Ramaphosa's panel calls for end to coal, but who’ll fund it? - The Mail & Guardian

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Like unfinished flyovers in Cape Town, global climate finance and domestic demand often don’t meet up.

If you want to understand the core problem with international climate finance then go to Cape Town. On the edge of the CBD close to the entrance to the Waterfront you can look up and see the ends of two incomplete freeways. They were supposed to create a fly-over across one of the busiest junctions in the city, but whether by engineering incompetence or some other mishap, they were destined never to meet.

Postponed from last year, for obvious reasons, it is no exaggeration to say that COP26 is a crucial meeting for the future of life on Earth. Its primary purpose is to review progress in relation to the commitments made — and since — at the Paris COP in 2015, which produced the— itself a vital climate change breakthrough since it created legally binding obligations on member states.

Developing countries and emerging markets, such as South Africa, need to develop their economies. In many cases, they have large, ostensibly “cheap” coal. Regardless, they understandably don’t care to be told to “develop differently to save the planet” by the very countries that caused the problem in the first place. knot can be untied is by ensuring that developed countries foot the lion’s share of the bill for the additional costs of shifting the development trajectory.

South Africa is, in its own clumsy, circuitous route, moving towards a clearer, better position on the need for an urgent energy transition. Presidential Climate Change Coordinating Commission has emerged as a significant, positive player in this regard, far exceeding expectations in terms of its ability to navigate a tough and treacherous political economy and forge a sufficient consensus.

The donor envoys would this week have been seeking signs that a consensus has emerged, that the political and policy commitment is there, and that, more than anything, Minister of Mineral Resources and EnergyFor a politically viable deal to be done, certain other factors need to be taken care of. First of all, the climate finance package must contend with two other big-ticket items: Eskom’s debt and the energy transition “losers” — coal workers and the communities that depend on them.

 

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