Found out some great news last week in that my poem "Your Shiny BEE Suit" was published in The Sowetan (http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/goodlife/youthtube/2011/06/20/your-shiny-bee-suit).
The peom is a direct attack on materialistic values I see exhibited in excess on certain individuals, and is my call for a shift in moral focus to the things that really matter.
Have a great week Ya'll!
Sunday, June 26, 2011
‘Going green’ in Africa and the place of local knowledge in conservation, climate change adaptation and mitigation: setting the agenda for COP 17, South Africa
The 17th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 17/UNFCCC) is set to take place in South Africa, Durban, from the 28th of November to the 9th of December 2011. This marks the second time in its history that an African city has hosted this important conference. The UNFCCC arose out of an international environmental treaty generated at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) that was held in Rio de Janeiro from the 3rd to the 14th of June 1992 and came into force on the 12th of March 1994.
The primary aim of the treaty is to minimise and stabilise greenhouse gas emissions’ concentration in the atmosphere to ensure that anthropogenic factors do not reach a level where they obstruct the natural functioning of the global climate system. The Convention is based on a recognition that “the climate system is a shared resource whose stability can be affected by industrial and other emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases” and seeks therefore to gather national governments to share and establish national strategies for attending to the emission of greenhouse gases so as to “cooperate in preparing for adaptation to the impacts of climate change”.[1]
The treaty however has more symbolic meaning than practical enforceability as it stipulates no mandatory limits on the emission of greenhouse gases by individual countries. Therefore it is legally unenforceable. Recognising the defect in having a non-binding treaty, in 1997 the Kyoto Protocol was established at COP 3 which set-up up binding obligations for the developed nations of the world to decrease their contributions to greenhouse gas emissions.
Most industrialized countries and some central European economies agreed to be legally bound by the Kyoto Protocol and to reduce their greenhouse emissions by an average of 6%-8% below those of 1990 levels between the years of the first emissions budget period (2008-2012). Notably however one of the biggest greenhouse gasses emitters, the United States of America, which would be required to reduce it’s total emissions to an average of 7% below those of the 1990 levels, has not ratified the treaty and expressly rejected the treaty under the Bush administration in 2001.
A Joint year-long report by The Lancet and the University College London (UCL) Institute for Global Health reports that “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”. The report goes on to assert that “climate change will have its greatest effect on those who have least access to the worlds resources and who have contributed least to its cause. [Therefore] without mitigation and adaptation, it will increase inequity especially through negative effects on the social determinants of health in the poorest communities.”[2]
This piece argues that the COP 17 opportune the African intellectual community a chance to redefine the urgent issue of climate change for what it is – an issue of global inequality. Climate change is an issue of global inequality, and COP 17 should serve as the occasion for Africa and other developing nations to unequivocally state the issue as such. Solutions to climate change will only be implemented thoroughly when global inequality is addressed....
Please see the full article at: http://bokamosoafrica.org/2011/06/‘going-green’-in-africa-and-the-place-of-local-knowledge-in-conservation-climate-change-adaptation-and-mitigation-setting-the-agenda-for-cop-17-south-africa.html
The primary aim of the treaty is to minimise and stabilise greenhouse gas emissions’ concentration in the atmosphere to ensure that anthropogenic factors do not reach a level where they obstruct the natural functioning of the global climate system. The Convention is based on a recognition that “the climate system is a shared resource whose stability can be affected by industrial and other emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases” and seeks therefore to gather national governments to share and establish national strategies for attending to the emission of greenhouse gases so as to “cooperate in preparing for adaptation to the impacts of climate change”.[1]
The treaty however has more symbolic meaning than practical enforceability as it stipulates no mandatory limits on the emission of greenhouse gases by individual countries. Therefore it is legally unenforceable. Recognising the defect in having a non-binding treaty, in 1997 the Kyoto Protocol was established at COP 3 which set-up up binding obligations for the developed nations of the world to decrease their contributions to greenhouse gas emissions.
Most industrialized countries and some central European economies agreed to be legally bound by the Kyoto Protocol and to reduce their greenhouse emissions by an average of 6%-8% below those of 1990 levels between the years of the first emissions budget period (2008-2012). Notably however one of the biggest greenhouse gasses emitters, the United States of America, which would be required to reduce it’s total emissions to an average of 7% below those of the 1990 levels, has not ratified the treaty and expressly rejected the treaty under the Bush administration in 2001.
A Joint year-long report by The Lancet and the University College London (UCL) Institute for Global Health reports that “Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century”. The report goes on to assert that “climate change will have its greatest effect on those who have least access to the worlds resources and who have contributed least to its cause. [Therefore] without mitigation and adaptation, it will increase inequity especially through negative effects on the social determinants of health in the poorest communities.”[2]
This piece argues that the COP 17 opportune the African intellectual community a chance to redefine the urgent issue of climate change for what it is – an issue of global inequality. Climate change is an issue of global inequality, and COP 17 should serve as the occasion for Africa and other developing nations to unequivocally state the issue as such. Solutions to climate change will only be implemented thoroughly when global inequality is addressed....
Please see the full article at: http://bokamosoafrica.org/2011/06/‘going-green’-in-africa-and-the-place-of-local-knowledge-in-conservation-climate-change-adaptation-and-mitigation-setting-the-agenda-for-cop-17-south-africa.html
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Writing In The Shadow of Apartheid (by: Gcobani Qambela)
South Africa has endured and survived over 300 centuries of colonial rule and just over 40 years of apartheid rule which censored and favoured particular and often representationally biased narratives on or about South Africa and in the process silencing many opposing accounts not deemed in the interest of the country.
The gradual fall of apartheid in the late 1980’s and the eventual first democratic elections on the 27th of April 1994 unlocked a new a new market for the narration of the South African struggle to the rest of the world, largely ushered in by the first post-apartheid President of the Country, Nelson Mandela’s ‘Long Walk to Freedom’, an autobiographical account of his life in the struggle for the liberation of South Africa.
However as South Africa steadily rehabilitated itself from the world as a global pariah to one of the most successful transition stories in world history and (re)positioned itself as a leading nation both in Africa and the world, we witnessed a shift in the world interest from its apartheid past, to a new curiosity about the ‘new’ life in the now largely integrated South Africa. This is an opportunity many young writers from across all racial lines took up with great exhilaration....
Kindly see the ORIGINAL ARTICLE at: http://www.thiis.co.za/culture/writing-in-the-shadow-of-apartheid/
The gradual fall of apartheid in the late 1980’s and the eventual first democratic elections on the 27th of April 1994 unlocked a new a new market for the narration of the South African struggle to the rest of the world, largely ushered in by the first post-apartheid President of the Country, Nelson Mandela’s ‘Long Walk to Freedom’, an autobiographical account of his life in the struggle for the liberation of South Africa.
However as South Africa steadily rehabilitated itself from the world as a global pariah to one of the most successful transition stories in world history and (re)positioned itself as a leading nation both in Africa and the world, we witnessed a shift in the world interest from its apartheid past, to a new curiosity about the ‘new’ life in the now largely integrated South Africa. This is an opportunity many young writers from across all racial lines took up with great exhilaration....
Kindly see the ORIGINAL ARTICLE at: http://www.thiis.co.za/culture/writing-in-the-shadow-of-apartheid/
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