Sarah Spinney writes:
The second day of the South Africa conference started with a discussion around the concept of carbon budgets, ecological debt and the Greenhouse Development Rights framework.
The figures themselves were a reminder of why injustice lies at the heart of this debate. Rich countries have consumed more than their fair share of the atmosphere’s resources. Their excessive emissions have left limited space available for development by poor countries and in addition have caused costly damage to fragile livelihoods. And yet despite this, countries like the USA still expect poor countries to share the burden of putting things right. As Mohamed Adow, my colleague from Christian Aid put it:
‘The developed world has had a feast and the developing countries have been invited to come and share the crumbs.’
If yesterday was about introducing the policy behind climate equity and gaining an overview of the key issues at stake in the negotiations, today was all about action. How could Southern African groups plan and implement campaign and advocacy work ahead of Copenhagen?
The Christian Aid Southern campaigns toolkit was warmly received by the group as a useful resource to stimulate campaigning in their own countries and after presenting some campaign ideas from around the world, including Countdown to Copenhagen as well as examples from Bolivia and the Pacific, the workshop broke out into groups to discuss common campaign demands, targets and action ideas.
A key thing to decide was how best to build and strengthen alliances to ensure the call for climate justice could be more powerful.
‘We need to work together. We need to link together.’
Meena Raman, Third World Network
As we started the final session of the conference it was exciting to see that everyone wanted to continue the engagement that has started here in Johannesburg. And in summing up the two-day workshop Mohamed highlighted what could be achieved if people came together:
‘The process leading us to a successful African campaign starts here.’
Key outcomes and priorities agreed were commitments to:
1) Build and strengthen national networks in individual countries
2) Improve co-ordination by forming a Southern African network to share ideas and communicate plans
3) Share skills and learn together
4) Co-ordinate advocacy at a regional and African level including:
• a commitment to join and engage in PACJA
The road is long, there’s much work to be done and it’s hard for African voices to be heard on the international stage. However, there was a sense that people came away inspired and determined. They were keen to tell others what they had learnt:
‘I’ll multiply it’ Medicine Masiiwa from Zimbabwe said.
