South Africa should stand with Africa at COP17

Gigiri, Nairobi (8 June 2011) – Only a profoundly renewed moral vision is likely to end 20 years of effective impasse in the climate negotiations that will continue at COP17 in Durban, South Africa, in December.

This is the conclusion of 130 African faith leaders of many creeds, who met with Kenyan Vice President Kalonzo Musyoga and UN Environment Programme Executive Director Achim Steiner at the UNEP headquarters in Nairobi this week.

The conference was initiated by the executive director of the South African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI), Bishop Geoff Davies, and hosted by SAFCEI, the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) and the Programme for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa (Procmura).

Kenyan Vice President Musyoka said that the threat of climate change is so great that “all our skills and knowledge” may not be sufficient “to save the human race from catastrophic and potentially dislocating changes”.

Recent crippling droughts in northern Kenya have provoked new conflicts when pastoralists have been forced out of desert regions into farmlands, and the country’s supply of hydroelectricity has been compromised.

UNEP executive director Achim Steiner told delegates that it is vital that a spirit of cooperation, rather than competition, prevails in climate talks. “In the climate negotiations, the world’s people are being silenced by arguments, facts and figures that are disempowering… You have immense power to bring back a sense of responsibility to these negotiations.”

He said that humanity’s collective practice of economic development has become unsustainable, and is overly dominated by pursuit of GDP growth, an “extraordinarily simplistic” indicator.

The conference declaration outlines the moral immobility of the climate talks, and suggests specific and unusual measures that would greatly help to secure a fair, ambitious and legally binding climate treaty in Durban (this is currently considered an unlikely outcome).

Delegates also called on South Africa to stand again with its African peers and for the interests of Africa, in climate talks, rather than aligning itself with other blocs.

About climate change in Africa

Despite 17 years of negotiations to cut warming emissions, current global pledges to emissions cuts leave Earth on track for between 2.5–4 degrees of warming, widely agreed to be catastrophic.

There is little sign that the world’s nations are yet truly serious about making the emissions cuts that are so urgently needed. Short-term economic growth, profit and narrow conceptions of national interest dominate, threatening the prospects for global long-term human development.

Africans are responsible for a tiny proportion of global emissions, both current and historic, yet are highly likely to be amongst the world’s most affected people, threatened by unprecedented droughts, floods, extreme weather, diminishing food security, poverty, forced migration and increased conflict. Tragically, all too many Africans assume that the increasing hardships forced upon them are acts of God, not realising that these hardships are ever more the consequence of human actions.

For more information, please contact:

For SAFCEI: Bishop Geoff Davies, +27 83 754 5275, geoff.davies -at- safcei.org.za
For AACC: General secretary Rev Dr Andre Karamaga (Nairobi): (254-20) 4441483, secretariat -at- aacc-ceta.org.
For Procmura: Rev Dr Johnson Mbillah: generaladviser -at- procmura.org.
Issued by David Le Page (SAFCEI): +27845 220968, press -at- safcei.org.za

Statement of African Faith Leaders – Climate Justice for Sustainable Peace 8 June 2011 (pdf)