Daily Maverick
Dailymaverick logo

Opinionistas

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed are not that of Daily Maverick.....

Climate breakdown is the greatest threat to human rights

Jo-Anne Smetherham
By Jo-Anne Smetherham
21 Mar 2025
Facebook
1
How many more lives must be lost before we acknowledge climate change as a human rights emergency? This is not just an environmental issue — it’s a threat to human rights on an unprecedented scale.

Community leader Nomandla Nqanula felt thankful that her life had been spared as she gazed upon the hole where her home had stood before being swept away in the Durban floods of April 2022. 

The destruction had been like a disaster movie, she told journalist Leonie Joubert, who documented Nqanula’s experience in an award-winning story for The Outlier. 

Yet Nqanula was one of the lucky ones. More than 430 people were killed in these floods, which were made twice as likely by climate change. 

A few more snapshots from the African continent: up to 20,000 people died in the 2024 floods in Derna, Libya, made up to 50 times more likely by climate change, and more than 10 million are now facing food insecurity in the Horn of Africa owing to drought made at least 100 times more likely by climate change.

In South Africa, too, agriculture will suffer as temperatures increase, diminishing food security. Our staple crops of maize, wheat and fruit are all under threat. 

How many more lives must be lost before we acknowledge climate change as a human rights emergency? This is not just an environmental issue – it’s a threat to human rights on an unprecedented scale. 

Human rights champion


South Africa positions itself as a leader on human rights, having championed equality and non-discrimination at the UN Human Rights Council and ensured that the International Court of Justice classified Israel’s onslaught on Palestine as genocide. 

Now, let’s show real leadership on the greatest threat of all.

Climate change is killing large numbers of people and is accelerating faster than scientists predicted. The United Nations has warned that reaching Net Zero by 2050 is too little, too late; we need to start reducing global emissions urgently, right now, and reach Net Zero by 2040.

Yet, instead of falling, emissions are still rising. In 2023, global carbon emissions from energy hit a record high, the International Energy Agency found. 

The Carbon Majors Report reveals that just 57 entities, including Sasol, are responsible for 80% of global carbon emissions (2016–2022). Two more South African coal companies – Exxaro and Seriti Resources – are responsible for huge past and present contributions to climate change.

Seriti, defying all the warnings of science, has just opened a new colliery at Naudesbank, whose emissions will not be offset by its small green investments. 

Breaching their climate targets


Are fossil fuel giants changing as they should? Not at all. The world’s largest oil companies, including TotalEnergies, Shell and BP, are breaking their Paris Agreement targets, the advocacy group Oil Change International reports. These companies’ climate plans are all incompatible with limiting global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, the level at which catastrophic consequences ensue, and the level we’re already beginning to breach.  

Instead of substantial investments in renewables, these companies continue to explore for more oil and gas, presumably to chase shareholder profits rather than help preserve a liveable planet. 

The fossil fuel industry is like a campfire that warms a few hands while setting the entire forest ablaze – it may create jobs for a few in local communities and profits for some elites, but the destruction it causes far outweighs the benefits. 

Shift the subsidies 


If the South African government was really protecting human rights, it would be taking a far stronger stand against the fossil fuel industry and holding it accountable. Yet along with others, our government is complicit; it gave fossil fuel companies a record R118-billion in subsidies in 2023 − a five-fold increase since 2018.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development has emphasised that subsidies must shift to align with climate goals. It is not happening. 

Instead, South Africa continues to approve new oil and gas exploration, including offshore drilling, in a flagrant betrayal of our own national climate commitments.

South Africa’s Climate Change Bill (2024), while a step forward, is too weak. It exempts Eskom from reducing emissions until 2026 and sets no penalties for companies failing to implement their emissions reduction plans. 

Our Constitution guarantees the right to a healthy environment, yet in certain key respects, the government is actively fuelling the destruction of our climate system.

Stop the destruction


Self-dubbed “King Coal”, Gwede Mantashe, our Minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, is among the many African leaders insisting we need fossil fuels to develop. He is wrong. Renewable energy creates more jobs than fossil fuels, without the destruction they cause. It is also cheaper and can supply electricity consistently, due to developments in storage technology. 

The only economically sustainable path forward is for least-developed countries to leapfrog over the outdated fossil fuel technologies that developed countries used to build their prosperity.  

Even if the government won’t yet call climate change a human rights crisis, at the very least it must stop the destruction. First, it must stop approving new coal, oil and gas exploration licences immediately. 

Second, it should redirect the R118-billion in subsidising polluters towards renewable energy and a rapid Just Transition. 

Third, it should make polluters pay – expand the carbon tax to include fossil fuel companies’ Scope 3 emissions, which stem from burning fossil fuels and which are currently excluded – and ban fossil fuel greenwashing, as took place for tobacco advertising.

It should prioritise the funding of worker- and community-owned renewable projects over the interests of large private developers.

Climate change will be remembered as one of the greatest human rights failures of our time. The question is, will we act in time to stop it?

To be a true leader on human rights, South Africa would take a stand on climate breakdown by addressing it as a human rights emergency. 

We have no time to waste. DM

Categories:

Tags: