{"id":250747,"date":"2018-06-11T10:08:05","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T08:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=250747"},"modified":"2018-06-11T10:09:57","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T08:09:57","slug":"south-africa-has-a-new-climate-change-bill-heres-what-you-need-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/energy\/250747\/south-africa-has-a-new-climate-change-bill-heres-what-you-need-to-know\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa has a new Climate Change Bill – here’s what you need to know"},"content":{"rendered":"

Minister of Environmental Affairs, Dr Edna Molewa, has published the National Climate Change Bill<\/a><\/strong> for public comment.<\/p>\n

The bill acknowledges that\u00a0anthropogenic climate change<\/a><\/strong> represents an urgent threat to human societies and the environment, and requires an effective, progressive and well-coordinated response.<\/p>\n

It further highlights that anticipated domestic climate change impacts have the potential to undermine the country\u2019s development goals, and that responses to climate change raise unique challenges require a legislative framework for the implementation of the country\u2019s national climate change response.<\/p>\n

“The purpose of the bill is to build an effective climate change response and ensure the long-term, just transition to a climate resilient and lower carbon economy and society,” the department said.<\/p>\n

“This will be done within the context of sustainable development for South Africa, and will provide for all matters related to climate change.”<\/p>\n

In an analysis of the bill, Legalbrief<\/a> <\/strong>expert Pam Saxby noted that it is “replete with catch phrases commonly associated with framework legislation”, including the \u2018effective management\u2019 of an \u2018integrated and co-ordinated approach\u2019 to addressing the challenges concerned.<\/p>\n

However, the bill does provide for the appointment of a ministerial committee on climate change<\/strong> to be tasked with overseeing the necessary activities across \u2018all sector departments and spheres of government\u2019, in liaison with provincial committees, she said.<\/p>\n

“Against that backdrop, the draft bill proposes that \u2013 within one year of the proposed new statute coming into operation \u2013 each provincial committee should have conducted a climate change needs and response assessment,” said Saxby.<\/p>\n

“Issues to be dealt with in each plan are expected, among other things, to: address all priority sectors; be aligned with national sectoral emission targets; and identify and map risks and \u2018vulnerabilities\u2019 across the areas, ecosystems, communities and households likely to be affected,” she said.<\/p>\n

Other provisions included in the bill include setting out and achieving national adaptation objectives, determining a national greenhouse gas emissions trajectory,\u00a0prescribing sectoral emissions targets, and determining a greenhouse gas emissions threshold to inform the allocation of carbon budgets, said Saxby.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Department of Environmental Affairs will now hold a\u00a0series of provincial stakeholder engagement workshops at which all stakeholders and interested parties will be able to comment.<\/p>\n

\n

Read:\u00a0Joburg will make household recycling compulsory from 1 July<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Minister of Environmental Affairs, Dr Edna Molewa, has published the National Climate Change Bill for public comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":69497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9874],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-250747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-energy","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250747"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250747\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":250769,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250747\/revisions\/250769"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}