More or less equal

In the final scene of 'Animal Farm', the creatures watch as their one-time liberators, the pigs, engage in a final act of betrayal and meet with the humans, cementing the fact that a people-led dictatorship has merely been replaced by an animal-led one. Nothing has changed for the majority of the animals on the farm, who suffer and toil in much the same fashion as before.

Social justice must accompany environmental justice if a new era of sustainable development is to be truly transformative.

Lezette Engelbrecht

At the launch of a new, cleaner energy company last week by a prominent coal miner and Indian power group, I couldn't help but feel a similar sense of unease at this “revolutionary” venture. On one hand, it's promising that big fossil fuel companies are finally getting into renewable forms of energy. On the other, I wondered how much of this “green power” was going to get to the billions of energy-poor who have remained cut off from modern electricity provision.

Of course, supplying the millions in sub-Saharan Africa without power was one of the stated aims of the company, but after it revealed that renewables will make up only a portion of the energy mix, and plans for future coal projects, scepticism about other aspects of the operation began to sink in.

Vital as it is for a greater percentage of the world's energy supply to come from renewable sources, this is not much use if millions worldwide are still forced to burn wood or kerosene to meet their energy needs. If the same groups that have grown wealthy from charging huge amounts for coal and oil do the same with wind and solar, the green economy will be a resounding failure. Renewable energy needs to become widespread and distributed on a mass scale, but that doesn't mean it has to use the same methods as fossil fuels to get there.

If the switch to a low-carbon world is to be successful, the energy-poor need to be part of the conversation and help formulate solutions. Too often, concerns around climate change are set apart from global issues like political strife and poverty, when it's actually integrally linked to the economic and social realities of our time. People feel like they need to pick one cause, but the interconnectedness of these issues provides powerful opportunities for widespread reform.

The move to a green economy provides a range of job creation opportunities - from manual labour to high-level technical posts - and these can't be allowed to bypass the rural poor who so urgently need to find a foothold in the formal economy. Social justice must accompany environmental justice if a new era of sustainable development is to be truly transformative. Unless people in developing nations are included in all parts of the process, any gains made will quickly be eradicated as poverty, hunger and disease sweep through the world's emerging markets. It's imperative that we use this opportunity for revolution to transform society at large.

Linked to the necessity to include the marginalised in clean energy provision is a need for on-the-ground communication. The billions set to be worst affected by climate change often lack information about challenges in a language, context, and means that is accessible to them. With cellphone use continuing to grow in the developing world, platforms like MXit and Young Africa Live are emerging as powerful channels for engaging people on social topics. Imagine if similar platforms were used to stimulate discussions on climate-related issues. They could serve as important hubs for sharing ideas and solutions applicable to the needs of specific communities.

The point is - dealing with climate change needn't be a trade-off. Done wisely, virtually everyone wins - the environment isn't plundered, those at the so-called “bottom of the pyramid” are given a more equitable share of the economic pie, and even those whose traditional business may suffer are already eying cleaner energy generation projects. This is besides all the completely new industries the green economy will bring, such as smart grid technologies, effective energy data management, intelligent building technologies, electric transport, energy efficiency tools and many more. There is a valuable opportunity to use the impending climate crises as a living laboratory to find new ways to function as a society, and these changes should benefit those who have been suffering under previous regimes, rather than just extending the monopolies of established energy players.

Often people look back on bad experiences - failure, illness, loss - and see how it shaped them and led to unanticipated opportunities. There aren't too many positives when it comes to climate change, but we can at least deal with the looming challenges in a constructive way. By making the right decisions now and ensuring progress is sustainable - in every sense of the word - humankind can leave a legacy of equitable progress in a time of immense difficulties.

A cartoon from 'USA Today' cleverly depicts a common argument against new ways forward: “What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?” But if we really do want to create a better world, it cannot stop at the superficial level - every group in the global farmyard needs to experience a change, or we will simply head down the same exclusionary path, except that it will be painted in the upbeat colours of the green revolution.