Episodes

  • #017 How climate change impacts our health

    #017 How climate change impacts our health
    Feb 16 2023
    Defining climate change as a health issue.

    Health, as we understand it, should be considered central to climate change. Climate change will have profound impacts on people and public health.

    In this episode, we speak to guests who work at the intersection between coal, climate, energy, and health. We reflect on the outcomes of the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27) in Egypt, specifically about discussions relating to the health sector and climate change. Our guests weigh in on whether or not we are making meaningful progress towards defining climate change as a health issue.

    We've long advocated that the health sector should be vested in climate change and all the associated ways of tackling climate change. Listen to this episode to understand why.
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    29 mins
  • #016 Climate friendly budgeting: where do we start?

    #016 Climate friendly budgeting: where do we start?
    Sep 7 2022
    Can the national budget advance adaptation efforts and climate justice?

    The need to mitigate and adapt to the realities of the climate crisis in these and other sectors has become increasingly apparent. This episode will focus on the adaptation pillar of climate action. Climate change adaptation means anticipating the adverse effects of climate change and taking appropriate action to prevent or minimise the damage it can cause.

    Government will have to develop and strengthen national and sectoral climate adaptation policies and ensure they are implemented. This will require significant resources and climate finance is thus a critical issue for successful adaptation efforts. This includes the need for a just transition away from investments in fossil fuels and other climate-damaging expenditures toward climate adaptation policies.

    This episode will offer a robust and nuanced conversation, as it seeks to interrogate the role of the national budget in advancing climate justice and adaptation efforts - looking specifically at frontline sectors, such as health and education. Section 27 website · Adaptation Network · 350 Africa
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    47 mins
  • #015 The Climate Change Bill: A breakthrough for climate justice?

    #015 The Climate Change Bill: A breakthrough for climate justice?
    Aug 3 2022
    An analysis of the Climate Change Bill for activists.

    The tabling of the Climate Change Bill before parliament represents an important moment in tackling climate change, the most severe crisis facing the future of humanity and the planet. As impacts of the climate crisis are especially keenly felt by the Black working class, and marginalised groups (women, youth and persons living with disabilities etc), it is vital that the legal framework is developed in a manner that facilitates the broadest involvement and which contains mechanisms to ensure that prevention and adaptation measures advance gender, class and racial justice.

    This podcast is designed to be part of broader education and capacitation drives to ensure as broad-based participation in the public hearings for the Bill as possible and to promote a public dialogue on what should be included in climate legislation.

    To help us understand the Bill, its strengths, weaknesses and what changes we should be pushing for, we have four guests representing different perspectives and sectors in the climate justice movement.
    To provide a legal synopsis of the Bill we have Brandon Abdinor, the Climate Advocacy Lawyer at the Centre for Environmental Rights.
    To provide the perspective of women in working-class communities we have Francina Nkosi from Waterberg Women Advocacy Organisation (WWAO).
    To provide a labour perspective we have Matthew Grant, the Research and Policy Co-ordinator at the South African Federation of Trade Union (SAFTU).
    And to provide a youth perspective we have Gabriel Klaasens representing the African Climate Alliance.
    The discussion is moderated by Robert Krause, a researcher at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies.
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    1 hr
  • #014 The People Versus the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy

    #014 The People Versus the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy
    Jul 14 2022
    A people's tribunal putting the government on trial for its crimes

    Guests: Cleopatra Shezi (United Front)

    In this special episode of Just Us and the Climate, we take you to a live People's Tribunal, entitled the People of South Africa versus the Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE). We hear stories from people across the country about how the policies and practices of the DMRE are harming them. We hear about the "crimes" that the DMRE is enabling against its own people, from air pollution to energy racism, climate chaos to load shedding, corruption to exclusion. We also explore the better future that could be built if the DMRE actually put people over the profit of polluting corporations. Join the Climate Justice Coalition and its members as we put Minister Mantashe and his DMRE on trial, explain why we need to #UprootTheDMRE and call for a more socially and ecologically just energy and mining future. Sign the coalition's petition to the presidency · Join the Climate Justice Coalition's campaign to #UprootTheDMRE.
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    42 mins
  • #013 We cannot eat oil and gas

    #013 We cannot eat oil and gas
    Mar 11 2022
    Seismic surveys on South Africa's east and west coasts

    Guests:
    Nonhle Mbuthuma (Amadiba Crisis Committee)
    Sinegugu Zukulu (Sustaining the Wild Coast)
    Wilmien Wicomb (Legal Resources Center)
    Christian Adams (Steenberg Cove Small Scale Fishers Community)
    Dr Mnqobi Ngubane and Moenieba Isaacs (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies)

    Big corporations’ plans to blast marine life along South Africa’s wild coast and west coast galvanised activists and ordinary citizens to put a stop to it. But what exactly are the impacts on small scale fisher livelihoods and ocean conservation when big corporations roll into town hunting for gas and oil? Join us for this episode as a panel of experts involved in the legal challenges dive into the politics – and the future of seismic exploration in SA.

    This is a special episode of the Just Us and the Climate podcast, where we are adapting a discussion held by the University of Western Cape's Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (UWC PLAAS). The discussion was so good that we thought we had to make it into a podcast episode. Many thanks to PLAAS, UWC, Living Landscapes in Action project and the Oak Foundation who made the discussion possible.
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    1 hr
  • #012 South Africa's R130 Billion Climate Finance Deal

    #012 South Africa's R130 Billion Climate Finance Deal
    Nov 23 2021
    Can climate finance unlock South Africa's just energy transition?

    Guests: Nina Callaghan (Centre for Sustainability Transitions)
    Dr Emily Tyler (Meridian Economics)

    In this episode, we dive into the details (or lack thereof) surrounding South Africa's major R130 billion climate finance deal announced at the COP 26 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow. Nina Callaghan a researcher from the Centre for Sustainability Transitions and Dr Emily Tyler an economist from Meridian Economics, join our host climate justice campaigner Alex Lenferna from 350Africa.org. They talk about questions like: what role does trust play in a just transition? Does climate finance come with strings attached? What do we make of fossil-fuel-friendly politicians who are resisting the finance deal on supposedly anti-imperialist grounds? Can this climate finance deal be the spark that ignites transformative change for South Africa that tackles social, ecological and economic justice at once?
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    57 mins
  • #011 The Full Costs of Mining

    #011 The Full Costs of Mining
    Nov 15 2021
    An exploration of how extractivism creates environmental, social and climate justice.

    Host: Robert.Krause (Researcher: Environmental Justice | Wits)

    Guests:
    Nomakhosazana Precious Nomnqa (Women Affected by Mining United in Action – WAMUA)
    Ramabina Mahapa (Land and Accountability Research Centre – LARC)
    Patrick Bond (Professor of Sociology, University of Johannesburg)

    The often unchecked exploitation of South Africa’s so-called mineral wealth has destructive effects far beyond the obvious impact on the local environment.

    Local communities bear the burden of a wide range of long-term consequences that impact health, society, local economy, and well as food and water security. And as with many other exploitative fields, it is often women who experience these harms most acutely.

    Access to land, ownership, tenure and mutually beneficial land stewardship is also often disrupted, impacting on non-mining related livelihoods and local communities’ ability to grow food and engage in land-based economic activity.

    The ramifications go further, impacting on, and being impacted by, the global climate crisis. And then there is the macro level aspect of the mineral endowments of the country and continent being sold at a low rate that denies benefit to future generations.

    The panel discussion illuminates these often unspoken about dynamics, describing the difficulties and creating a space to envision a different approach that benefits people and planet, both now and in the future. Connect with Robert
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    53 mins
  • #10 Suffocated by the air we breathe: A Tale of Two Pandemics

    #10 Suffocated by the air we breathe: A Tale of Two Pandemics
    May 24 2021
    Guests in this episode:
    James Irlam (PHASA)
    Thandile Chinyavanhu (Greenpeace Africa)
    Thomas Mnguni (groundWork)

    With three exciting and considered guests and hosted by SECTION27, this episode is in conversation about the impact of climate change on health, honing in on the consequences of poor quality air on population morbidity and mortality. The association between the quality of an individual’s environment and their health is a well-documented concern articulated by experts on climate change and advocates for climate justice.

    Research extensively points to air pollution as a health hazard. Over time, as air quality standards have dropped due to uncontrolled pollution and harmful environmental practices, the morbidity rate of populations living in unclean environments has worsened.

    This episode offers a robust and dynamic conversation on the case of air pollution in South Africa.
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    40 mins