South Africa is taking a continental lead in the integration and implementation of a green economy, as well as in putting initiatives in place to achieve the targets set out in the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to ensure environmental sustainability, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Resource-based Sustainable Development competency area manager Dr Doug Trotter said during a presentation at the CSIR’s fourth biennial Science, Engineering and Technology conference last month.

“South Africa was faster off the starting blocks than other countries in Africa in terms of responding to the emergence of a green economy as a concept.

“Initiatives to achieve the environmental sustainability MDG are already in place. This is a new emerging area within the CSIR and within South Africa as a whole,” he said.

Trotter explained that, as a country that was heavily dependent on natural resources for economic development, South Africa had no choice but to take the initiatives geared towards a green economy seriously.

He added that natural resources had ecological limits and the country needed to consider ways of decoupling the meeting of economic growth targets from increasing natural resources extraction.

“A green economy is one that results in improved wellbeing and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities.

“The underlying principle is to reduce the reliance of economic development on the increased consumption of, and damage to, natural resources and the environment, while meeting social needs and understanding inequities.

“To achieve this, we need to try to decouple the use of natural resources from the economy, while still maintaining economic growth,” stated Trotter.

He added that research was being done to find the most appropriate way to reduce the country’s reliance on coal and invest more in renewable-energy sources.

“If we reduce the use of our natural resources, we will reduce the environmental impact on the country,” he said.

Trotter further noted that the country needed to ensure that new initiatives and technologies were in place to improve economic growth and environmental protection.

“South Africa has started developing strategies to implement a green economy,” he stated.

He explained that the transition towards a green economy was seen as a means to drive and implement sustainability; however, both were relatively new concepts and there were significant capacity and knowledge gaps in both these fields.

“Both concepts are complex and require the integration of the complicated relationships between environmental, social and economic considerations.

“The capacity, tools and methods to address these complexities and understand previously unforeseen relationship effects are still in their relative infancy, but are significantly needed now,” he said.

Further, Trotter noted that growing global pressure was driving accelerated research and development in this area.

“The availability of improvements on existing methods and the ongoing development of new approaches, guidelines and decision support tools are helping to unpack the complex issues.

“South Africa, along with the international community, needs to enable legal and regulatory context reform in terms of how to drive and enable funding and investment frameworks moving forward in that domain.

“We also need to enable international partners and global trade conditions and set up new indicators for monitoring and reporting,” he stated.

Trotter stressed that green growth had to contribute to poverty reduction and socioeconomic development in the short to medium term, if it was going to gain traction in Africa.

“Comprehensive use of integrative review and planning, coupled with appropriately and purpose-designed decision-support tools, are crucial in unpacking the complexity of the path ahead,” he said.
From Engineering News

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