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Ramaphosa said climate change was already having a “direct and material impact on activity across the economy”, with extreme weather events like floods and droughts causing disruptions that raise business costs, weaken competitiveness and hinder employment opportunities
Ramaphosa says urgent response is needed to plug gaps in climate funding. Extreme weather events are already putting strain on public finances, according to President Ramaphosa. He revealed this while addressing a symposium. He further added that severe weather conditions, worsened by climate change, are already putting additional strain on SA’s public finances.
This, he said, underscored the urgency for the country to swiftly develop and enforce financial and policy measures to address these shocks, said President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday.He was addressing a National Treasury symposium on climate resilience in Pretoria which aims to identify strategies that will improve government co-ordination on climate change.
Ramaphosa said climate change was already having a “direct and material impact on activity across the economy”, with extreme weather events like floods and droughts causing disruptions that raise business costs, weaken competitiveness and hinder employment opportunities.
The effects of climate change heightened the severity of the 2022 floods in KwaZulu-Natal. The total cost of infrastructure and business losses from these floods reached almost R36bn. Ramaphosa pointed out that extreme weather events resulted in infrastructure damage, which in turn strained public finances and required the shifting of funds from other critical services. “To manage the higher expenditure and lower revenues, the government may then need to increase borrowing, leading to higher debt levels and interest payments. This limits the government’s ability to invest in other critical areas,” he said.
Francois Engelbrecht, professor of climatology at the Global Change Institute at Wits, speaking at the same symposium, said that Southern Africa was “warming dramatically” and the region was likely to become generally drier. However, over eastern Southern Africa, including parts of KwaZulu-Natal, the number of extreme rainfall events was projected to increase.
Some of the biggest climate change risks SA faced in the near term, and for which the government should have planned responses, included a Gauteng day zero, which could occur during prolonged droughts, as well as intense multiyear droughts that could collapse the country’s cattle and grain industries.
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Key to SA’s climate change response was the implementation of a just energy transition, which would see the country move towards becoming a low-carbon economy, said Ramaphosa.
