Efforts to fight climate change — such as planting forests across Sub-Saharan Africa — could backfire if local communities and African research are sidelined, leading climate scientists said ahead of the COP30 conference starting tomorrow in Bélem, Brazil.
Rising temperatures in the 10 years since 195 parties adopted the Paris Agreement to protect the planet from overheating have triggered more intense and frequent disasters worldwide.
The devastating flooding in eastern South Africa in April 2022, Cape Town’s wildfires in April 2021 and the “Day Zero” drought from 2015-2017 are among 10 case studies where climate change “increased the severity or likelihood of the event”, Carbon Brief reports.
Liziwe McDaid, strategic lead at The Green Connection for ecojustice, said: “The people who suffer the most are those in the South, countries like ours which are already being flooded and experiencing drought. We need to keep to 1.5 degrees (below pre-industrial levels) target or at least get back to 1.5 as fast as possible.
“The critical issue at COP30 is the responsibilities that the North owes the South, increased grant funding for adaptation and for loss and damage. When looking at the just energy transition, we don’t want secret deals for fake solutions. We don’t want carbon capture storage or nuclear or gas deals.”
New grants for African-led climate solutions are a priority for South Africa at the meeting in Belém. The minister of forestry, fisheries & the environment (DFFE), Dion George, said: “Developing-economy nations require scaled-up, predictable and accessible funding … in the form of grants and concessional finance, not new debt.”
The government and activists are united in this demand. “The developed world has never fulfilled its pledges,” said Bobby Peek, director of the environmental justice organisation groundWork. “Climate justice and action in the South is not about investment opportunities, it is a life and death situation.”
The role nature plays in countering climate threats is also expected to get attention at COP30. The Endangered Wildlife Trust’s head of sustainability, Kishaylin Chetty, said they want to see “nature-based solutions fully recognised as a core climate adaptation mechanism”. He called for “more African case studies and pilot projects for energy infrastructure, rangelands, water funds and biodiversity banking”.
Prof Laura Pereira, director of the Wits Global Change Institute, noted that "natural climate solutions” need to be Africa-centred and appropriate.
“Our policymakers need to push back on [inappropriate] investments being made by the North in natural climate solutions … like planting a lot of trees in savannahs and ignoring the communities who live there,” she said.
Prof Guy Midgley, acting director of the School for Climate Studies at Stellenbosch University, said the afforestation of grasslands, savannahs and fynbos vegetation was a “mal-implementation” that puts Southern African ecosystems and human livelihoods at risk, unlike clearing invasive alien trees, which reduces the risk of wildfires and boosts water security.
Projects need to use African data accurately as global datasets can misrepresent conditions, said Pereira, giving the example of African savannahs being “misclassified as degraded forest by the [UN’s] Food and Agricultural Organisation”.
But she added: “There’s a big opportunity to do investments right, preserving our biodiversity and the livelihoods … for example, for our fishing communities to have flourishing coral reefs and reap the rewards.”
Dr Sebataolo Rahlao, Oceanographic Research Institute executive manager, said more research was needed on how “threats such as pollution, invasives and climate change” impact marine and coastal systems and which nature-based solutions can address these.
Prof Gina Ziervogel, director of the University of Cape Town’s African Climate and Development Initiative, recently attended a workshop on what three informal settlements in Khayelitsha needed to reduce their vulnerability, where their representatives and city officials engaged in bottom-up planning for “climate resilient development”.
George said that finalising the new “global goal on adaptation” was a priority in Belém. “We support a concise set of indicators, around 100, to measure progress.” And the finance goal adopted at COP29, which aims to mobilise $1.3-trillion (about R22.5-trillion) annually by 2035, “must be turned into reality”.
Climate justice and action in the South is not about investment opportunities; it is a life-and-death situation
— Bobby Peek, director of groundWork
African Climate Alliance and Cancel Coal leader Sibusiso Mazomba is in Belém as a youth delegate. “We are calling for parties to recognise loss and damage as the third pillar on the Baku to Belém road map and fund it. This is so urgent right now,” he said.
Mazomba called for red tape to be cut so funds can be rapidly processed after disasters.
But focusing on adaptation and loss and damage is not enough, said McDaid, urging the parties at COP30 to accelerate the reduction of the emissions driving rising temperatures and decouple development from fossil fuels.
Every country had to submit their targets to reduce emissions, and South Africa achieved this on time. The Climate Action Tracker rated South Africa’s targets as insufficient, but George said they had to be balanced against developmental priorities.
Department of forestry, fisheries & the environment media liaison officer Thobile Zulu-Molobi said citizens can “expect to see practical changes that make communities cleaner, healthier and more sustainable” with the shift to renewable energy.
“[This will] help to reduce load-shedding over time, while cutting pollution from coal. We’ll also see more electric vehicles, energy-efficient homes and buildings, and greener public transport options,” she said.
In partnership with eThekwini, groundWork is demonstrating this through its methane reduction project at the city’s landfill sites. Waste pickers remove organic waste from markets, reducing methane emissions at dumps and improving air quality, said Peek.
South Africa would build bridges at COP30 — meeting the African Group of Negotiators, the Basic group (Brazil, South Africa, India and China), as well as the Group of 77 — to get support for the outcomes that developing countries seek, said Zulu-Molobi. “Outcomes that do not balance ambition with means of implementation for action would be a red line for South Africa.”
Peek put it more starkly: “Climate justice and action in the South is not about investment opportunities; it is a life-and-death situation.”
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