One would generally look at the current political season and the obtaining environment of the local government election fever as yet another opportunity to mainstream climate action and the just transition, as it should be.
In doing so we should however resist the temptation of endorsing any of the thousands of political parties and independent candidates contesting the local polls, come November this year.
Local government is where people experience climate change and its impacts in their daily lives – it is the first and last frontier for climate action.
It is where families and farmers alike get water for consumption and for growing food, where safe and dignified sanitation is a developmental and human rights, and supposedly clean and affordable electricity is provided , where roads are maintained and constructed for durability, where refuse is collected, recycled and reused, and where local economies are built and nurtured.
It is in municipalities where hard choices and trade-offs are made, and where procedural justice finds meaning in consultation, transparency an inclusion. With these things that make local government work, despite progress made since 1996, many municipalities are not as functional as they should.
Everyone is resoundingly clear – local government must deliver services that reliable and affordable, and environment that allows us to participate in decisions about our future development and that of those who will follow, and we expect leaders to be accountable and ethical, we expect leaders to be accountable and ethical, and truthful our challenges and supportive of the opportunities we seek.
Climate-smart and resilient municipalities
The underlying intent of a climate smart municipality remains to improve municipal service delivery by focusing on environmental sustainability, social and economic inclusion, institutional capacity and leadership development.
Our local government system is not insulated from the impact of climate change, and such continue to affect communities across South Africa. In recent years, communities in KwaZulu Natal, Limpopo, Eastern Cape, Western Cape and other parts of the country have experienced severe floods and other extreme weather events.
The dramatic surge in extreme weather events, impact on families, businesses and communities, with loss of lives, displacements, damage to homes, infrastructure and significant cost to municipalities and households – and sometimes never to recover.
With minimum resources, and tilted balance sheets, the costs of recovery post climate disasters in more than two thirds of disaster damage are uninsured, disaster response grants and fiscal interventions take an average of five months to reach a municipality, and longer to ultimately support the recovery require to lives and livelihoods to pre-disaster normality.
A local government compact for climate action and just transition
It has been two years since the Climate Change Act came into effect in 2024.
The Act in section 17 behoves every municipality to conduct a climate change needs and response assessment and ensure that there is a publicly accessible climate change response implementation plan expressly govern meaning as part of the municipality’s integrated Development plan (IDP). Section 9 of the Act is already in force: every district intergovernmental forum already serves as a Municipal Forum on Climate change, and should do more than that, make sure that it is not cosmetic, but addresses the three principles of the just transition
An opportunity to recalibrate for better and strengthen municipal capacity
With the existential climate crisis and the opportunities associated with the appropriate response measures, people expect all government bodies, social partners and stakeholders to work together to build vibrant and cohesive towns, cities and rural communities.
Disaster Preparedness: Every municipality must have a funded municipal disaster plan and functional disaster management capacity, establish a community early warning system in every ward and review its municipal insurance cover annually.
Green the municipality: Every space must have plant trees and maintain public open green spaces, invest in wetland and river rehabilitation, waste diversion and recycling, with support for reclaimers, and waste pickers and recyclers.
Generate and enable clean energy - Municipalities should be key participants in renewable energy development and deployment as new sources of revenue as well as resilience, though quick wins lie small scale embedded generation, to enable businesses to buy clean power through the municipal network.
The commitments and the realisation of our climate action targets will only matter if municipalities have the capacity to implement them. The obvious thing to do is to strengthen the leadership, planning, institutional, technical and financial capacity required to turn our climate ambitions into funded programmes, implemented projects, reliable services and measurable results.
With local government elections approaching, it's important to remember that climate change is no longer a someone else problem ".
It's an everyday reality.
The next landlords of our tows, cities, villages which we will elect at the November polls must therefore prioritise retributive justice, through and equitable distribution of risks and responsibilities that addresses the direct impacts resulting from the transition.
That will however not be sufficient is justice does redress of historical damages against individuals, communities, and the environment, with the goal of rectifying and ameliorating the situations of harmed or disenfranchised communities.
Blessing Manale, Executive Manager, Consensus Building, Communications and Outreach.
**The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Media Group.