Deputy Minister Bernice Swarts: 36th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol

Honourable President.

Distinguished guests.

As South Africa takes the floor for the first time, I would like to extend our sincere appreciation to the Secretariat and the Bureau for the excellent preparations leading to this meeting, including the hosting of this high-level segment, as it is crucial for Political Heads to come together to discuss strategic issues of concern. Appreciation also goes to our lovely hosts, the Kingdom of Thailand and her warm people. I wish to congratulate you Madam President on your appointment; and I assure you that South Africa is fully committed to working constructively with you, and all parties present in this meeting.

Honourable President, on Financial reports and budgets of the trust funds for the Vienna Convention and the Montreal Protocol; the historic decision, of the largest ever replenishment (about 1 billion US Dollars) of the Multilateral Fund for the 2024-2026 period, to support Article 5 countries during MOP35 last year, is very encouraging, and it enables my country, South Africa, to effectively implement our obligations under the Protocol and its Kigali Amendment. I am pleased to mention that our department has been working very closely with the South African refrigeration and air conditioning sectors (RAC), to facilitate their transitioning to safer refrigerants and more energy efficient systems. The local beneficiaries of these efforts thus far are, two Grocery retail shops, a dairy production facility, and a public hospital. Such transitioning actions by the South African RAC sectors, contributes to the concerted global efforts helping to avoid up to 0.5 degree Celsius of global temperature, with co-benefits to climate change. The process and transitioning the RAC industry towards "green operations" also creates jobs for the RAC technicians and thus contributes to efforts to boost the South African economy.

Honourable President, South Africa appreciates the efforts by the Montreal Protocol to enhance Life-cycle refrigerant management, including the outcomes of the workshop on life-cycle refrigerant management. Such efforts contribute to parties' improved abilities, for example, to undertake inventory of recovered, recycled or reclaimed controlled substances, reduce emissions, to better assess future amounts, identify ways to enhance the recovery, and identify specific needs, other sources of recoverable substances, and opportunities for recycling. Just this previous week, I handed out tools to four hundred servicing technicians to improve their trade while protecting the environment. We intend to train and equip an additional one thousand six hundred technicians in the next two years.

Honourable President, my beautiful continent of Africa, is the world's second-largest, second-most populous continent after Asia, and has the youngest population in the world, so you can just imagine the need to ensure the Montreal protocol-controlled substances are effectively monitored and controlled. My country, South Africa, is the most industrialized in the continent. Scientific data is one of the key elements that has made the Montreal Protocol to be effective. It then should be our priority as parties, to ensure that there is an adequate number and representation of monitoring stations across the various UN regions. Such would acceptably inform us of where some of the controlled substance emissions are from, and would also guide us on which regions need more support in their implementation efforts, thus enhancing the global and regional atmospheric monitoring of substances controlled by the Montreal Protocol. Africa needs more state-of-the-art monitoring stations to contribute to global scientific data. South Africa, through my Department's Weather Services, has already established three strategically located monitoring stations, but we require financial support to procure automated total column ozone instruments such as Base Transceiver Station solar systems. Currently, we are still using the old Dobson spectrophotometer which needs manual observations and data logging. As more data is required to study more episodes that might be related to Stratosphere-Troposphere Exchanges; more ozone launches will allow South Africa to also undertake data statistical analyses, which will then contribute to the global data on the related ozone layer activities, status and monitoring of protection thereof.

Distinguished delegates, as we still grapple with balancing and protecting human health (asthma in this case) and our environment; it is critical that the relevant medical industries, exponentially advance in finding ozone and climate friendly, and safe alternatives for metered-dose inhalers.

Honourable President, South Africa appreciates the Montreal Protocol efforts of training our customs officials to combating illegal trade, and addressing imports of unwanted, and energy-inefficient products and equipment. To effectively address any such challenges, South Africa proposes a two-pronged approach, as it generally yields better and sustained results. In this regard, there is also a need to ensure that there are consequences for those parties that continue to trade illegally, and similarly those that export unwanted, and energy-inefficient products and equipment to Article 5 countries.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great joy to share with this meeting, that my country, South Africa, has successfully been able to phase out the use of Methyl bromide where safe and adequate alternatives are available, hence we have not been submitting nominations for critical-use exemptions for methyl bromide for several years, including this year.

Honourable President, to ensure that the Montreal Protocol remains as the most and practically effective multilateral environmental agreement, South Africa urges all parties, to ratify the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol. My fellow African states, we owe it to ourselves as Africans, to fully ratify the Kigali amendment.

In closing, Honourable President, and dear colleagues, the co-benefits of reducing ozone-depleting substances, for climate change, are well-known. Furthermore, we have come to know, through the identification of synergies among the various MEAs, including knowing about the priority pollutants such as nitrogen, as have been identified by the UNEP, and how inaction by one of us, can negate our collectively gained benefits. We, therefore, should continue to be steadfast in our commitment of protecting the Ozone layer, and make quick headway on slowing global warming, as we have only one environment; whose optimal health is critical to our own human survival too.

Honourable President, guided by your leadership, we are therefore gathered here not only to influence each other positively to take impactful decisions to effectively address the various ozone layer protection challenges we are faced with, but also to avoid inaction of one party negating our collective efforts, and to ensure we leave no one behind, especially Article 5 countries.

Thank you Honourable President and colleagues.

For media enquiries, please contact:
Peter Mbelengwa
Cell: 082 611 8197
E-mail: [email protected]

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.