The availability of affordable resources is essential to the productivity and running of a country. All sectors of a country, whether state, business or other, depend heavily on reliable resources and the services they facilitate.
Whether using water, energy, food, transport or waste, doing more with less translates into increased capacity for production and consumption and enhances long-term sustainability.
By using and reusing resources efficiently and intelligently, resources are freed up for other uses.
In the future, ensuring stable access to resources will prove more difficult. Global trends warn of drastic changes unfolding. Population growth, urbanisation and improvements in living standards place a strain on resources as demand for goods and services increases.
The negative impact of climate change and the degradation of life-supporting ecosystems add more uncertainty to resource availability and it does so in unpredictable ways. This uncertainty is made worse by greater global connectivity between economies and markets, where resource scarcities in one part of the world can have severe impacts on other parts of the world.
Perhaps the most interesting advances are unfolding in how systems of production, consumption, waste, sanitation and transport are being reinvented
If the Siberian wheat harvest fails due to drought, it can have damaging effects on food security in countries where wheat is a staple. If coal mining in Queensland, Australia, is hampered by flooding, it affects global demand for coal and drives prices up, creating scarcities in other parts of the world. Both examples have already occurred.
The challenge of rethinking and reshaping how resources are perceived and used is being met with staggeringly significant innovations in technology and research and development, such as the global growth of the renewable energies and green technology sectors. Flows of speculative investment into the renewable energies sector outstrip those going into conventional fossil fuel technologies.
Perhaps the most interesting advances are unfolding in how systems of production, consumption, waste, sanitation and transport are being reinvented. By rethinking how the linkages within and between systems can be exploited to reuse by-products to boost productivity and innovate new offerings, new ways of conducting business and providing services are being found.
Systems reconceptualisation also lies at the heart of customising solutions. This has special relevance for Africa.
Serial entrepreneur and author Gunter Pauli in his book The Blue Economy provides powerful examples of systems innovation. He relates practical accounts of how to reinvent systems of production ranging from the intelligent reuse of slaughterhouse waste to mass producing paper from mining waste in waterless processes.
He relays case studies with startling simplicity, promising 100 innovations that can provide 100-million jobs. Every industrialist, manufacturer and developmental practitioner should take heed of his advice. It is light on theory and heavy on practicality.
The opportunity for SA to engage in sustainability-orientated technological, infrastructural and systems innovation has staggering potential for Africa. By embracing green and sustainability-orientated growth, SA has the potential to stimulate the diversification of its economy and spark growth.
Growing the renewable energies sector is critical to unlocking this potential. It is through diversification of the sector that the absorption of other sustainability-orientated technologies and systems provisions can be catalysed.
The nuclear deal represents a significant obstacle. By allocating large funds and effort to nuclear build programmes, renewable energies are likely to be crowded out and their potential for spearheading diversification squandered.
In practical terms, this diversification would result in a transition to semidecentralised and decentralised infrastructure and technology offerings such as solar and wind power systems, biodigesters, grey-water recycling and rainwater harvest systems, mass public transit and nonmotorised transport systems, eventually extending all the way to permaculture and agro-ecological operations, green building and construction, and the reconfiguration of old industrial zones and agro-industrial operations.
The transition being envisaged is a grand vision but it is by no means beyond the grasp of SA, which is well positioned on the continent to lead the way.
SA has the technical skills base to embrace and roll out new technologies and infrastructures in the state, private sector and research and tertiary education institutions.
Even though SA is relatively more developed than the rest of Africa, it has the same conditions that plague development efforts across the continent. These include the proliferation of informal settlements (where bulk infrastructure often cannot be deployed); informal systems of trade; service provision and employment; widespread poverty and unemployment. By innovating offerings that fit the South African context, viable solutions can be formulated for the rest of the continent.
SA has a robust, growing tertiary sector that can offer reliable financial, insurance, real estate and banking services. It also has high levels of liquidity; funds waiting for viable investment avenues to emerge. This means that SA can bank-roll new offerings and help provide the financial and credit services necessary to ensure large-scale absorption of these offerings across the continent.
SA is wasting its vast potential to lead a transition that will transform itself and can potentially play a significant role in actualising the vision of an African Renaissance.
What is needed is clear leadership and a social compact that can actualise this vision. It is not a matter of whether it can be done or not, or whether we choose to or not.
• Peter is a long-term sustainability researcher and expert. He will conduct a master class on sustainability innovations at Cornerstone Institute from February 2018 7-9.
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