Govt scared to face facts?
2003-10-29 18:56
Cape Town - Inquiries from scientists at the Global Change Symposium in Kirstenbosch in Cape Town on Wednesday on the whereabouts of a report completed three years ago raised queries into whether the government has been suppressing potentially worrying information on the consequences of climate change in South Africa.
The SA National Country Study Programme was completed in 1999. It aimed to provide a national inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, and to determine how climate change would impact on biodiversity, agriculture, and water supply in South Africa.
This report was apparently published on the web for a brief period of time, before the administrators were requested to dismantle the website. No one who has approached the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) has been able to get hold of a copy of the report.
Scientists who were involved in the programme also found their way blocked when they tried to inform the public about the consequences of climate change.
However, with the help of scientists from institutions not directly funded by government Dr Guy Midgley, climate-change specialist at the National Botanical Institute, released a report to the media in 2001 entitled "the heat is on..."
Asked about this at the symposium, Shirley Moroka, principal environmental officer at DEAT agreed that the department had been told not to release the studies until they got cabinet approval. She said there were things in the report on greenhouse gas emissions that they didn' release "for political reasons". However, she said that the department was actively working on it, and that they hoped to get cabinet approval and release the report very soon.
Moroka pointed out that as the report had taken so long to be released much of the work was out of date. However, Moroka did not believe that the delay had limited the government' ability to respond to the information in the report.
She said the report had been circulated widely within government, and that its ideas were being implemented.
William Bond, professor of botany at The University of Cape Town, disagreed. He felt strongly that the delay by government had muted the public response and had made it very difficult for scientists either to spread the information, or to continue further research.
Down-playing
Moroka agreed that the delay might have made it difficult to get funding for further research, but she said DEAT had been addressing the issue of climate change, and had initiated two working committees on the subject, held various workshops with departments, as well as starting awareness-raising campaigns at schools. She did not want to comment on whether the government had been down-playing climate change.
Bond said the government might have been worried that the information in the report would deter investment in South Africa. The projected consequences of climate change for large areas of South Africa were very serious.
The report showed that within the next 50 to 100 years the biomes as we currently know them (including fynbos, succulent Karoo, grassland and forest) might well be reduced to between 35 and 55% of their present extent.
This did not mean that South Africa would become a desert, but it did mean that the plants, animals, and people in South Africa would have to have to get used to living in a very different environment.
"Ignoring global climate change will not make it go away," Midgley said in a press release. Mounting pressure - globally, and from the South African scientific community - has forced climate change onto the government agenda.
South Africa is a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol, and as such has to fulfil various commitments regarding monitoring climate, awareness-raising, and mitigation. It is also committed to finding ways to adapt to the significant changes that are, and will be occurring in this country in the near future.
- SAPA