The SA delegation to the UN climate conference COP28 to be held in Dubai in December will be strongly objecting to the implementation of trade measures that penalise countries according to the carbon emissions associated with their exported products.
Such cross-border tax adjustments are “perverse” and will only be used by rich countries to fund their own climate ambitions, said Shamini Harrington, who serves on Business Unity SA’s (Busa’s) environmental subcommittee.
Harrington, vice-president for climate change at Sasol and a commissioner on the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC), represented Busa at a consultation session hosted by the department of forestry, fisheries & the environment and the PCC on Thursday on SA’s negotiating mandate for COP28.
Forestry, fisheries & the environment minister Barbara Creecy said one of the key conversations SA would take to COP28 is the threat posed to sustainable development in developing countries by unilateral trade measures such as the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM).
In SA’s submission to the European Commission on the EU’s draft implementation regulations of the CBAM earlier this year, the government said applying import tariffs based on carbon emissions linked to certain products imported into the EU would “transfer the burden of climate action onto developing economies” and place “undue and unjust burdens” on SA and certain industries in particular.
About $1.5bn (R28bn) in exports of SA to the EU are at risk because of the CBAM.
Reverse
On Thursday, Maesela Kekana, deputy director-general for climate change and air quality at the department of forestry, fisheries & the environment, said instruments such as CBAM would “reverse the flow of money from developed to developing countries” and contradict any support rich nations might offer to assist developing countries in reaching their climate goals.
Other issues of importance for SA at COP28 centre on how developing countries in Africa could “take advantage of their abundant renewable resources and strategic minerals to build shared prosperity and sustainable development on the continent,” Creecy said.
SA, as part of the Africa group, will also drive negotiations on the “pressing need for transformation of the global financial architecture to make the global financial system fit for purpose, in assisting countries to combat climate change and achieve their sustainable development goals”.
Developing nations, said Creecy, have continually called for more support for the financing of their fight against climate change, but the funding targets pledged by developed countries are still not being met.
“At COP28 there will be a renewed call for a scaled-up and predictable goal for climate finance.”
According to Kekana, studies showed that Africa would need between $26bn and $41bn per year up to 2030 just to cover the cost of climate adaptation.
Financial burden
“We need a specific and massively scaled-up new, quantified, long-term goal for finance that is based on the needs of developing countries and backed up with a collectively negotiated implementation road map,” Kekana said.
It is not sustainable, he said, to expect developing countries to have to resort to loans that “come with onerous conditionality” and that worsen their debt crisis.
Busa agreed that developed economies should provide financial, technical, and capacity-building assistance to developing economies during their transition, but also agreed this support should not lead to an increased financial burden for developing economies or an increase of unwarranted conditions, Harrington said.
“Climate finance should not add to SA’s current debt burden. Regrettably climate finance flows have thus far been insufficient, placing the relative cost of climate change disproportionately on the shoulders of developing economies, despite their limited fiscal capacity,” she said.
If international financing is to be agreed on, Busa suggested, it must be primarily grant-based, concessional and free of conditionalities.
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