November 2011

COP 17 - SA's biggest distraction?

The 17th Conference of the Parties, COP 17, is to be held in Durban this month and, while I believe myself to be a citizen with concerns about the world's environment, I find myself failing to muster any enthusiasm for the process or optimism for the outcome. That was all destroyed by Copenhagen two years ago. The opening paragraph of the COP 17 web page reads: ‘The discussions will seek to advance, in a balanced fashion, the implementation of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the Bali Action Plan, agreed at COP 13 in 2007, and the Cancun Agreements, reached at COP 16 last December'. Inspirational stuff?

I hate big board meetings, mostly because, in my experience, they always begin with a rehash of the previous board meeting's minutes. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is unashamedly ‘seeking to advance' something that was ‘agreed' to seventeen years ago! The process has become so politicised and paralysed by political protectionism, by both signatories and non-signatories to the Kyoto protocol, that anything other than further discussions on previously agreed ‘principles' is difficult to envisage. Yet, as South Africans, we are proud to be hosting this conference and determined to communicate our ‘green credentials' to the rest of the world.

Without some serious problem-solving interventions, 2050 may end up to being a very scary place, and not just because of a 2˚C rise in temperature - and it is impossible to imagine that COP 17 or any other COP is going to provide practical solutions. For the sustainability of both the economies of the world and the environment we live in, we, as individuals, companies and governments, are going to have to stop being distracted, and to start putting some serious energy, effort and money into finding real solutions to here and now problems. To do that, we are almost certainly going to have to change!

Peter Middleton