WILDBW: LACK OF READING WILL BE OUR UNDOING. WHY GLOBALISATION WILL CATCH US UNAWARES.
Oshinka Tsiang
American black civil rights leader Malcom X once said. “If you want to hide something from black people put it in a book.”
This week on Wildbw podcast we feature Ms Mokgadi Monamati. She’s the government’s project leader for the Botswana National Ecosystem (NEA) study which has yielded a report with policy recommendations on the economic future of Botswana under the green new deal. It is the greatest pointer yet to the relentless pursuit of the 2030 agenda premised on the idea that the survival of the world depends on using less fossil fuels, eating less red meat, traveling less and generally being nicer to the environment. It’s a belief that human activities, ie, industrial activity and other factors are responsible for climate change. We are told for example that the use of coal and diesel or petroleum products contribute to carbon emissions which affect the atmosphere and consequently cause climate change. It is for this reason that while Botswana’s global contribution to carbon is negligible at 0.019%, the per capita contribution is significant. The main culprits are energy, especially the use of coal to generate electricity in Morupule and agriculture, ie the many cattle that we keep that apparently add to the amount of methane in the atmosphere though their bowel movements. It is estimated that each one of us contribute 10.6 tonnes of harmful gasses annually. I’m not making this up. It’s contained in the Climate Change Tracker.
Which brings me to the significance of the quotation at the start of this piece. When I asked Monamati what her greatest fear was as we accelerate towards the green economy, her answer was “Batswana don’t read.” That sounds like stating the obvious but it is a critical observation. What she means is that many of us will be left behind by this fast moving train of “unlocking the green and blue economy potential for national transformation” because we do not read. We do not connect the dots. We do not know what our country has committed to and the significance of it. We do not engage with the relevant laws and regulations designed to govern us and we get surprised when we see things happening. Take the scenario we just highlighted earlier concerning Botswana’s carbon footprint. Did you know that Botswana, typical of our usual inclination to be the first to comply, has officially committed to reducing its economy-wide GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions by 15% by 2030 relative to the Business-As-Usual (BAU) scenario? That is only three years away. This has implications. The pressure for investment in renewables has ramped up. But modern renewables excludes traditional uses of biomass, such as burning collected wood, agricultural byproducts or dung for cooking or heating. This apparently has serious negative consequences on health and the environment….and is targeted for phase-out in international development and climate goals and in the IEA's Net Zero scenario. Now you can understand the flurry of activities geared at greening Botswana as rapidly as possible.
For the purposes of today’s conversation, you will be well advised to familiarize yourself with the recommendations of the NEA technical report summary document for policy makers. It can be accessed on line. Just to highlight a sample of the recommendations for unlocking the green and blue economy potential for national transformation. There are 18 policy recommendations under this category. The range is quite diverse including such proposals as, expanding payments for ecosystem services, carbon finance and biodiversity credit mechanisms to align economic incentives with ecological outcomes, to mention just one. Translation, we need to understand what are the carbon markets, how they are accessed, how much can we benefit and what adjustments in policy and action we need to make to benefit. That doesn’t come by osmoses. We need to read. There are recommendations for enabling governance conditions for resilient socio-ecological systems. These include mandating cross-sector policy harmonization between Environment, Agriculture and Local Government authorities. Also recommended is to institutionalize ecosystem valuation in national planning to ensure environmental benefits and costs are not treated as externalities allowing trade-offs to be openly assessed and environmental impacts minimized before decisions are finalized. In other words future land allocation would depend on what the ecological value of every plot happens to be. For example there will come a time when land allocation for housing will be premised on the biodiversity of the land in question. Not just availability as is the case. There will come a time when the value of the land you now occupy or have rights to is determined by the amount of oxygen released into the atmosphere by your trees. There are many other recommendations in the report which require deeper engagement. The point being made is that we need to be proactive to familiarize ourselves with this movement. It is a whirlwind of globalization agenda that is sweeping across our country designed to transform our culture. We cannot afford to sit by only to wonder what happened later or when we encounter laws that we did not anticipate. At the moment Monamati and her team are consulting with various communities to give them feedback on the recommendations. But that goes only as far as the recommendations specific to those communities. There is a foreboding feeling of inevitability and urgency about the globalization agenda. Whatever your take on it, it is very important to inform ourselves. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
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