Durban beyond Dirty Energy?

Pascoe Sabido

30 November 2011

Last week, underneath the dark rainclouds of Durban, South Africa, before the world's governments descended for the latest round of international climate negotiations, Dirty Energy Week was taking place.

This grassroots conference organised by groundWork, aka Friends of the Earth South Africa, united people from across the continent who are fighting to stop polluting petrochemical corporations, mining companies and state-owned energy companies from trashing their local environments and the planet.

Our dependence on climate-changing fossil fuels is driving an unsustainable energy system that needs to change. The International Energy Agency recently warned that unless we urgently move away from fossil fuels, within five years we'll have emitted enough tonnes of CO₂ to guarantee at least two degrees of global warming, with catastrophic consequences for people and ecosystems in many areas of the world.

While in the UK the effects of fossil fuel emissions are not always easy to spot, communities in South Africa are witnessing impacts first hand. Activists from the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance (VEJA) living near the coal-to-liquid-fuel Sasol petrochemical plant told me it's causing so much air pollution it's having a huge impact on their health. The plant itself is the world's largest single point source of emissions. Meanwhile, poverty here means many people rely on coal for heating and cooking, bringing the pollution indoors too. Similarly I've been hearing stories from Uganda, where oil prospectors in the Rift Valley are threatening to destroy one of the world's most beautiful conservation areas and pollute the Nile River, potentially impacting every country downstream until Egypt.

From opposing coal-fired power plants in South Africa to stopping oil drilling in the Niger Delta, people are battling corporate greed and a global addiction to fossil fuels.

Fortunately there's also hope.

Each speaker at Dirty Energy Week called for a move to renewable energy. Clean, decentralised energy that allows communities to take control of their power supply, protect their local environment, and - as the slogan repeatedly chanted went - "keep the coal in the hole, keep the oil in the soil".

Friends of the Earth was also able to present its recent thinking around clean, affordable energy access, and how we can transform our current energy system away from fossil fuels towards small-scale, decentralised renewable energy generation through systems like solar panels and wind turbines. We want to see power quite literally being given back to the people, through local structures of governance that also dramatically improve wellbeing and health.

Rich countries may be dragging their feet on the emissions cuts needed to tackle climate change, but communities can take solutions into their own hands, as those gathered in Durban have shown. Subsidies for local renewable energy will help communities wean themselves off climate-changing fossil fuels and enable billions to escape poverty.

And on the last day of Dirty Energy Week, as if the man upstairs had listened, the clouds above the conference parted and out came the sun.