SA has a responsibility to grow a better future

Titled "Growing a Better Future", the Oxfam report shows how the food system is at once a driver of this fragility and highly vulnerable to it, and why, in the twenty-first century, it leaves 925 million people hungry.

Three shifts necessary

Oxfam believes that there is a new prosperity that is possible, should the food crisis be addressed immediately and it cites three shifts necessary to meet this challenge:

• A new "global governance" to avert food crises;
  
• A new agricultural future; and
  
• A new ecological future.

The report proposes a detailed agenda to bring about these shifts, including establishing local, national, and regional food reserves, encouraging governments to dismantle support for biofuels and raising awareness of the human impact of climate change, particularly in rich and rapidly developing countries.

Within every description of the various contributors to the food crisis, sub-Saharan Africa seems to face the gravest threats. As the only African member of the geo-political alliance BASIC (comprised of Brazil, South Africa, India and China) and the economic groups BRICS (the same four countries, and Russia), it would follow that SA could play an important role in pushing a similar agenda to that of Oxfam's, on behalf of its continent.

Lesley Masters, senior researcher for the Institute for Global Dialogue, SA, in a comment on SA's climate diplomacy, sees this as a double-edged sword.

With opportunity comes responsibility

It is an indicator of SA's significance as a key country of the South, which therefore presents us with an opportunity to pursue a clear position as a leading voice of the region. But, it means that we also have a responsibility to carefully manage international geo-political dynamics, and not just in our own best interests.

In 2011, SA has a chance to demonstrate that we can do exactly that. We assume the chair of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change from Mexico and will host COP17 in November 2011.

There, says Masters, we should build an understanding of current international geo-political divisions, draw African and other vulnerable states into the centre of the discussions and balance competing national priorities and interests while ensuring interaction with civil society within the negotiation process.

Is but one element

COP17 addresses issues of climate change, emissions and natural resource use specifically, which, as detailed by Oxfam's report, is but one element of the food crisis. So, while SA needs to solidify its plans to reduce the effects of climate change, it also needs to develop clear policy to address soaring food costs, increase sustainable subsistence farming, and promote market transparency, to name just three other elements.

As clearly detailed in "Growing a Better Future", these issues are all so intertwined that we cannot resolve to tackle just one, or another, in isolation. Rather, we must develop a holistic strategy that will result in steady progress towards addressing all of them.

And don't forget that if we are to fulfil a genuinely leading role among the world's developing nations, we must do all this not just for SA, but with a view to guiding our fellow sub-Saharan African nations to achieving the same.

SA can start by using its influence as host of the COP17 conference to genuinely advance the implementation of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol, as well as the Bali Action Plan, agreed at COP13 in 2007, and the Cancun Agreements, reached at COP16 last December.

Collaborative negotiation

Then, once everyone has gone home, our government must take the outcomes of the conference to the private and public sectors for a collaborative negotiation on how to develop the strategies necessary to demonstrate that we deserve the role we are striving for.

The "fact" that we - the country, the world, the human race - are in a time of crisis appears regularly in news reports covering any number of political, environmental, economic and social issues. Whether we are or not is not really important in the face of what really is a fact - that we are at a moment where it is necessary, and possible, to forge an alternative future based on co-operation, ingenuity and custodianship.