Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning
With regard to international treaties on climate change, such as the Paris Agreement on Climate Change:
(1) Has the Western Cape Department of Environmental Affairs at any stage over the past ten years been briefed by the national Department of the Environment, Forestry and Fisheries on obligations arising from such treaties; if so, what are the relevant details;
(2) what support has been made available to provinces in order to support the obligations following such agreements?
[1] The National Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment has, on occasion, conducted capacity building sessions where detail was provided on the national position in respect of greenhouse gas emissions mitigation. The primary informant to these sessions is the Nationally Determined Contributions [NDCs] to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as submitted by South Africa to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 2021. The Department of Environmental Affairs and Development Planning has not been briefed on provincial obligations stemming from the international commitments such as the Paris and Glasgow Agreements, as national government has yet to fully translate the national obligations into sector or regional responsibilities. Comments provided by the Western Cape Government on the Climate Change Bill, 2021, have requested that the role of subnational government be clearly articulated.
The platform for sharing information related to international treaties is the MinTech Working Groups [Working Group 9 deals with Climate Change]. These are, however, restricted to the National commitment and not unpacked to the subnational level as evident in the current version of the Climate Change Bill. The WCG is an active participant on this platform, advancing and defending the interests of subnational spheres of government.
[2] National commitments in respect of the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions are currently being dealt with at a national level, with no firm obligations placed on provinces or specific sectors. Sector Emission Targets [SETs] are being developed by the national Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. The national Department has been drafting a proposal to include provinces (essentially through inclusion in provincial climate change strategies) and local government (through mainstreaming of Municipal Integrated Development Plans); the proposal and associated guideline are to be developed in consultation with provinces and districts but no specific engagements with province around this have been confirmed. There has consequently not been any support provided to provinces.
In respect of adaptation measures – i.e. adapting to unavoidable impacts of climate change – mention can be made of individual local intervention projects by the national Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment. These projects typically facilitate the use of international donor funding for local scale adaptation such as early warning systems or response strategy development. We have benefitted from an Adaptive Capacity Facility funded project setting up an early warning system for fires in the Garden Route District Municipality. The national Department has a Local Government Support Programme that support municipalities directly in some of their response activities.
To date, the Western Cape Government has had limited engagement with national support processes. The national climate change Local Government Support Programme included engagements such as capacity building and knowledge sharing around the development of climate change response strategies as it aligns with the National Climate Change Response White Paper utilising the ‘Let’s Respond’ toolkit. The Western Cape did not participate in the latter strategy development programme since district level strategies had already been developed as part of the Western Cape Government’s own Municipal Support Programme. As part of the national programme, the province participated in some one-day workshops – specifically the “From Planning to Implementation” workshop that was held in May 2018 which looked at lessons learnt from 3 WC district municipalities. In responding to stakeholder identified challenges, the Western Cape Government participated in the finance related component focussing on building municipal capacity through project proposal writing for accessing donor climate finance.
