DEEP JUST TRANSITION
Climate Justice and the Future in South Africa
With Awande Buthelezi/ South Africa, Ndivile Mokoena/ South Africa (video)
Moderation: Juliane Shucmacher/ Berlin
Languages: English, German
Large parts of South Africa have been experiencing severe drought for years, and in April 2022 several hundred people died in floods in the port city of Durban. These are consequences of a climate change that hit the Global South particularly hard — and especially those who are already disadvantaged. At the same time, South Africa is a regional economic power. The state-owned energy supply - over 90 percent of which is coal - is now to be be converted into a climate-friendly solution thanks to 8.5 billion dollars from the North. But South Africa is also home to one of the world's most active movements for climate justice, such as the Climate Justice Charter, which sees itself in the tradition of the struggle against apartheid.
In the world's most disparate country, the complex dynamics of inequality and responsibility in the climate crisis are revealed as if through a magnifying glass. Who bears what historical and geographic responsibility? What does climate justice mean, in the country, regionally, globally? Who shoulders the costs of the transformation, who shapes it? And what can be learned from the South African experience?
On the Podium
Awande Buthelezi is a researcher and designer at the Co-Operative and Policy Alternative Centre (COPAC) in Johannesburg. He is the coordinator of the Climate Justice Charter Movement in South Africa, which has spent several years developing a charter for a socially equitable transition to a climate-friendly society and is now working to implement it.
• 2020 Climate Justice Charter
↗Climate Justice Charter Movement
Ndivile Mokanea is a South African activist working for climate and gender justice in South Africa as well as internationally. She works in Johannesburg for GenderCC, among other organizations, with women smallholder farmers who are particularly affected by climate change.