27 August
to 01 September 2006
Speech
*THE PRESIDENCY: REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA*
OPENING ADDRESS DELIVERED BY
THE DEPUTY PRESIDENT, MS PHUMZILE
MLAMBO-NGCUKA, AT THE THIRD ASSEMBLY OF THE GLOBAL
ENVIRONMENT FACILITY
(GEF)
*Cape Town** International Convention
Centre (CTICC)
29 August 2006*
Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism,
Marthinus van Schalkwyk,
Minister of Finance, Trevor Manuel,
The Premier of the Western Cape,
Ebrahim Rasool,
Ministers of Environmental Affairs, Finance and
Development,
Your Excellencies, Ambassadors of Various Countries,
Global Environment Facility (GEF) CEO, Monique
Barbut,
Associate Administrator of the UNDP, Ad Melkert,
Executive Director of the UNEP, Achim Steiner,
Director General of UNIDO, Kandeh Kolleh Yumkella,
Executive Secretary of UN Convention to Combat
Desertification, Hama Arba
Diallo,
Executive Secretary of the UN Convention on Biological
Diversity, Ahmed
Djoghlaf,
Distinguished delegates and representatives of
international organisations,
NGO's and civil society,
Members of Parliament and Portfolio Committees,
Ladies and gentlemen,
*Welcome*
Let me first convey the warmest
greetings and welcome from the President of the
Republic, President Thabo Mbeki who cannot be
with us today. I welcome all of you to South Africa
and the city of Cape Town. It is symbolic that
this 3rd Assembly of the Global Environment Facility
is taking place here in Cape Town, at the very
tip of the African continent, home of the fynbos
biome, and blessed with remarkable biodiversity.
This tip of the African continent
is also potentially challenged by the impact of
climate change, global warming, and with warming
temperatures threatening the wine and fruit industries,
and indications of declining rainfall also likely
to have a significant socio-economic impact. It
is about time that we get decisive on the importance
and economics of saving the planet.
*Expected outcomes of the Assembly:*
South Africa hosted World Summit
Sustainable Development (WSSD) and the World Economic
Forum only three months ago. These forums reminded
us of these shared international interests and
mutual concerns including global environmental
challenges, increasing levels of poverty and a
growing gap between rich and poor, management
of trade and financial stability, the economics
of debt and aid, the management of conflict and
the politics of multilateral co-operation.
The 3rd GEF Assembly is an important
and strategic opportunity for GEFstakeholders
to take stock and collectively strengthen strategies
for addressing some of these interrelated challenges
of our time.
It is a time to review whether
the policies of one of the major financing mechanisms
for global environmental issues, are indeed able
to meet the growing scale of a set of challenges
that are impacting on developing countries in
general, and Africa in particular.
*Environmental issues are People
issues: *
As you meet at this conference,
however, another challenge that you must address
yourselves to is: how do environmentalists and
those concerned with environmental issues transform
environmental issues to people's issues? It is
a challenge that faces all of us to ensure that
environmental issues are easily understood by
a person in the street, in that way we will have
a broad base of people who are concerned with
the environment as opposed to it remaining an
issue of environmental specialists.
It should concern all of us
gathered here today, that when people talk about
the environment they think of it and regard it
as a very specialised field in which there is
no room or a lack of a proper space in which common
people can interact with the environment, and
thus play a positive role in its protection. We
all share this planet. Therefore, the protection
of the environment cannot continue to be just
the concern of only a few people.
*Demystify the myth: *
Close to half of the worlds
poor live in rural areas that are environmentally
fragile, relying directly on natural resources
for their livelihoods. But global environmental
threats are undermining this resource base.
We must demystify the issues
of environment. We must do all that we can to
show that ordinary people, particularly the rural
poor, have a role to play in ensuring that our
environment is protected and to promote good practices
when it comes to environmental issues. Protecting
the environment should become a way of life and
an income-base. When people redeem economic rewards
from taking care of the environment, there will
be less chances of degradation. In South Africa,
programmes such as working for water and working
for fire are but a few that aim to do just that.
This supplies the much needed remunerated work
that ordinary people can do helping them to development
of their communities.
We must help people to move
away from the belief that the work of protecting
the environment and the planet should be entrusted
to environmental lobbyists and scientists. It
would be necessary to cooperate much closely with
non-governmental organisations that are dealing
with environmental issues to double their efforts,
actions and educational campaigns to show that
continued human existence and sustainability is
dependant upon a healthy environment.
We can learn from a number of
countries especially in the First World, which
take environmental issues very seriously and have
thus developed strong "green movements"
in their countries that lobby to ensure that environmental
issues are central to the work of their governments.
There must be a concerted drive
as well to make young people part and parcel of
environmental projects, after all the youth are
the future and it is, therefore, in their common
interest to ensure that the environment is protected
and preserved. Issues of climate changes, deforestation,
and so on, must be uppermost in their minds. We
should always endeavour to broaden the base of
people who play a critical role in the campaign
to save our planet.
*Environmental Issues as Cross-Cutting:
*
We can do this by ensuring that
environmental issues are treated as cross-cutting
issues throughout the public service and in public
policy as we do with corporate governance issues.
Another important issue is that
of ensuring that we are not pond foolish when
it comes to entrenching environmentally responsible
lifestyles.
Where as government departments
we for instance, refuse to buy energy saving bulbs
and resorting to buying non-saving energy bulbs
arguing that the proper bulbs are too expensive.
If we continue to do so we contribute
to global warming, and we behave in manner that
is penny wise instead of pound wise, because we
lack to see a bigger picture in terms of long
term effects and impact of our actions. This means
that we also end up spending more money on electricity
bills instead of using the money to improve on
the living standards of our people.
In doing all these things we
must also ensure that we clarify that there is
no fundamental conflict between development and
environment, we must show that it is possible
to achieve development without having to compromise
environmental matters and that for development
to be sustainable it needs to be environmentally
friendly.
*In conclusion,* let me quote
from the World Bank Report of last year where
it says: "There are *NOT* two worlds, one
rich and one poor. There is only one. We are linked
in so many ways: not only by trade and finance,
but also by migration, environment, disease, drugs,
crime, conflict, war, and terrorism. We are linked
– rich and poor alike – by a shared desire to
leave a better world to our children, and by the
realisation that if we fail in one part of the
planet, the rest becomes vulnerable. So poverty
somewhere is
poverty every where". I hope that it will
guide you in your deliberations.
I wish you wisdom in your deliberations in this
conference.
*I thank you. *
Extract From SA Statement at
the Global Environment Facility, Delivered by
the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism,
Marthinus van Schalkwyk, Cape Town International
Convention Centre, 29 August 2006
Embargo: 15:00 on Tuesday 29 August 2006 - Extract
from South African Statement
NOTE TO EDITORS: The full text
of the SA statement follows the extract.
TUESDAY, 29 AUGUST 2006: Chairperson,
Developing countries in general and Africa in
particular, face critical environmental challenges,
including the impacts of climate change, land
degradation and chemical dumping. These challenges
are a call to action: a call to move from strategy
formulation to action plan implementation.
In Africa we are addressing
these challenges through innovative programmes
guided by the NEPAD Environment Action Plan.
However, there is a yawning
mismatch between the scale of the growing environmental
challenges and the resources available to address
them. As the financial mechanism for four international
environmental conventions, the replenishment of
the GEF must keep pace with the size and scope
of the challenges.
The current Resource Allocation
Framework distributes 75% of the resources to
25% of eligible countries, with many African countries
relegated to the margins. It is important that
the GEF bases its resource allocation on the needs
and priorities of countries rather than on an
inequitably skewed formula. In this regard, it
is vital that the COPs should also be active participants
in the 2008 review of the RAF.
I believe we should create the
political space to constructively discuss the
long term role of the GEF. In order to address
both the adequacy and the allocation of resources,
an independent review of the contribution of the
GEF as a financial mechanism to the implementation
of the Conventions, is urgently needed.
Turning to governance, it is
our view that the GEF Assembly should be the highest
decision-making authority, giving political guidance
on GEF’s direction, policies and priorities. It
is the Council’s role to then operationalise the
Assembly’s recommendations. To address the governance
issue a comprehensive and strategic review of
the GEF, including its constituency system, is
needed.
In conclusion Chair, we are
all meeting here because we share a conviction
to act now before global environmental damage
becomes irreversible, or too costly to reverse.
We need to make the most of this opportunity to
set the stage for fundamental and lasting changes
- to ensure that we do not lock-in pathways that
destroy eco-systems, undermine sustainable development
or that do not promote good global governance.
Our task is to ensure an age of hope globally
- and in particular in Africa. And we must do
this in a renewed spirit of solidarity.
Mava Scott (Director: Communications)
