A Black Perspective to COP 21

My views about COP21 and Climate Change

Written on 06 December 2015

“For a colonized people the most essential value, because it’s the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.”- Frantz Fanon

Black peoples land is under siege. Not since the European Scramble for Afrika’s economic, cultural and human resources has there been such a competitive struggle to acquire land throughout the Black world. Each developed country has been queuing to stake their claim on lucrative land ownership deals through-out the Afrikan continent. (Add estimated foreign land owners in SADC)

Being subjected to continued colonization by the ruling economic powers of this world has caused many Afrikan people to remain passive spectators even in our own land. Almost everything that happens on our land and even in our names, simply does not adequately include us, the decision makers are either multi-nationalist corporations from USA, the UK, China, Germany and others or our puppet-like comprador government political leaders.
A case in point is the COP 21 currently taking place in Paris (30 November to 6 December). COP21 is short for the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

That long winded title was created in Rio in 1992 where countries concerned about the impacts of climate change came together under the United Nations to do something about it.
The hard part is trying to get 195 countries to agree on how to deal with the issue of climate change. Every year since 1992 the Conference of the Parties (COP) has taken place with various key negotiators trying to put together a practical plan of action. But there are startling contradictions as the most polluting countries have always been the main stumbling blocks and cause for inaction.

This year's COP21 in Paris is the last chance for this process. Negotiators agreed in 2011 that a deal had to be done by the end of 2015.
These are either pipe dreams or charades that obscure the fact that Black lives are considered valueless while the land that rightly belongs to us is infinitely valuable. There is not a single developed country that does not benefit from the socio-economic instability created by the mining industry in the DRC/Congo, the blood diamonds of Sierra Leone and the Platinum throughout the SADC’s platinum belt.

To add insult to more injury, the leading “food’ producing conglomerates including Nestle’, Monsanto and others have institutionalised the use of Genetically Modified Organisms with the collusion of most post-colonial Afrikan governments. All of this paints a picture that clearly shows that despite the short-lived gains and jubilation of the Independence era of the 50’s and 60’s, the Afrikan continent is far from free.

Although developing countries such as ours are among the least polluters, the ruling ANC’s complicity in pursuing undemocratic and anti-black policies is unprecedented and places them in the same category as the world’s worst polluters. Most countries are improving these measurements and have pretty accurate ways to assess both atmospheric greenhouse gases and extreme point sources.

For example, Sasol’s coal-to-oil and gas-to-oil operation in Secunda is considered the world’s single greatest site of carbon dioxide emissions.
“Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa’s new (2014) R5.6-billion budget is revealing; in recent weeks, she cut R20-million from the South African Weather Service. This means, according to Parliament’s oversight committee on environment in a July 8 statement, “South Africa would be unable to meet its international obligations regarding the monitoring of greenhouse gases through the Global Atmospheric Watch station.
“As a result, there would be a limitation on monitoring the impacts of Climate Change Mitigation and Scenario Strategies for the country. The country would also be unable to formulate baselines and monitor emissions versus set targets.”

Does Molewa want to keep us ignorant about our economy’s reliance upon fossil fuels? Fossil fuels are so fundamental to the operation of capitalism and the world today that serious reductions, if they were even tried under capitalism, would lead to a period of extraordinary economic disruption. Entire industries would have to stop functioning while they retool, and other industries would just have to disappear.
She regularly bows to the perceived durable power of the so-called minerals-energy complex.
That power was unveiled when her cabinet colleagues Nathi Mthethwa and Cyril Ramaphosa assisted Lonmin by deploying the police to help maintain corporate mining profits through violence – including those of Ramaphosa’s former company, the Shanduka Group – on August 16 2012 in Marikana.
The above observation taken from an article by a white activist professor Patrick Bond is just one case in point, clarifying how a Black puppet government only helps to further degrade the planet.

Black First Land First movement rejects any negotiations and plans that claim to work for our welfare when the very representatives of these countries continue to reap benefits of our continues slavery. We stand firm and inspired by the revolutionary example of Thomas Sankara, that Afrikans have the power to make the world a better place to live without depending on the vampirish destroyers.

The ANC government cannot be allowed to pay lip-service to pressing environmental issues and then not invest properly in the wellbeing of the Indigenous people, the Black people who are an afterthought instead of being placed first. At this COP21, governments cannot be allowed to keep pledging to reduce emissions while at the same time continuing to use fossil fuels. But it is the kind of contradiction that has become normalised within the neo-liberal white monopoly capital rhetoric.

While it is the majority white nations and multinational conglomerates of the developed world most responsible for CO2 emissions, enjoying the spoils of their excessive lifestyles and conspicuous consumption, it is the poor, the developing nations, Black people and other people of color, who will most severely bear the brunt of these first world excesses.
That may turn out to be the most significant story of the 21st century.

Black Lives Matter protests have had further influence on the left wing of the movement. Along with other radical struggles like Occupy Wall Street, the size and influence of BLM helped loosen the grip of professional, corporate-friendly NGOs like the Environmental Defense Fund--giving a louder voice to people of colour and leftists demanding that more attention be paid to environmental racism, police brutality, colonialism, jobs and inequality.

How about culpability of the South African government? The ANC’s NDP helps ship massive amounts of coal from Limpopo, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal to China and India through Richards Bay – the first Presidential Infrastructure Co-ordinating Commission Strategic Investment Project (SIP) – at a cost of several hundred billion rands.
For Marxists, eco-socialism involves the recognition that the environmental/ecological question is the most important problem that we face in the 21st century: If we don't recognize its centrality, our politics will be irrelevant.
Marx famously said that people make their own history, but not under conditions of their choosing. This is a concrete example--changing the world in the context of impending environmental disaster. Marx didn't expect that, but that's our reality. The way we build socialism, the kind of socialism we will be able to build, will be fundamentally shaped by the state of the planet we must build it on.
In Black Skins White Masks, Fanon offers that what is needed is to develop a new society and a way of life and a new value system. The ground of such a society will not be prepared by Black elites, but must be based on those who have been excluded from civil society, namely the wretched of the earth.
The beginning of The End...