Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute Appeal

Too Great a Toll:

SAFCEI is helping the Pondoland Wild Coast Community raise funds for a court case to

oppose development which threatens their livelihoods and natural environment.

2012 Calendar Sales R200 each.

Please call 021-7018145 / 083-4681798. Email cop17@safcei.org.za



Press release from Bishop Geoff Davies:          9th December 2011

Yesterday I told President Zuma that when some people say the end of the world is at hand, I am quite sure that God does not want to bring about the end of this incredible, magnificent and abundant creation, but we humans are in danger of bringing it about.  In fact we are effectively doing so.

Whatever the outcome of COP17 we have to say that it will not be nearly ambitions enough. We are deeply disturbed and disappointed.

We are totally dependent on the well-being of this planet. If we don’t get a binding agreement – and Kyoto is the only one we have – we continue the destruction of this planet.  But our emission reductions must be much more ambitious than Kyoto requires if we have any hope of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

At the faith rally the day before the climate talks started we presented a petition signed by over 200 000 people to the President and Secretary of COP17.

The three key demands for COP 17 are well known:
1. A FAB agreement (fair, ambitious and legally binding) and commitment to a second period of the Kyoto Protocol
2. Clear short and long term targets for carbon emission reductions that keep average global temperature increases well below 1.5 degree
3. Ensure there is adequate finance for adaptation in Africa

But the petition starts by calling on World Leaders to be honest! This is because we cannot fool nature and the environment.  We might try to deceive one another but when we are not honest with the environment, we pay the consequences.  The question now is whether this COP will seek an agreement that places the health and well-being of the planet and people before financial interests and political posturing.  

At the Rally the day before COP started, we asked that South Africa builds a spirit of trust and that all of us – all nations, races, religions, cultures - co-operate in meeting this greatest threat ever to confront humanity.  Stop competing.  Start cooperating! I am glad that I have heard the word co-operate frequently in the plenary.  This is encouraging, but we know that not all nations are agreeing to renew the Kyoto Protocol.

At this late stage, we ask South Africa to be BOLD in setting an example so that we break the logjam and that we do this by basing decisions based on moral principles of justice and compassion and love for people and planet.  This is the only way we will stave off the destruction of all life on this planet, our only home. 

If South Africa could make a bold public commitment to move away urgently from coal to renewable energy we could set even more ambitious targets for reducing carbon emmissions.

We are not helped by news reports that there will be a R3 billion investment in Richards Bay to export 91 million tons of coal a year, or our Minister of Energy stating last week that South Africa has this great of resource of coal and that we would continue burning coal in the future.    

So South Africa wants to continue digging for coal and other nations want to expand the drilling for oil and so we have a stalemate and we will all suffer the consequences.

The reason I am talking about our domestic policy is that by making a dramatic announcement, as host nation, South Africa could call on all nations to make the urgent emission cuts needed to stave off disaster.

Certainly historic polluters like the USA need to reduce their emmissions, dramatically. We find the US position tragic – actually reprehensible!  For the USA chief negotiator to say that the US will just have to reduce emissions more sharply in the future is shocking.  Every year we delay sends millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere – for the next 100 years.  We can’t get it back.  The children and grandchildren of US Congressmen will ask what their parents and grandparents were doing to be so selfish and irresponsible.

The USA is a most religious society yet their behaviour can only be described as sinful because this refusal to reduce emmissions is causing immense environmental destruction and suffering among people.  The Ecumenical Patriarch, Archbishop Bartholomew, has called environmental destruction “a sin against God and a crime against humanity”. 

As a follower of Jesus Christ, we know that he said "If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck ...(Mark 9:42).  Millions of children are already stumbling in Africa because of our failure to act.

But it is not only the historic polluters who must act. NO country is entitled to carbon space. The new polluters, like China and India and ourselves (South Africa), need to start reducing emmissions - from 2012 the scientists say! The great news is that the USA, China, India and South Africa all have the capacity and the technical ability to implement renewable energy which can be up and running within months rather than years.  It only requires the political will.

We know the importance of development in Africa.  It is essential that historic polluters assist Africa to leap frog the polluting fossil fuel era into the new solar and renewable energy era through finance owed to Africa.  They have an ecological debt!

When it comes to finance, look at our priorities.  The world could spend $1 trillion to bail out the banks.  The top six armaments expenditure countries spend more than $1 trillion annually, with the US topping the bill with $664 000 billion in 2009, yet we cannot find $100 billion for the planet.  Just half of this “defence” budget would enable the world to meet the MDGs and go a long way to restoring the environmental health of the planet.

The Bible calls strongly for Justice (Amos Chapter 5 verses12 and 24 among many others).  All religions call for Justice.  In South Africa we had to abolish the injustices of Apartheid before we could find peace.  The Apartheid government was spending more and more defending its immoral position.  The same applies in the world today. We have global Apartheid between the rich north and the developing south.  Until we establish justice in the world, we won’t find peace.  We call on the US in particular to give a lead in establishing justice within the global community.  It can then establish a Department of Peace instead of “Defence”.

The negotiation target is still keeping temperature increases below 2 degrees.  We find this incredible.  Already at 0.8 degree average global temperature increase we are experiencing horrific weather extremes – I don’t need to catalogue those.  To go up an average of 2 degrees will bring about horrendous floods and droughts and the scientists warn that Africa will become twice as hot.  Can you imagine a 4 or 5 degree average temperature increase?

It is clear we are being held ransom by the fossil fuel industry.  We sell the birth right of our children to our addiction to fossil fuels.

So our plea at this late stage is that South Africa and the nations of the world “do the right thing”.  This COP would then be remembered for taking a principled stand.

When William Wilberforce was campaigning against slavery, the politicians and business men said the economy of England would collapse without slavery.

Now we are being told the same about carbon, and we have become enslaved.  “Will the last human on earth turn out the lights”.  This sticker was on a door in the toilets of the convention centre.  We can have all the energy we want, on a dead planet.

The well-being of people and planet must be at the centre of negotiations and this can only be done through applying moral principles. 

Finally, we ask that South Africa stands with our African brothers and sisters.  By following African traditions of Ubuntu and sharing and cooperation, we can show the world the path to a sustainable future. 

We have the resources.  Let us not sell out to the big corporations.  President Zuma spoke at a side event on African Agriculture.  We must ask that this initiative is to support the millions of small scale farmers with organic agriculture and not a new wave of big agro-business funded by outside  

We are strongly committed to ecological and organic agriculture as a solution to climate change but we are very wary of putting small African farmers under the control of carbon markets and offsets.  Climate smart agriculture will only work if it does not open the door to CDMs.

To be honest to the environment means that we honestly reduce our emmissions, rather than offsetting them. 

Bishop Geoff Davies
Executive Director
Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI)

Office Phone:  +27 21 701 8145
Cell Phone:      +27 83 754 5275