SA must act urgently to exit group of climate-change pariahs
The country has been rated with the likes of China, South Korea and Japan as being highly insufficient in tackling global warming
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report from October 2018 states the world only has until 2030 to limit global temperature increases to 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels. To meet this target, global carbon emissions need to be reduced by 45% by 2030, before being reduced to zero by 2050. Debra Roberts, the co-chair of IPCC research into the impacts of climate warming, has stated that “the next few years are probably the most important in our history”. Despite this assertion, Climate Action Tracker, an organisation that “quantifies and evaluates climate change mitigation commitments and assesses whether countries are on track to meeting those” states that SA’s climate commitments are “highly insufficient”. Climate Tracker Action characterises “highly insufficient” commitments as those that will lead to global warming of 3°C-4°C if pursued globally (it is predicted that warming will be twice the global average in sub-Saharan Africa, so 6°C-8°C). SA is far from b...
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