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A LEADING Eastern Cape social scientist and human rights activist has made a passionate call for South Africa to move to a “low-carbon economy”, based on clean development.
Speaking on Friday at a conference hosted by the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University social development studies department, Dr Janet Cherry rejected the argument that there was a conflict between the prerequisites of overcoming poverty and unemployment, and a sustainable low-carbon economy that would no longer rely on burning fossil fuels.
“The conventional economic models will no doubt say yes there is a conflict, but I think the most important challenge for social scientists is precisely to show that there is no contradiction – that, in fact, sustainable livelihoods provide a higher quality of life and overcome poverty in a more profound way than current models of economic development can hope to do.”
Disparities and problems abounded in existing socio-economic structures in South Africa , she noted.
“Hunger in South Africa … is widespread. Yet statistics in June revealed that South Africa produced five million tons of surplus maize this year.”
On another front, the multi-billion-rand Coega IDZ “cannot provide enough cheap energy and water to entice and sustain dirty, capital-intensive industries”, she noted.
“Meanwhile, local working class communities like KwaZakhele have a structural unemployment rate of 50%. This population is relatively well-educated and has a reasonable level of development in terms of housing, services, health and education.
“But these people are simply not being accommodated in the industrial economy of Port Elizabeth with ‘decent work’, as Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has been calling for.”
It had been widely accepted that the next major conflicts in the world were likely to be over access to water, she said.
“Yet, in South Africa, on the one hand rural women spend many hours each day fetching water from rivers and, on the other, urban consumer society has adopted the American bottled water industry with a vengeance – despite the wastage and enormous carbon cost of plastic bottles.”
Cherry said it was clear from these anomalies that the poverty conundrum was not a shortage of food or productivity or lack of technology or ability.
“Where the paradigm shift is required is in the social sciences, in social and economic reorganisation.
“With consensus now reached on climate change, and human culpability for it, the onus is now on social scientists to look at new models of social and economic organisation to overcome the enormous problems posed by our current social and economic systems.”
The change must come urgently, and must be profound, with political will and policy change, across all sectors working “top down”, at the same time as grassroots’ pressure and consumer behaviour were working “bottom up”.
Social scientists had a key role to play in terms of helping to shape economic and development policies and there was an opportunity to learn from countries like Cuba, which was forced in 1991 to switch to a low- carbon future when the Soviet Union, after the fall of communism, withdrew its supply of fuel, she said. Lessons could also be gleaned from the transition towns springing up in developed countries where the citizens and their municipalities had created local economies free of dependence on fossil fuel like coal and oil. – By GUY ROGERS