G20: Novel financing of equitable systems to address One Heath

Dr Jenny Coetzee, CEO African Potential

With South Africa assuming responsibility at the weekend for the G20 Presidency in 2025 , it is incumbent to reflect on the key issues that shackle many African countries in a vicious cycle of hunger, poverty and inequality. The theme selected for South Africa's presidency of the G20 is "Fostering Solidarity, Equality, and Sustainable Development". However, crippling debt and the lack of relevant, novel financing paints a very different picture.

The G20 has historically been plagued by an unmanageably broad and unfocused agenda. With geopolitics front-and-centre, it is vital that South Africa, in the broadest sense, advocates for clarity on factors that most impact Africa. ?

South Africa should capitalise on the opportunity of hosting the world’s largest economies to push for initiatives that support innovative financing and leverage market-based mechanisms to incentivise greater adherence to, and stewardship of, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

While wealthy nations benefit from the resources extracted from Africa, the continent has become dependent on excessive debt. Meaningful achievement of the SDGs have consequently become a mere pipe dream.

Opportunities, beyond the more familiar carbon market, exist to leverage corporates’ needs to achieve sustainability targets (or offset their environmental pollution). These opportunities would form the backbone to financing and thus enable a fresh approach to, and the achievement of, the SDGs.

International collaboration, however, will be required to agree on the frameworks and verification mechanisms for a credit system more relevant to the market it is serving.

Water security

Consider the critical issue of water security. It’s pertinent, in particular, to SDGs 2 (Zero Hunger), 3 (Human Health and Wellbeing), 6 (Water and Sanitation), and 14 (Life Below Water). South Africa is the 22nd most water scarce country in the world and almost two thirds of its water treatment plants are in a critical state.

This has led to widespread contamination of both surface?and underground water sources - threatening water security, human health, food security, and economic development across the country (and continent).

Compounding this problem is that the majority of water treatment plants in South Africa (and in much of Africa) are legacy facilities dating back many decades.?A bi-product of our 21st century lifestyles is that mounting chemical complexity, present in industrial and household discharge, is finding its way into our wastewater systems. Ostensibly, this raises the cost of service. In addition, and arguably even more problematically, it further complicates the system of water processing via the introduction of novel pollutants into the system.

Contaminants that have been found in the in the Cradle of Humankind, a UNESCO World Heritage Site 50 kilometres northwest of Johannesburg,?present significant health concerns. The inability of legacy wastewater treatment practices and facilities to comprehensively deal with contaminants from a range of industries (plastics, mining, cosmetics, pharmaceutical and others) is a potential catalyst for zoonotic and antimicrobial infection as well as various other disease mutations.

Remedial action

For starters, there are potentially two mechanisms that could be leveraged to support remediation efforts towards addressing these concerns and achieving multiple SDGs. The first is the development of a specific water, One Health, or biodiversity credit model. This approach is aimed at enabling projects geared at addressing the SDGs while alleviating the burden on African countries to provide the capital investment up front.

This is a critical point of discussion. The current carbon market does not lend itself well to the verification and monitoring of water, One Health, or biodiversity credits - and yet there is immense need from both sides of this equation. One would imagine this a match made in heaven, and one that South Africa could assume a leadership role on and pave the way for international agreement.

The second opportunity is a Social Impact Bond, an outcomes-based investment mechanism for the investor with a conscience. This innovative and outcomes-based financing mechanism can be structured on the basis of a ‘polluter pays’ principle.

The polluter (be it government, a corporate or municipality) de-risks against a social investor who fronts the capital required for remediation. The return on investment is based on a set of well-defined and pre-agreed outcomes.

This approach has a proven track record. It has successfully been used for various health and education programmmes, and offers a way for governments to manage investments into social and environmental projects, without becoming overburdened by debt on unsuccessful programmes.

As per South Africa’s G2O rallying cry of “Fostering Solidarity, Equality, and Sustainable Development", it is only through considering novel ways of raising investment for sustainable social and environmental challenges facing Africa, that we can begin to consider an equitable system of solidarity.