 Good afternoon. My name is Mashuru Masutaramute. I would like to welcome you all to the second of six online policy dialogues as part of the Southern Africa Towards Inclusive Economic Development Essay Tide program that's the research into policy series. Essay Tide is a collaborative research policymaking and capacity building partnership between the national treasury, UNU wider, the South African Revenue Service, the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, the Trade and Industry and the Department of Trade and Industry and Competition, Trade and Industry Policy Strategies, the International Food Policy Research Institute and the European Union. The program also includes a number of local and international universities so the work of Essay Tide has been generously supported by funding from the EU for which we are very grateful for the support. Since its inception the program's goal is improved economic research for informed evidence-based policy to promote inclusive growth in South Africa and in the region. It is a result of a unique collaboration between local and international officials and experts under six work streams namely enterprise development, public revenue, macro modeling, inequality, climate and energy and regional growth. You are all able to get all the research that's been done over the past three years on the Essay Tide website. Today's policy dialogue is hosted under the work stream climate and energy transition as drivers of change. We will seek to address the trade-offs between investing in development based on today's uncertainty about future climate versus investing in the future once the climate change has occurred. So to our audience members we encourage you to be part of the conversation by writing your questions on the chat box or raise your hand and our guests will be more than happy to respond to any questions that you might have for any of them this afternoon. So we welcome you once again so to kick things off we will begin with a synthesis of research findings produced under the work stream of climate change and energy transition as drivers of change by Channing Arndt, director of the environment and production technology division at IFPRI and Kenneth Streispack. He's from MIT. Over to you gentlemen. Thank you very much for Shudo. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen here. Here we go. We can see that so and move into presentation mode. So thank you very much. The topic today is climate-related investments now or later. This is all about prioritization. We can't do everything at all once. So what should we do first and what should we do later? To begin climate change we expect warming and this is what we tend to expect in Southern Africa. This particular graph is looking at the west side of Southern Africa. All of the graphs eastern central and west are quite similar. This blue band is sort of the historical range of climate. What we have are a number of bins 0 to 0.5 degree rise in temperature relative to the end of the 20th century and increasing in 0.5 degree increments. We have a series of climate scenarios. One is reference where emissions continue more or less as they are right now. A second is Paris forever where the current Paris agreement, the commitments are net within that but then no other commitments are made. The Paris commitments are not sufficient to reach a two-degree Celsius world. So we have a scenario where two degrees Celsius is achieved through further commitments and emissions reductions and then a strong emissions reduction scenario of 1.5 degrees Celsius. So if we look at that particular 1.5 degrees then in most instances by about 20, 60, 70 percent of the time we have a warming in the range of 0.5 to 1 degree relative to the end of the 20th century it's possible that it's only in the 0 to 0.5 degrees. In other words the climate stays within the historical range roughly but it's also possible to be warmer. As we move to greater emissions scenarios we get greater temperature rises even by 2060. When we go to the strongest emission scenario the most likely outcome is you know almost a 45 percent chance probability is in the 1.5 to 2 degrees of warming. Less warming is possible but also more. So this is in December, January, February for western time but it looks pretty similar for most of these. So there's a consistent warming and the more emissions we get the more warming comes. When we go to precipitation we end up with less sign of consistency. Here is a similar sets of climate scenarios similar binning but this time it's precipitation. This is in millimeters per 10 days and probabilities on the left-hand side. So if we just focus on December, January, February again the blue range is historical climate variability and if you stay at 1.5 degrees Celsius then most of your outcomes are some mild drying within the sort of historical range but as we head to stronger emission scenarios we get a much much greater spread of potential outcomes. It could get wetter or it could get drier. The bulk of outcomes push you towards drier in western southern Africa. This is broadly true across the region and so precipitation with temperature where constant things will get warmer in precipitation we're not certain whether the climate will broadly wet or broadly dry and what's happening here is can be seen in a little more detail. So these are 18 general circulation models of the earth and atmosphere and these are the highlights of precipitation change. So red is wetting and green is drying and what we're observing is steep gradients between areas of wetting and areas of drying. So for example here we have in green a wedding and then in red a drying and a very small area in between the two. So that actually showing up rather robustly to all of the models what's not robust at all is where these gradients actually are and so what happens is in some cases we end up with for example substantial drying in this region but in another model it's it's wetting and so those distributions are reflecting this uncertainty that the models were showing. We also have you know we don't live the climate in the sense we live weather and climate is what we expect to happen it's the the average of the of the outcome so we expect it you know in summer to be warm and in winter to be cooler but on a given day we can have warmer days or cooler days and wetter days and drier days. So we go ahead and we add weather to to the climates we do a pretty thorough job of dealing with multiple climates and multiple possible weather combinations and this gives us a richness in terms of possible outcomes and with the large number of outcomes we can look at the ranges of potential outcomes. So here instead of looking at the region western southern Africa we're looking at actually south Africa and this is a box and whisker plot so inside the box is about 75 percent of outcomes and inside the whiskers the large majority of outcomes the dots are outliers or extreme outcomes. The blue is is climate so this is the variation in the 2020s under the two-degree scenario that we expect in climate or for temperature in south Africa on on average but when we add weather the the range is is much much greater and we can have more extreme events as we run through time especially in the stronger emissions scenario the Paris forever scenario we get a widening of the range of possibilities generally and and much more extreme outcomes in terms of temperature. For south Africa we get a fairly consistent outcomes in terms of precipitation distribution is not changing that much and relatively few outliers across but this is not the the case everywhere in southern Africa in Zambia for example we find the distributions for precipitation becoming a little wider as the as time and emissions pile up under the stronger emission scenarios and we have much more climate outcomes that are more extreme so this is the variation that that we are we are looking at this variation has a lot of implications for what we should do now and what we should do later we have a fair amount of uncertainty and we need a fair amount of resilience and robustness one of the areas where we've looked in some detail is in terms of agricultural yields and and in particular the threat of extreme events or extreme yield events so what we're looking at here is a calculation of the 20 year maize yield extreme events so what we're looking at is the five worst years in in a century and we're looking at that across countries and across emission scenarios for the 2040s and for the 2060s and what we see is if we have strong mitigation and we go only to the 2040s so for south Africa we see that the 20 year event becomes more likely instead of happening once every 20 years it's happening once every 16 16 or 17 years and this stays relatively consistent into the 2060s if we emit more and move to two degrees centigrade though that 20 year event becomes substantially more likely but the likelihood doesn't change very much over the course of the 2040s into the 2060s but as we get to greater and greater emissions then these uh what used to be a 20 year event or something that would likely happen once or twice uh in in your like in your lifetime or your operating lifetime as a farmer becomes far more likely so in the reference scenario the strongest emission scenario in the 2060s what is a 20 year event reduces down to about a six or seven year event or or effectively uh triples in in likelihood so instead of happening once every 20 years happening about once every seven or the probability is about 15 instead of five so this is one of the examples and this is a a nicely done new set of work by Tim Thomas so this brings us to the question you know sort of try to set things up for the question what what do we do now or later and I just want to see the discussion a little bit with some thoughts on what we might do now and what we might do later in their characteristics so one of the things that really it's important to do now is agricultural research we need we want to produce food there's a different amount of the dependent especially in the region but also in South Africa on agriculture agricultural research has a long lag between the investment in research and the ultimate benefit so if we want to deal with higher temperatures and you know more variable rainfall in the 2040s and 2030s and 2040s that we have to invest now this comes out of the the graphs it's certainly in the interest of south and southern Africa to see mitigation happening through through time one of the in the energy stream that we find that it's actually economically an improvement to switch out of coal-fired electricity generation into renewables so this is something South Africa should be doing over time independent climate change but certainly climate change strongly reinforces the case for action that's something to start with one of the things that we found and which means very much stays in place in our more recent analyses is that South Africa has a very significant water infrastructure storage and ability to transfer water between river basins this is an extremely important asset in dealing with uncertain and potentially more intense rainfall so maintaining that is is is critical and it's an important asset so that's something we should do now things that we might do later or that we would do after careful consideration large new hydropower investments if there's drying and warming then there's less precipitation meaning less water more evaporation meaning less water and so as a consequence large new hydropower investments might not have the water eventually to actually turn the turbines in the way that we expect so it's something we have to be careful about protective infrastructure is sometimes worthwhile it might be worthwhile to build a dike to prevent flooding but it's something even without climate change has a checkered history these these kinds of investments and so we do want to be careful finally striving for food self-sufficiency is something that that is a reaction you want to seeing this increased variability but in fact we're going to see variation in rainfall and temperature conditions in the quality of growing decisions not just in southern Africa but around the world and what we want to do is to be able to trade to be able to bring in product work for in areas where where you know weather has been favorable in order to offset where where it has not been so climate change strongly favors open tree so with that I will pass back to Machudo thank you for doing the opportunity to deliver this introduction thank you very much Channing just maybe one question three or four principles principle lessons from this program well in the in the energy stream we've done quite a good job I think of illustrating the benefits of shifting to renewables over time this is not right straight away but I think we've done a convincing job of showing that by 2030s 2040s and 2050s this is this is an excellent investment the other major item to bring into this climate discussion and debate is this issue of variation and variability it was not long ago that you know people would show up and say oh it's going to get drier or oh it's going to get wetter and in fact it could get drier or it could get wetter and and this has implications for the ways that that you invest you know one of the the implications that I mentioned before was this this water infrastructure issue and and keeping that water infrastructure maintained it already exists and improving it is a very good deal one of the best in terms of of things to do now so those would be sort of three implications that show up a final one that we're working on and relates to the trade question that I brought up is regional approaches to climate change are really likely to to provide much greater flexibility and and options we showed you these these big impacts on on maize maize is the most important prop in the in the region but it's not happening to all regions in southern africa at the same time those extreme events are occurring in different areas and trading within southern africa in maize but in other products as well provides a great progress really that had lies in the past 20 30 years in regional trade is something that's that's favorable to you know confronting climate change and it's it's something that that we should we should continue so those would be some some observations thank you miss you thank thanks very much channing i'd like to introduce other panelists this afternoon we've got salim pakir he's the executive director of the african climate foundation elia masalela is the executive chairman of dna economics we've got dr canter regard she is a lead environmental specialist at the africa region at the world bank thank you so much for joining us this afternoon so what i'd like to do to kick things off from our end is to get a view of how you saw this presentation some of the views that you have on the presentation that channing has presented to us all the synthesis that channing presented earlier on i think i'll start with salim thank you it's always a pleasure to have an exchange with channing and the other but the panelists here i thought it was a very interesting presentation it'd be good to get into more detailed reports but i'll make two or three observations on his presentation which sort of triggered a number of thoughts because as african climate foundation we have been engaging if pre around the idea of thinking through the agricultural space particularly land use sustainable agriculture and i think that the the shift in variability of weather patterns is a very important area for us to to consider we also obviously very involved in energy transitions particularly in south africa we hope to roll out a big program in south in the rest of africa and there's urban transitions work as well and they're all intertwined i think the south african you know work is interesting i have questions about the rest of the continent and one of the lessons there but i thought there were a couple of things that channing brought to the table we are obviously interested in shifts in climate which affect weather and the reason for that is that we they have huge implications for the productivity of agriculture and i think channing alluded to that but the one area that i think the the report hasn't covered is the human dimension effects of thermal effects on human labor and particularly the also the the expansion of the geographic zone of of diseases particularly the expansion of malaria into warmer areas that once were colder are now becoming warmer will be subject to more sort of vector-borne diseases and the effects of that and the third part is around we've seen this with the cyclones in mozambique and so on the impact on critical infrastructure particularly that's essential for exports of commodities not only minerals but agriculture especially in countries in southern africa that are highly dependent on agriculture for not only labor intensity but food security and in some cases exports that have had a dramatic effect and i think what the presentation raises and it's a question i have for this group the extent to which we must build a approach to regional integration that takes into account climate that builds into that climate thinking particularly on its implications for agricultural economies how to distribute the burden of vulnerability by doing that we're also building resilience across the region and in different parts of africa some parts of the region are going to be more affected than others and it's it will be good to understand this a little bit more in granular terms because it will influence the the relationship between trade integration which is starting to happen on the continent agricultural production and the distribution of productive capacity in different parts of the continent how we do that politically and economically is a bigger question but it allows for a greater capability of resilience as a regional approach because i don't think these climate issues can be dealt with just on a national basis it's very clear that there are regional dimensions to this and i wanted to bring that into the conversation a lot more because it has a chance of being missed if we just focused merely on the national sphere so i think agriculture is very crucial to take a more regional perspective whether if the climate lens is a stronger area of vulnerability because in many african countries whether vulnerable sectors are which are vital to the economies of these countries are likely to be impacted possibly negatively and positively by by climate but assumption that we often make is that it's mostly negative and we have to find three different approaches regional integration as a way of protecting these sectors from extreme weather the second is to be able to integrate technology and infrastructure that can improve resilience of the sector and the third of course is the finance and economic spinnals of integration that allow for more of these commodities to be traded internally within the regional economies that can the important indirect effect over this improves income of farmers and also improves their resilient capability because it's definitely linked to income and the national income sources can be improved because what we are finding evidence of is that particularly poorer countries that are very vulnerable to extreme weather can and can be driven into more debt trap especially they already have a debt problem so these are broader dimensions that i think we need to think about i can talk about other stuff later but i want to give the other panelists an opportunity to say something thanks thank you very much salim you brought a number of aspects to this conversation so i think elias would like to add a bit more on to that you will just need to unmute your mic elias we can't hear you thank you this is training i never got at school sorry i would like to start off by echoing what salim had said i think it was a very good presentation and the one thing that stands out to me in the presentation is how practical it is what are the solutions that we should be thinking about now and in the future but there's a few other things that we need to also be thinking about and the one that i would like to place right on the table the the presentation talks about now or future in terms of what sort of investments we should be talking about i think i want to take a slightly different approach to now or tomorrow and say when we ask that question are we asking it because we think the challenge is agent or we think it can be delayed and what we have found is that it is not a challenge that can be delayed we're actually running behind the cave and i'm not sure if we're ever going to catch up with the cave add to that is that our region is one of the fastest warming regions that means we need to take it more seriously than any other region in the world if we're going to be sustainable going forward but as we do that what is important is never leave other people behind and for me therein lies the importance of just transition as we transition what are the socio-economic implications of so doing and how do we make sure that we mitigate against the negative effects of what we're faced with the big debate that we're having now we've had in the planning commission for a very long time is cold or no cold and it was very clear early in our years of South Africa when we negotiated the funding of me do be and the other where we went to the rest of the world the first question that asked that they were asking South Africa is why do you want to invest in cold and the simple response was what else and it was clear that if you stop the use of cold immediately South Africa is going to suffer and for the rest of the continent is going to suffer so the concept of trans of transitioning in a sustainable and healthy way is extremely important Salim also raised the issue of bad and distribution I would like to also extend that slightly and ask the question who is responsible for this transition who is supposed to find it and in a lot of debates I have observed that people seem to think that it is government's responsibility in fact if you leave it to government chances are we shall never transition if we do transition will transition in an erratic way so there is a movement in South Africa called impact investing South Africa which is a global movement driven by private sector players owners of capital who are saying the responsibility of sustainability ought to reside in the hands of the private sector not in the hands of government and they are willing to put money to deal with issues of the environment issue of employment and why is that so it is so because in their minds they are thinking about the problem in an intergenerational way they would like to be in business in the current generation and also in the future generation what they are also asking themselves is what sort of world or what sort of economy do you want to equip to future generations our children and our great grandchildren and these I think are the questions that I would like to put on the table and one of the things that is our impact investing South Africa has done is work with your UNDP to do what they call an SDG map for South Africa and the continent what that does is identify the needs for capital and matching it with supply of capital to deal with sustainable issues and working with the private with other partners in the private sector not necessarily in impact investing they've come up with a concept of outcomes programs where you look at the appetite of the private sector where they would want to put their money get them to do what has been traditionally known as a government responsibility and get the private sector to invest their own capital upfront and depending on their performance you incentivize them accordingly in that way you move the debate from a talk stage into an implementation stage and I think this this is what is interesting with the presentation that was presented today it is very practical it's asking the questions what what are the investments that we should be considering today and tomorrow that's my input thank you very much alias the number of probing questions to the other panelists so we've got a doctor regard she'll give the last word on her thoughts on the presentation thank you very much fellow panelists for raising I think some very important questions and and obviously to the framing that Channing had put out I think it's always good to good to start with with this research and the science and the evidence and what that is telling us and how we need to really further embed that into our decision making processes and I think the messages from from the presentation are clear I think you know we get the reaffirmation on the critical importance of looking at the variability looking at the climate trends and you know all shrouded in some level of uncertainty but yet the need to act with certainty and I think that's that's where the dilemma comes in and because it focus focus a little bit on on the agriculture area so maybe just to continue that piece of the conversation I think to the point that Salim made I think it's correct you know the research just does say you know recent papers I think published by Purdue and others you know do say that the impacts of climate on the crop side is really important but even more important particularly in the African context it's going to be the impact and exposure to the labor and to the people who are engaged in agriculture especially in the lower latitudes and this really then also throws into the spanner the kind of food insecurity that could mount today as we speak in in sub-Saharan Africa there are about 220 million food insecure people and the numbers I believe went up in covid and when you put in the moderately food insecure it becomes 600 million and that really does mean something and to Elliot's point about the intergenerational part where climate comes in is in a study that was done at the World Bank it said that if in the first thousand days a baby that is born doesn't get the right nutrition they have intergenerational consequences especially girls because it affects not just them and their human capital development but the next generation so that means that the urgency for acting now is is really high even though we need to take some considerations into account so so what what do we really have to do and and how do we sort of address this issue which is here and now and which will have consequences across the board right and I think it's no easy answer to you know and I I think placed in Africa all of you know that firsthand that it's really difficult but we must act on it but I think one important thing is how do we take that conversation bigger I mean it is about production on the farm but food security as I think the Lehman others it's much more it's it's something that it's about the access it's about the distribution systems and when we put out the World Bank's next generation Africa climate business plan food security was a number one priority and what we really said was that we needed to take an end-to-end approach uh on on food security and climate affects every part of that end-to-end value chain it affects things on the farm as we saw in terms of productions and productivity patterns but it also affects the distribution systems even our roads and access systems can be and will be undermined by some of the climate side of it and then I think in terms of food pricing and that's where the trade question comes in and and sort of how we look at things perhaps from a regional context so I think it's a very complex situation and I think climate cuts across the whole end-to-end and that doesn't mean that we don't act on it I think that there is a need to act on it to to the point I think I do believe that we need to continue to do the research but we cannot postpone the action and that's I think the reality that we deal with Masjidu and I think there is clearly different challenges in different parts of of the continent and and we can really have that conversation there are financing gaps there are technology gaps there are innovation gaps and and there's multiple things that we all need to do but I think what we are also realizing is sometimes the solution is in the regional connectivity and looking at those issues so there is ongoing work looking at food security in the Sahelian countries that brings a lot more regional partnerships together from research but also in terms of the practices and the access and distribution but let me stop there I think we can come back to more on this thank you very much the doctor regard and we do encourage our audience members to also be part of the conversation by writing their questions on the chat box and I can impose it to the panelists I do have a question so far it's from Rob Davies he's asking Channing whether you have any insights on how climate related investments might interact with proposed COVID infrastructure investments thank you oh sorry here we go thank you yeah that's a good question and and certainly what you well if we take the focusing on on South Africa this is this is the tricky problem right I mean very much South Africa wants to reemerge emerge from the COVID depression that the economy went into and and still remains you sort of deeply recessed and so and and so we do want to come out of that as quickly as possible at the same time there was a very poor growth performance leading into the the COVID recession which so obviously some things need to be different or we need to do we need to take the opportunity perhaps COVID creates some policy space in order to do things differently to to get growth and so we're looking at the long-run growth pattern and when you started to look at you know moving towards this long-run growth pattern you want to deal with with climate change and and there are sort of two sides to that you know alias was was focusing mentioning the mitigation challenges and you know transitioning and it's it's definitely true that that you know you can't just throw away your your coal-fired power fleet tomorrow that that's not going to work you have to have a transition and a transition plan um the same goes with the the regional dimensions and some of the things that that you'll want to do and and you so you have a a difficult challenge that you know you want to carefully balance investments that are going to quickly pay so you can get your economy growing again and at the same time be looking forward to these to these longer-term challenges that um that that COVID uh well that that climate change is going to going to pose um so you know returning to kind of the the extreme events example and this applies in South Africa as well as everywhere else you know one of the things that South Africa is already doing is is looking at higher temperatures and and what that means for transport infrastructure and transport investments it means you know in an engineering sense a different pavement mix um to you know deal with with the higher temperatures and that's something that that you i mean that almost free you just need to think of it as you are rehabilitating your your roads or and if you're building new roads you notice on the on the distributions that we were showing you could get less rain but you could also get more and you can also get pulses of rain uh so you know flooding becomes an issue and in you know in particular as we know where they are on you know flooding is much more likely on a plane somewhere than it is you know on some on some hill uh so you need to think about that as you are investing uh and either perhaps place roads on slightly higher ground um build um uh you know bigger pipes to transport water underneath the roads uh these kinds of things are other things that that one can take on you know now as you are investing such that you have a more resilient uh set of of infrastructure and you are providing the infrastructure that you need to to to stimulate growth in in the in the short realm so uh thanks for that question can i write on that question so it is you can do that yeah the rider for me is doing a comparison between the impact of covid and the impact of the environmental transformation we're going through um as human beings people have responded very quickly to covid because it has direct and immediate negative effects on the human being how do we put the same level of attention on environmental changes chenny can answer to this it can be answered by any of the panelists i'll let somebody else jump in can i um just pick up on uh what elias and chenny said particularly in um with regard to to rob's comment about the nature of investments of course um uh the the the basic things that agriculture and i want to talk particularly in south africa and and beyond south africa as we see it is that the the basic infrastructure of agriculture i mean research um uh farmer extension support uh integration of agriculture into uh this specific value chain researching new types of crops uh introducing uh crops that are more resistant to disease and and extreme weather conditions those basic things have to be done in order to improve the climate resilient component of it uh so we are also on a back foot in terms of the development of the agricultural sector and the rate of investment on the continent in fact uh if you look at the au uh comprehensive agricultural development program i think it recommends 10 percent or 15 percent of gdp i can't remember the exact figure but none of the countries in africa are at that level so that's the the first thing there's a big debate to be had uh in terms of uh the role of the state and in many cases the state doesn't have the capacity and uh the the necessary resources because its fiscal space is very narrow uh then then the question arises about how does one work with private uh financiers i think Elias was talking about impact investment um in a range of areas around genetics land use practices technology uh weatherproofing certain types of agricultural practices private firms in south africa already doing uh cover farming which is an extensive expensive infrastructure um and then improving infrastructure and logistics uh lots of agricultural income and diversity can be improved with more investments in irrigation uh energy and road road uh uh road networks which uh in many countries are very poorly serviced we have a situation in south africa for example the milk industry uh suffering from massive poor road infrastructure particularly in the eastern cape that they can't supply milk uh uh timely to a specific um uh in terms of supplying to the necessary places uh because of the poor road infrastructure and some of the the rural areas so some of these basic things have to be really looked at uh before you can actually even embark on a more advanced scale of uh accommodating shifts in weather pattern and climate uh to build a more resilient agricultural income and uh i think it's important to consider the nexus in particularly the rest of the continent improvements in in energy and agriculture because that also allows for diversification of uh agricultural production uh beyond just narrow um crop uh cultivation to uh processing and other types of uh diversified income sources within the rural farm state or rural context thanks thank you very much salih we've got a question from shinghi dube um her question begins with with the south africa currently lagging in key infrastructure investments such as water infrastructure to what extent do you think government will respond to the needs of climate change as a present and pressing issue to shift resources and start investing in water and infrastructure i'm not sure if you'd like to take that one chenny ken at the stress pack on the line if you'd like to also respond to anything he's more than welcome to do so okay so um one of the uh one of the one of the assets that south africa has is a is a very good water infrastructure uh already so it's it's important it's obviously it can always be better and and there are our things to do but uh it's it's really a maintenance question that making sure that that that infrastructure stays in place and then looking for selected areas to to improve that um i think that that's a point that that's been made and and that should come into consideration very much uh you know as we head out of the the pandemic i think um the other you know another burning question in south africa where climate comes in quite strongly is the land reform issue uh this is obviously a big uh issue for south africa um what we tend to find is that uh you know south african agriculture small farmers uh very strongly tend to irrigate so they they tend to put some water on on those crops they're not working in in a purely dry land situation and after having looked at the issue for a little while i've concluded that you know we we've almost misnamed it it's uh it's not so much land reform or at least as much water reform as it is as it is land reform in terms of making sure that these smaller plots if they're going to be more intensively cultivated have access to to water and and water is going to it is already in short supply so this this is a that that's an important uh a really important issue for for making that important program uh successful uh and and and there's a there's an infrastructure need there uh and when you're starting to reform water um you know the upsides go up and the downsides go go up as well if you you know if you start to take really productive water and putting it to unproductive uses you can have a a a real downside as as well so this is this is a really important part of of where uh investment and you know where where South Africa wants to go and and how it it should it should do it so the the water infrastructure issue relates to municipal and industrial the ability to to handle you know in say how Tang um you know be able to have the municipal you know basically need to be able to flush your toilet and so forth um in in in those areas uh and and having that supply and then relating right into you know the big users which which are which are agriculture can did you have anything you want to add to that and then I think gillius has come can I come in on that uh to add to what Chenning said sorry so please no I just wanted to add I think on the water side and to what Chenning said I think clearly I think uh maintaining and and the infrastructure side is important uh but in terms of the land I was thinking is also critically important uh that we kind of blend the the gray infrastructure with the green and make sure that we have those you know natural systems conserved in terms of regulating the floods and the soil erosion and and sort of the water conservation measures because I think in as you have that increasing variability the critical importance of this natural ecosystems is really important and in some ways they they also become the first line of defense against the kind of variability and extremes that that climate change will bring with it but clearly of course these systems also have many other benefits to communities and livelihoods uh and in in the African context I think you know the sort of ecosystem stability and and how we sort of recognize the critical importance of natural capital within the sort of whole accounting of how we look at infrastructure uh really is something that's also been missed in some of these sort of cost benefit analysis if you want to call it and but I think that their value uh is even more enhanced uh with in the context of climate change and and if that can be brought into the accounting processes I think that would be really important thank you the only thing I was going to add to to those good comments is what we're seeing is clearly a increased demand by by crops rain fed and irrigated for water so even if water does go up we're seeing that that's being taken up by more thirsty agriculture so their climate will put a big stress on on agriculture we're also seeing by about 2050-2070 with a growing economy a a big clash between use of water in industry against agriculture the other thing that South Africa has to look at is regional solutions both from water there are people looking as far as the Congo basin to bring water down they're looking at Zambezi they're looking at others to bring water long distances to to South Africa and so those are in people's minds but also regional solutions to where food would be grown so food security rather than food self-sufficiency and that's really important for protecting the environment so the message to South Africa is we need to look in the regional context of Sadeq and in the region for solving these problems because there'll be differential impacts but also it will lessen the the blow on on any one country thank you very much Ken we've got a question from Tim Thomas he wants to challenge the panel to go beyond recognizing the huge need for investment in climate resilience to address the budget constraints and hence a prioritization of investments so his question is what are the priority investments right now what are the investments that are better postponed until uncertainty of climate is better resolved I'm happy to start off because I think that's really important and a really good question because that is the crux of the issue because we want to really you know look at the infrastructure needs and gaps that exist in in the continent and then I think of course there is the climate resilient infrastructure that is a reality that we have to embed into that decision-making process so if we look at the infrastructure needs for sub-Saharan Africa it's in the tune of 150 billion dollars if we look at the infrastructure gap it's close to 60 to 100 billion dollars and and when we begin to think about infrastructure I think we really think it's not just about the physical assets it's really about what infrastructure means for livelihoods what it means for having schools and hospitals and and and sort of their ability to to to have the economic growth and in some as in some ways that cannot be postponed and but clearly it also still needs a prioritization because there is a a financing gap leave alone the fact that you want to make it resilient but in the context of making it resilient I mean there is research that shows that in fact making it resilient can have cost savings there was a lifelines report that the World Bank put up about 18 months ago and recognize that that you know for every a dollar invested the returns were four dollars for making it climate resilient and that you know in the low and middle income countries you could have you know benefits that go up to 4.2 trillion dollars over time over the lifetime of the assets so what is really the challenge is the the budget gap that exists right now as as the person who posed the question and that I think is is where countries are struggling with because they have numerous needs and that capacity that budgets to do that is lacking where I think that the climate resilience comes in is how can we bring the best the knowledge the best research and the best ways in which we can make sure that investments that are designed now build into them some of the climate considerations not extending the the future uncertainties but put in place the regulations put in place the policies and incentives whether with the public or private sector to make sure that we can not be locked into options that are worse so the bottom line is I think there is a real financing gap and some of these aspects that need to bring in the resilience I think that we should find ways in which hopefully the international community can come in to help to support some of that to complement the budgets and the sometimes the limited budgets that government have governments have but I really like the question because I think it's it's really spot on the issue that's on the table and that there is an infrastructure gap and a deficit thank you yeah I think the question raised by term is is sort of more or less the points I was trying to raise earlier that the pathway to climate resilience is actually to improve the picture and the dynamism and the economic viability of agriculture on the continent if you don't get that right there's no point in talking about climate resilience I'll even say that as a person who runs a climate foundation because these two notions are not inseparable they actually have to be tagged together but the one is very dependent on the outcome of the other so limited investments in agriculture in general are not really conducive neither for economic growth nor for development job creation nor for climate resilience so that entire picture has to be built around what the economic how to enhance the economic dynamism of agriculture and there are lots of things that go into that we've talked about some of them infrastructure there are many other aspects to it and it's it's very clear that agricultural potential on the continent is huge it's under serviced it's under exploited we just have to look at figures around in terms of percentage of irrigation infrastructure compared to Asia and then there's a big trade dimension to this which has to be positive both within the region and external partners outside of the region that can support the upliftment of agricultural development which in my view is very important for climate resilience trying to talk about climate resilience without a proper notion of what agricultural economies and development have to be developed is only talking to one half of the issue so I don't want us to also be distracted by the notion of climate resilience as if it's some in a separate picture to the world of agriculture they have to actually be tagged together and budgeting and financing of of agriculture in the future will have to take climate issues into account it's just an intrinsic part of the investment models that will have to be developed it can't be separated from it thanks thank you very much I think Elias would like to to also respond to this question yeah thanks thanks chair I would also want to go back to water as well this this is a very broad question and very difficult to answer it's almost trying to answer the question what is impact investing in the impact investing movement we've said impact investing is what you think has the impact you wanted to have and this is for one simple reason each circumstance is different and the way in which you invest also matters so if one would try to answer a question as broad as this one I would say the best investments to deal with today are what I call investments that covid proof your business or that covid proof your economy investments that climate proof your business or climate proof your economy and you have a wide range there to pick from depending on what your capacity or your skills are to help in society so it is very difficult to answer that question I have asked a number of asset managers in South African every time I ask this question two questions I get a blank response the first question that I've asked is how many of you in this room have invested in finding a solution to the covid pandemic supporting the research that's taking place and in most instances it's zero secondly I've said how many of you in this room can survive without scom and you can imagine what the answer is then I ask a further question would you be willing to put more money into scom to sort it out and you can imagine what the response is so I'm using these examples as illustrations for how complex the question is but it's a very pertinent question and it depends on who is answering it and what do they want to achieve then I would like to go back to the issue of water I think that was a very good question to ask because water has been identified as one of the biggest bottlenecks for South Africa in the national development plan but what the plan also identifies is that it is not so much that we have under invested in water we've invested badly after having invested badly we've managed water badly despite the fact that we say we are a water constrained economy the way in which we manage our water is not reflective of that the way in which behave both at the policy level and at the consumption level does not reflect the state of the economy just to give you an astounding statistic which I always grappled with and never know how to assimilate it and accept it as a statistic that I can live with out of the allocated water 60% of it goes to agriculture but if you look at the contribution of agriculture to the economy it tells you that there's something wrong if you look at the productivity of agriculture relative to other economies and the one economy that I always look at and I ask myself why should we be importing agriculture commodities from that country is Israel I think we have better conditions than Israel but in agriculture they seem to be performing better than us whether it's technology definitely cannot be water but from our from my perspective if we were managing water properly I think our agriculture if assuming you you already invest properly in in in research and technology in that area agriculture should be one of the driving forces in South Africa going forward but it is not the case so management for me is key and I'm using water as an illustration the challenge of management seems to happen across all sectors and that's that's how we should be thinking about how we manage resources how we invest and how we foolproof ourselves from other victories that overcome thanks chair thank you very much Elias we have another question and I think this question would would be best answered by you but panelists are more than welcome to respond to this question it's from M Thatcher he says or she says how can we ensure that the private sector responsibly invest in sustainable agriculture and energy considering the impact that speculative investments in agricultural commodities had on food prices in 2008 and the general prioritization of shareholder profits how can we ensure that the private sector will prioritize long-term sustainability over short-term profits it's very difficult to represent business I think it's more difficult to represent government I I think we cannot run away from the fact that private sector is in business for profit but what we're also beginning to see is that private sector is quickly appreciating that if they want to stay profitable they need to think long-term they need to be sustainable those private sector players that are doing it for profit maximization at all costs the likelihood is that they will not survive it is the wider the wiser ones the ones that understand the value of taking a long-term view that are going to stay in business unfortunately as we as we were trying to turn around the future of agriculture you find that there are other variables that come into play the water issue cannot be ignored the land issue cannot be ignored so for a lot of people playing in agriculture particularly the those who feel at risk the likelihood is until the land issue is resolved they are not going to take a long-term view they'll always take a short-term view and how do you blame them where there's no where there's no certainty so one of the biggest recommendations that have come out of the national planning commission is that we need to provide policy certainty to the market for us to see the behavior that we want to see if we don't do that the likelihood is private sector is going to continue behaving in a short-termism manner now when when we move to a multi-year budget in 1998-1999 whenever that was there are people on the call who will remind us it was to provide more certainty when we introduce the plan which gave us a a a line of sight to 2030 was to further enhance certainty but i don't think that we have complimented those two uh in technical interventions in the way in which we do and communicate to to the markets i'm not sure if it helps the the person to ask the question i just wanted to add to the private sector question i have no comparative advantage but i perhaps is as much a question as an answer i think that private sector is is a very big you know composite set of of actors and players and clearly you do have the the slice that is the one that has to operate on a profit model but you also have private sector that i would like to call the enablers for the sort of climate resilience or climate context and these are the emerging companies that are really able to provide you with the innovation the tool the technology that better allows you to embed your climate considerations i'm thinking here about some of these emerging businesses around those who use satellite data to provide you timely information to to look at how you can really use that information to get some kind of early warning system going translating the geospatial data into a vegetation index that tells you that drought is coming up or using other data sets to to drive certain innovation and technology or coming up with you know equipment in in in sort of farms that is more climate friendly all businesses that are along the green line that are tapping into a people who are willing to pay that extra because they are sort of environmentally or climate be conscious so i think we need to bring in that aspect of the private sector who is also perhaps operating on a profit model but who are also along the way enhancing the climate resilience or low carbon technologies through their work so just you know as much a question as an answer but i do think that there is an emerging set of businesses around this who still need to be sort of propped up with some incentives but i think there will be an important player moving forward thank you Imthacha is very happy with the responses that he has received this afternoon thank you very much for that question Imthacha it we have come to the end of our conversation i can't believe that we are at the end it's been so insightful thank you very much to all the speakers and panelists this afternoon i'll start off by Channing Arc the director of the environment and production technology division at AFPRI and Kenneth Streispack from MIT our guest Salim Bakir is the executive director at the african climate foundation Elias Masilella the executive chairman of DNA economics and Dr. Kanta Rougard a lead environmental specialist at africa region at the world bank and a big thank you to you our audience for being part of the conversation this afternoon and a very big thank you also goes out to our officials partners without whom this would have been possible not have been possible you and you wider the national treasury the South African revenue service the department of planning monitoring and evaluation the department of trade industry and competition traded industry policy strategies the international food policy institute and most of all the european union for their continued commitment and invaluable financial support for this very important program before i continue i see aren't amy Channing has got his hand up before i conclude um did you want to add a few words Channing i do thank you very much mischievous first i want to very much thank the the panelists for joining us they volunteered their time and really thank them for their expertise the other thing that i wanted to do was just recognize that one of South Africa's preeminent climate change experts bob scholes passed away a couple of weeks ago and i just wanted to pay respects uh he was present at a workshop uh that that we ran on climate change actually issues is seven or eight years ago and an earlier version of this of this program so i i just thought it would be useful to to to pay those respects before we conclude it thank you mischievous thank you very much may he so rest in peace and very thank big thank you once again to our audience members for joining us this afternoon and do look out for the next policy dialogue which will be on the 28th of may on international trade and global value change so don't also forget to visit the essay tide website for more research that's been done under the six work streams have a lovely afternoon further thank you very much again go back