Cllr Jack Sekwaila, the Member of the Mayoral Committee for Environment and Infrastructure Services Department (EISD) engaged scores of young people from across Johannesburg on all matters pertaining to climate change in honour of Earth Hour. This years’ Earth Hour celebration, held under the theme Invest in Our Planet was celebrated a little differently due to the impact of load-shedding on the City. Instead of switching of lights between 8:30pm and 9:30pm, the City chose to engage with the youth on climate change and environmental conservation.
Cllr Sekwaila’s talk at the Joburg Zoo was part of a four-day series of youth dialogues on Climate Change action. The City had invited industry experts, the youth and other interested parties to join the series of engaging discussions, which ultimately led to Earth Hour, which is organised by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) annually on the last Saturday of the month.
Cllr Sekwaila told young people to do their part to protect the environment and ensure efficient energy use.
“Climate change is causing many challenges around the world such as rising sea levels, floods, heatwaves, droughts, and erratic rainfall patterns.
These impacts of climate change are already manifesting in the City, as we have witnessed episodes of flooding, heatwaves and water insecurity associated with drought,” he said.
Cllr Sekwaila added that it is evident that municipalities, communities, businesses are all impacted by climate change, hence the call on various stakeholders to work together in the fight against the environmental catastrophe and on measures to adapt to its impacts.
“A few of the programmes, policies and actions implemented by the City to mitigate climate change include the Climate Action Plan (CAP) approved by Council in March 2021, the food Resilience programme which is an innovative approach to reducing food insecurity through community empowerment, as well as the Tshedzani social housing retrofit project in Roodepoort which is a demonstration of the City’s commitment to low-carbon development and resilience,” the MMC explained.
Cllr Sekwaila said working together, the City, businesses and the youth can create a municipality everyone can be proud of.
“Together we can work towards the best-case scenario – a clean, beautiful, world-class city and together, we can find innovative, mutually beneficial ways of ensuring we live, work, and play in an environmentally friendly City of Johannesburg.”
The City was making strides towards creating a more sustainable future, Cllr Sekwaila added.
Written by Sascha-Lee Joseph
27/03/2023