Friday, 4 June, marks the day the Presidential Climate Change Coordinating Commission decides its position on South Africa’s updated nationally determined contribution
Currently, climate change is still seen as an environmental issue in South Africa and it is dealt with as peripheral. But climate change will undermine every single aspect of life, and cannot be seen as mutually exclusive from how society or the economy works. A deep systemic change will be required to ensure that the most vulnerable people do not become shock absorbers for the impacts that will occur from climate change.
The president stated that “our new NDC proposes a significant reduction in emissions target ranges” and in consultations it was stated that the NDC aligns with the preferred. Yet the truth is that the updated NDC still does not fall in line with limiting global temperatures increases to below 1.5 degrees Celsius — even in a best-case scenario. If we as a country only live up to some of the lower target ranges proposed in the NDC, we can only look forward to catastrophic heating scenarios.
We, the youth of South Africa, thus call upon President Ramaphosa and all decision-makers to make the NDC and its consultative process more inclusive and accessible, and to commit to raising South Africa’s climate ambition in a way that can practically bring about climate progress within the next five years. It will cost nothing to set a more ambitious lower target range on the NDC in order to facilitate a greater rate of change.