South Africa faced a “difficult challenge as a country” in dealing with a set of tough issues that were not dealt with at the 2010 Cancun global climate change negotiations, said Joanne Yawitch, who was one of the government’s main climate negotiators before she moved to the National Business Initiative (NBI).

The newly appointed NBI CEO said business would need to think about what it wanted to come out of the process from a South African, African and developing nation perspective at the Durban climate meeting in December.

“I think that, sadly, it is unlikely that in South Africa, one is going to see the climate agreement to end all agreements, but significant progress can take place on particular issues,” said Yawitch of the seventeenth United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conference of the parties (COP17).

Yawitch said that business needed to find ways to ensure that its perspectives were integrated into the work done by the governmental negotiators at these UNFCCC negotiations.

This was vital because some of the directives following from the Cancun COP, such as the establishment of a Green Climate Fund, a Technology transfer mechanism including regional centres of excellence, development of an Adaptation committee, and work on mitigation, would affect and involve the private sector.

Work on these would take place in 2011.

The finance and technology aspects would require special technical work to establish international institutions around those issues. For business, noted Yawitch, the question of what those institutions are, what they do, how they operate and how they are going to interface with business worldwide, were critical issues.

It was a core interest for business to ensure that the work that governments did was well informed, and to be aware of what the concerns, issues, expectations and requirements were of the private sector.

Expectation was that the bulk of climate change finance that would need to be mobilised globally by 2020, would come from the private sector. Also, solutions to climate change lay in developments from private organisations.

The way to get a more robust system of technology innovation and transfer internationally very relevant to businesses involved with technology development, dissemination and distribution. Thus, the international institutions established under the UNFCCC should be acceptable to business. “And we must ensure they will work for African and developing country businesses,” added Yawitch.

“Because in South Africa business has a close working relationship with government, I really think the way is open for us to make the proposals and to put forward the ideas that will allow a more fundamental set of engagements between business and government in the process leading up to, and during the COP,” emphasised Yawitch.

She added that the NBI would seek to initiate engagements to build understanding of the negotiations, and of the international politics of climate change, with business representatives, enabling them to engage in a more meaningful and nuanced way with what was a difficult process.

“There are ways that companies can engage but we do have a long way to go. Especially with international negotiations,” Yawitch maintained.

She also highlighted that South Africa should use COP17, with its 25 000 to 30 000 visitors to Durban, to establish a joint and collective effort in showcasing what is being done in South Africa and Africa around climate change, what the concerns are and what collaboration with counterparts could take place.