Chairperson, hon members and Ministers, it is indeed appropriate that we are debating the issue of climate change today. In Barcelona delegates from countries all around the world, including our own delegation, are working around the clock, trying to find common ground in order to reach an agreement that will allow us to establish a new international climate regime in Copenhagen in December. It is proper that we pay tribute to this South African team that is holding the flag high not only for this country, but also for Africa.
Before we deal with this and, in order to contextualise it, it would be important to go back and understand why this issue is so important for the world, for our continent and for our country. It is now understood that global warming that creates changes in our climate and in our weather patterns is caused by an accumulation of greenhouse gases, such as carbon and methane, released into the atmosphere. These gases are released through activities such as the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of land for development and many other human activities. They remain in the atmosphere for many years and create a greenhouse effect in that they prevent gases from escaping and cause temperatures to rise and, in turn, icebergs to melt and weather patterns to become unpredictable. Under these circumstances, we get increased extreme weather events such as floods, droughts, hurricanes and tornadoes.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, was established as a global scientific body to research and report on climate change and its impact. The IPCC's fourth assessment report has identified a set of issues of key importance for us. In the first place, they identified the fact that, in order to avoid irreversible and dangerous climate change, global temperatures must not be allowed to rise above 2 degrees of preindustrial levels. This is equivalent to a concentration of about 450 parts per million of carbon concentration in the atmosphere.
They also identified that, in order to achieve this, the developed countries of the world would need to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by between 25% and 40% by 2020 and by 80% to 95% by 2050, while developing countries would need to reduce their greenhouse gases to below their business as usual path by 2050. I met with nongovernmental organisations on Tuesday, and they gave me a petition on the global target of 350 parts per million, which is quite ambitious. Furthermore, the IPCC has identified Africa as the continent that will suffer the most serious impacts of climate change.
This vulnerability is both at the level of the physical impact in relation to changing weather patterns and extreme weather events such as floods and droughts, as well as the capacity of Africa's people to build up resilience to withstand major changes in such factors as their access to water and changes in weather that would harm agricultural production and destroy livelihoods.
South Africa is no exception to this, and the work done by our scientists in taking forward the IPCC conclusions indicates that we will experience unpredictability of weather conditions, a rise in sea levels, serious impacts on our water resources and our agriculture, as well as changes in the distribution of pests with serious impacts on the health of our people.
Climate change is a global issue. In order to bring down the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, all the nations of the world must agree to work together and to take action. This is the Copenhagen challenge. We, as a country, are committed to playing our part in the global effort to address climate change, both in relation to ensuring that we are prepared to adapt to the negative impacts of climate change, as well as reducing our greenhouse gas emissions in the future.
We are working on a national climate change policy, and we look forward to tabling this in Parliament for national consultation during the course of 2010. This policy will include the programme and actions needed for both adaptation and mitigation and we will set out the roles, responsibilities and actions of all spheres of government and all key departments and sectors.
A central element of this national policy will be to build on the long-term mitigation scenarios. This work has identified a trajectory that would allow our emissions to rise from about 450 parts per million currently to about 550 parts per million in 2020 to 2025. We would then want them to stabilise at that level for about a decade on the basis of a range of low carbon interventions in the way we run our economy, and we would then want to see them decline in absolute terms from about 2035.
In order to do this and given the high levels of fossil fuel dependence at present, we would need substantial assistance from the international community, in relation to financing for low carbon initiatives in particular, as well as technology transfer and access to technology.
In this context, we are pleased to announce that South Africa has secured a concessional loan of $500 million, which will leverage another $1 billion, that will allow for major low carbon investments in a concentrated solar power plant, wind power and in enabling the private sector to invest in energy efficiency and build a solar water heating industry.
It is worth noting that South Africa is already doing a lot to reduce its dependence on coal. Renewable energy is part of our mixed energy policy. We have invested a lot of money to modernise our transport.
It is our hope that the negotiations currently under way in Copenhagen would further support the roll-out of such actions, as well as enable us to take early action to adapt to climate impacts. With finances made available, we have the potential to do more. We can enhance our technology capacity, we can co-operate with other countries to produce clean technology locally, in the process creating jobs and developing skills for our people.
These negotiations are taking place in two parallel tracks: the Bali Action Plan and the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol is an instrument of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that provides for developed countries to take legally binding actions while, on the other hand, it ensures bolder actions from developing countries.
For Africa, we have a serious concern. Weak emission reduction targets from the developed world will mean that the two percent centigrade rise in temperatures will happen with potentially devastating consequences. For Africa and South Africa, our continued development and survival requires the developed world to play its part. It is in this context that the Africa walkout of the negotiations earlier this week took place. It resulted in a renewed focus on targets and numbers for a mission to clear reductions.
In the Bali Action Plan negotiations, countries are trying to find agreement on how to enhance implementation of the convention in five key respects. Agreement is needed on a shared vision and long-term global goal for missions. Developed countries are not signatories to the Kyoto Protocol. Those that are not, like the United States, must take on a mission reduction that is comparable to other developed countries.
Developing countries have agreed to take voluntary and nationally appropriate mitigation actions, a programme that will ensure that adaptation is given equal priority. At this stage in the negotiations, there is a substantial way to go to find an acceptable agreement. In particular, the developed world is trying to shift the burden of emission reductions to developing countries, and it is also not putting adequate financial commitments on the table.
Chairperson, we need to be clear that a developing country, such as South Africa with its challenges regarding the need to develop in order to achieve growth and poverty eradication, insists on its carbon space. While agreeing on the need for us to take action on climate change and reduce our emissions, we cannot enter into an agreement that will not allow us to move forward as a nation. We also cannot sign up to an agreement that does not recognise the priority of adaptation. I thank you. [Time expired.] [Applause.]