’s food system is globalised into Africa, including
Southern Africa, and in the context of the drought is failing to feed 16
million people in the region according to the World Food Program. At least
another 49 million are at risk in the region. Corporate controlled food systems
cannot feed a world increasingly journeying into climate crisis. We need
systemic alternatives such as food sovereignty to feed the people and hence the national Bread March by the South
African Food Sovereignty Campaign.
Moreover, the state is failing dramatically
to respond effectively and learn from this drought. This meteorological pattern
is going to worsen as the planet heats up. Through research conducted by COPAC,
tracking the impacts of the drought on small scale farmers, we have discovered
the following: small scale farmers were struggling before the drought but the
drought has worsened things, there is a lack of effort on governments part to
mobilise communities, government is failing to assess small scale farmer needs
adequately, food parcels even for livestock are not sufficient, there is no
clear response on how to bring back cultivation of food crops, water management
is revealing serious weaknesses, there is no government policy thinking on how
to mitigate impacts beyond the immediate effects of the drought and increasing
food prices are hurting even farming households. Building capacities from this
drought to ensure South Africa diversifies its food system is lost on the
state. Hence the South African Food Sovereignty Campaign’s Drought Speak Out.
The First Steps Towards a Peoples
Climate Justice Movement: Advancing Systemic Alternatives Now!
The
worsening crises and the efforts of SAFSC, Break Free, Earthlife, MACUA and R2K
are laying the basis for a red-green
alliance or a peoples climate justice movement to emerge. The activities
planned will aim to show the interconnections between coal, climate, drought
and food crises. Such deep rooted problems cannot be solved through tinkering
but require systemic change. In this context we call for a just transition now
in South Africa. We reject the National Development Plan which merely produces
more of the same and instead we believe a people led and democratic just transition is required to
advance systemic alternatives from below.
·
Keeping coal in the ground means we
have to take socially owned renewables seriously.
·
Fighting the pollution effects of
mining means we have to manage water, land and community impacts more
sustainably.
·
Exposing information deficits in governments decisionmaking including on
nuclear means greater accountability and citizens power.
·
Calling for food sovereignty means
giving greater control of the food system and its culture back to small scale
producers and consumers. It means we can use agro-ecology to feed villages,
towns and cities while controlling our genetic materials like seeds through
community seed-banks.
Food
Sovereignty is peoples power…
Break
Free From Coal…
System
Change Now!
Forward
to Climate Justice!
Contact:
Dr. Vishwas
Satgar, Associate Professor, WITS.
Cell: 082 775
3420
Twitter:
@VishwasSatgar
Email: copac@icon.co.za
Board
Chairperson COPAC (COPAC serves as secretariat to the SAFSC)
Member of the
National Coordinating Committee of the SAFSC
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