INTRODUCTIONSouth Africa signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on 15 June 1993 and ratified it on 29 August 1997. It acceded as a Party to the Kyoto Protocol on 31 July 2002. Under both the Convention and Protocol, South Africa is recognised as a developing country. This means that it does not have any binding greenhouse gas reduction commitments but rather is required to report on its national emissions in the form of national communications and to the extent possible take into climate change considerations into account in the relevant social economic and environmental policies (UNFCCC, 1992). South Africa submitted its first national communication to the 9th Conference of Parties in Milan, Italy, December 2003. This First National Communications highlights the energy sector as the sector contributing the most CO2 amounting to 287 851 Gg emissions in 1994 which represents 78 % of the total emissions, followed by the agricultural sector at 9.3 %, industrial processes at 8 %and waste at 4.3 %. Discussions on the future of the climate process have started. With the Kyoto Protocol still not ratified and with less than four years to go to the start of the first commitment period, there is a need to examine the different scenarios in the event of non-ratification and thus implications for the multilateral policy process. While the much of the early discussion of future approaches has focused on the magnitude of reduction targets and optimal stabilisation goals, the role of developing countries in mitigation and how development goals and aspirations can be reconciled in this regard has received significant attention as well (Munasinghe 2001; Anon. 2003; Davidson et al. 2003; IIM 2003). South Africa like many developing countries has a role to play in the future process. Unlike the situation of developed countries whose future engagement may depart from an assessment of the adequacy of their existing targets, it is still unclear what can be demanded of developing countries and how this would be structured. Among the contentious questions are the timing for their involvement, the scale and nature of such involvement. Proposals for future scenarios have been based on qualitative as well as quantitative targets grounded on various allocation methods as well as negotiated schemes. Since the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP-8) to the UNFCCC, it has also become clear that significant funding and implementation of adaptation will have to be a central part of a second-generation climate agreement. The interlinkages between mitigation and adaptation reinforce the central role of achieving sustainable development, as a means of building both adaptive and mitigative capacity.
This study examines the potential for South Africa to contribute to the stabilisation of atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations by establishing what future approaches it can be expected to undertake in the international policy process.More specifically, this study strives to assess the prospects for engaging in future mitigation measures by examining the country’s present situation, expectations from the current climate policy process including participation in the Kyoto mechanisms as well as a review of development goals and priorities. The underlying factors that could drive its future involvement are highlighted as a way of identifying means by which a process to support future actions to address climate change.