Inasmuch as a business is facing a challenging year in progressing decarbonisation plans and adapting to climate change, the task for the government is just as challenging. If we are to make better progress in terms of climate action, 2023 needs to be a year of closer collaboration between the public and private sectors.
South African businesses are starting to realise the practical difficulties of living with climate change, and 2023 will likely see further challenges as this global trend comes to impact increasingly on corporate risk levels. The floods and business disruption in KwaZulu-Natal are the most recent reminder, but the severe droughts in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape are the kind of events which we must now build into our future planning.
These mega-trends are not only affecting business operations; they are resulting increasingly in the need for infrastructural development, or for infrastructural repair and improvement. Here, the task facing the government is at least as onerous as the one facing the private sector. State bureaucracy is not really designed to manage change; its size, complexity and authority structures might make it slow to recognise the signs of change, to agree on what must be done in response, and to actually implement an effective strategy.
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