Receive our free daily newsletter:
Fakir is interim executive director of the African Climate Foundation – saliem@africanclimatefoundation.org
You must have felt a bit of a daze with the cacophony of announcements at the twenty-eighth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – or COP 28 –...
Michael Polanyi, the brother of the famous Karl Polanyi (the writer of The Great Transformation), says in his book, Tacit Knowledge, that “we can know more than we can tell”. He brought to the fore...
Policy wonks like me are in the business of persuasion and perhaps a little grandstanding. The picture of the world we want has to be a different one from the status quo. Utopias can display...
The world is in a very different place to where it was when the World Trade Organisation (WTO) came into being in 1995: geopolitics and geoeconomic fragmentation are on the rise, and we are seeing...
Climate gatherings are traditional stomping grounds where calls for radical change can be met with lukewarm or whimsical responses, but you can be left with the illusion of progress having been...
The concept of ‘technocene’ is not novel; in fact, there are lots of writings on this concept. The Technocene age holds the premise that we are not in the Anthropocene age any longer – technology...
One of my favourite childhood authors was the science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke, the author of 2001 Space Odyssey – which was later turned into a movie – who wrote: “For every expert, there is...
It has been said by some that those who desire to ensure we have a more sustainable planet and oppose fossil fuels are antidevelopment. Indeed, the antidevelopment argument against...
“Bad ideas matter. They have their own coherence and own power”. These words are attributable to Timothy Snyder, a US historian who specialises in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the...
Africa’s problem is not fossil fuels or the continent’s dependence on raw land and minerals but the lack of capacity to transition from these dependences into something else. This is a matter...
This article is a continuation of the last instalment of this column, which concluded by highlighting the transformative power of a single legal victory in the US – the granting, in 1973, of the...
‘All men (women) are intellectuals . . . but not all men (women) have in society the function of intellectuals.” – Gramsci. It seems incremental change, or what one would call the reformist...
“Where you arrive does not matter so much as what sort of person you are when you arrive there.” – Seneca, letter XXVIII. Our coal situation is like the satirical movie Don’t Look Up where a...
South Africa had its first investor and policy summit in Cape Town in late November when President Cyril Ramaphosa opened the hydrogen conference. Hydrogen is the most common element in the...
Yes, I was in Sharm El Shaik, Egypt, attending the Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It was a busy place of deliberations and...
Stability can be a recurrent fable that we tell ourselves that we have in order to preserve the idea of the ‘good’ life – sometimes at the expense of others. Stability is a product of a utopian...
“We live not only in a market economy but more generally in a market society – that is to say, a space of civilisation where all human relations and similarly where all human relationships with the...
The sad thing about the Russia-Ukraine war is that the 1.5 oC-aligned energy transition looks set to be interrupted once again. We are here today with this troubling predicament of having done...
It is important to locate environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals and net-zero targets in the context of corporate citizenship today. There will be some who would say that corporate...
Who would have thought that we would enter a new inflationary era? Even US Federal Reserve chairperson Janet Yellen was caught off guard by the sudden turn upward inflationary trajectory. It was...
It is oxymoronic to talk of Africa decarbonising – with the exception of South Africa and a few other countries, the continent has the lowest per capita carbon footprint. A recent analytical piece...
Over the past decade, I have been engaged in an inquiry into the nature of judgment, given that I have had the privilege of setting up new entities and programmes over the course of my two-decade...
“It takes two mirrors for the correct image of one’s self” (Diary of Patricia Highsmith, 1968). By now we are all aware of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and what has happened to our world. Several...
It has always been maintained and will continue to be maintained that the route to curing the climate challenge in Africa is to define a new pathway for development. That pathway has to be aligned...
The year 2021 should be remembered as a turning point for climate change policy and diplomacy in South Africa. It is hard to recall a time when so many players felt that the game had been lifted...
Sometimes the ‘impossible’ seems far-fetched and unrealistic, but it can be on the cusp of happening, even if it still has some journey to cover. This is illustrated by the history of the Just...
We are in what we may call slow burn and incremental shock of climate vulnerability – recent events tell a story of increased frequency of extreme weather patterns, yet the world struggles to...
Last year, marked a tectonic shift in the climate change arena, and this was spurred on by the recognition by the European Union (EU) that no crisis should be spoilt as Europe moved to change the...
Ulrich Beck wrote: “One can possess wealth but one can be afflicted by risks; they are, so to speak, ascribed by civilisation . . . Risk society is a catastrophic society” (Risk Society: Towards A...
Extractive industries offer no long-term solution for countries that continue to rely on their natural resources as levers for an economic boost; when a commodity boom end, the countries will slide...
We have been made to believe the narrative that things were under control When, in July, looting and rioting broke out in KwaZulu-Natal and parts of Gauteng, we were told that the country was in...
We must guard against the idea that green means socially responsible and equitable. Green and optimum social outcomes are not synonymous; therefore, a debate about intersectional issues relating to...
Societies that are most vulnerable to economic piracy need countervailing forces to protect them from those who deliberately pursue actions intended to maximise their own gain at the expense of the...
The public discourse around gas is intensifying. Climate activists have now made gas – which has been touted as being better than coal and a necessary transitional fuel – the target of their next...
In his book, Feline Philosophy, which is about what cats can teach humans, John Gray points us to a few lessons. One of these is pertinent to what I discuss in this article: beware of anyone who...
The coming into being of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA) is giving momentum to an idea that has been very long in the making – a unified position around trade, whose importance will...
It has been an interest of mine for a long time – this question concerning the production of knowledge systems. The part that I will not focus on is the epistemological process of knowledge...
The term ‘just transition’ may seem a neologism, but in reality it is not so new. It originated from the depths of US labour movement struggles in response to the impacts of new environmental laws...
For the human mind to cope with the world, it has to develop a set of frames of the world, or what can also be called heuristics. These sets of frames are not all innate; many are a product of...
Individual utilitarianism is seen as primordial in conventional Western economic tradition. However, individualism does not always lead to better public outcomes. Extreme forms of individualism are...
Climate resilience in Africa can only be optimised if other forms of social protection work in concert. This means you may not achieve success, entirely, with the scaffold of climate resilience...
I recently participated in a panel discussion on industrial development in Central and West Africa, organised by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. The panellists, drawn from...
It is common wisdom that, if you have evidence, that evidence should speak for itself. But the history of knowledge and ‘factfulness’ shows that the causal relation between evidence and good...
Research Reports
Latest Multimedia
Latest News
Showroom
ENVASS is a customer and solutions-driven environmental consultancy with established divisions, serviced by highly qualified and experienced...
VISIT SHOWROOMYale Lifting Solutions is a leading supplier of lifting and material handling equipment in Southern Africa. Yale offers a wide range of quality...
VISIT SHOWROOMWeir Minerals Europe, Middle East and Africa is a global supplier of excellent minerals solutions, including pumps, valves, hydrocyclones,...
VISIT SHOWROOMISO-certified Condra manufactures overhead cranes, portal cranes, cantilever cranes and crane components: hoists, drives, end-carriages, brakes and...
VISIT SHOWROOMPress Office
Announcements
What's On
Subscribe to improve your user experience...
Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):
Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format
Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):
All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors
including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.
Already a subscriber?
Forgotten your password?
Receive weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine (print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
➕
Recieve daily email newsletters
➕
Access to full search results
➕
Access archive of magazine back copies
➕
Access to Projects in Progress
➕
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format
RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA
R4500 (equivalent of R375 a month)
SUBSCRIBEAll benefits from Option 1
➕
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports on various industrial and mining sectors, in PDF format, including on:
Electricity
➕
Water
➕
Energy Transition
➕
Hydrogen
➕
Roads, Rail and Ports
➕
Coal
➕
Gold
➕
Platinum
➕
Battery Metals
➕
etc.
Receive all benefits from Option 1 or Option 2 delivered to numerous people at your company
➕
Multiple User names and Passwords for simultaneous log-ins
➕
Intranet integration access to all in your organisation