Exactly 20 years ago on the first week of September, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) was hosted in Joburg. The WSSD resulted in numerous sustainable development commitments by South Africa, including the establishment of the National Cleaner Production Centre South Africa (NCPC-SA). The NCPC-SA hosted a colloquium on Friday, 2 September 2022 at the Pretoria National Botanical Gardens and online.
The colloquium attended by more than 40 guests at the venue and 30 online, including 5 panellists, sought to unpack the progress made in South Africa and Africa on sustainable industrial development since 2002. Setting the scene for the event, was Julie Wells, a Business Support Manager at the NCPC-SA. She challenged guests to think about what sustainability means in their own languages. Her opening remarks sparked interesting conversations that lead to thought-provoking presentations from the event panel consisting of representatives from government policy makers, academia, industry and reseachers as well as comments from guests.
Ndivhuvho Raphulu, Director of the NCPC-SA highlighted the different Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on which the work of the NCPC-SA has made an impact over the last 20 years. He acknowledged that there is a lot of work done by other stakeholders to address all the SDGs in the country. “This is our first colloquium, but we intend to host more of these to provide a platform where we can discuss, analyse and share ideas on what we are doing against these goals,” said Raphulu. “We want to see how best we can increase the impact on addressing the SDG’s in collaboration with government and private sector stakeholders.” He adds.
The NCPC-SA colloquium is set to continue and spread to other provinces across the country until March 2023.
To participate in future discussions, send an email to ncpc@csir.co.za.
