Minister Dion George: Ministerial Roundtable on Global Climate Transparency

Honourable President of the 29th Conference of the Parties, His Excellency  Mukhtar Babayev,
Honourable Mr Secretary-General
Excellencies,
Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Paris Agreement, 
Ladies and gentlemen

It is an honour for South Africa to be one of the co-hosts of this roundtable on global climate transparency. South Africa also wishes to congratulate the COP29 High-Level Co-Pairs for Transparency, Her Excellency, Zulfiya Suleimenova  and His Excellency Francesco Corvaro.

South Africa, like all other Parties here, is committed to a fully functional and effective Enhanced Transparency Framework (ETF) for action and support. South Africa has been at the forefront of  contributing to the operation of the ETF, when we co-facilitated the finalisation of the MPGs in Katowice during COP 24.  Soon after Katowice, we worked with other Parties to finalise the outstanding work on the Biennial Transparency Report (BTR) outline, the outline of the National Inventory Document (NID), as well as the Common Reporting Tables and the Common Tabular Formats in Glasgow during COP 26.

South Africa further wishes to highlight that, we have been highly committed to reporting under the Convention in line with Articles 4 and 12 of the Convention. To this end, South Africa, has submitted 3 National Communications (NCs) and 5 Biennial Update Reports (BURs) as well as 7 National Inventory Reports to the UNFCCC. We submitted the last BUR last year in December during COP 28 in Dubai.

This year in fully transitioning to the ETF , we will submit our 4th National Communication as well as the 1st Biennial Transparency Report. In our 1st  BTR, which my team here and back home is currently working hard at, we will track the first two years of implementing the Nationally Determined Contribution, that is from the 1st of January  2021 to the 31st of December 2022. As you know, South Africa’s Nationally Determined Contribution has both the 2025 and the 2030 targets and we will be tracking both in the our BTRs. In 2025, our annual GHG emissions will be in a range 398-510 Mt CO2-eq whilst in 2030 they be in the range of 350-420 Mt CO2-eq.

This NDC provides our highest possible level of ambition in both targets given the significant developmental complexities. We are implementing key and significant   policies and measures including the Integrated Resources Plan, the Integrated Energy Plan, Sectoral Emission Reduction Targets, the Carbon Budgets, the Just Transition Framework, the Carbon Tax, the Green Transport Strategy, the Waste Management Strategy, the Green Hydrogen Commercialisation Strategy as well as  the Climate Change Act, which the President signed into law this year. The act will now be the key legislative instrument to enforce climate change action in South Africa.

Furthermore, we will be reporting on progress in implementing the National Climate Change Adaptation Strategy, demonstrating our key vulnerable sectors in water, agriculture, health , biodiversity, infrastructure as well as human settlements and demonstrating what is needed to build resilience and adaptive capacity on those sectors. We will also report on the systems we have put in place to monitor  and evaluate progress as well some of the losses and damages we have suffered as a result of climate change.

Our BTR will also include financial, capacity building as well as technology development and transfer support needed and received from the period 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2022.  Excellencies, developing economy countries like South Africa require extensive financial support to implement the NDC in order to contribute to the 2 and 1.5 degrees goal of the Paris Agreement as well as reaching net zero by 2050. I call on developed economy countries to provide this financial support, more in the form of grants and concessional loans. Transitioning from coal will be costly for all of us but we are committed to doing our fair share to achieving the objectives of the Paris Agreement. We would also like to call for more technology transfer and development into South Africa to help us with our transition to a lower carbon and climate resilient economy.

We are committed to submitting the BTR by December 2024, and every two years thereafter. We will also be submitting a separate National Inventory Document (NID) with consistent annual time series every two years with our BTRs and the corresponding electronic tables. As a developing economy country, we will be making using of flexibility provisions that we need in light of our capacities, and emphasise to other developing economy countries that what is important is to submit a BTR – it does not need to be perfect – we will all improve over time.

We wish to highlight that developing economy countries have still not received sufficient financial, technical and capacity building support to develop and and enhance their national monitoring and evaluation as well as reporting systems. We call for this support to be provided urgently, so that we have successful implementation of the ETF.

In closing, we wish to empsize that the ETF is a key accountability mechanism of the Paris Agreement  and that BTRs will serve as key inputs to the global stocktake process in 2028, and subsequent years which will take stock of our collective progress as Parties, in implementing the Paris Agreements and achieving its objectives.

In that regard, we have also been contributing to capacity building of developing countries  through the Partnership on Transparency in the Paris Agreement (PATPA), which we have co-founded with Germany and South Korea. We have also as South Africa participated in various peer to peer exchanges on the ETF with many countries as initiated including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Namibia, Ghana, Zambia, Kenya, Malawi and the Gambia. We plan to do more of these next year as we believe that it is through learning from each other, and helping each other improve that we can make success of the ETF.

We congratulate the Presidency on the establishment of the Baku Global Climate Transparency Platform. We acknowledge with gratitude the technical and capacity building support that has been provided to developing economy countries through different support providers,  for supporting the on-going efforts of developing economy countries to develop  their 1st  BTRs. The journey is still long and more support is needed. Lastly, I wish to announce that I will be approving our BTR and NID by the end of this COP and we will submit both of them as well as the corresponding reporting tables  by early  December, 2024. “We shall deliver.”

I thank you.