Finance minister Enoch Godongwana has allocated millions of Rand to respond to natural disasters arising from climate change. He made the announcement during his Medium Term Budget Speech (MTBS) to Parliament on Wednesday.
“To cater for the growing pressures imposed by climate change on infrastructure, especially at the local level, we have created a resource pool to specifically respond to future disasters,” he said.
This comes after several cities have been battered by heavy rainfall and flooding. Cape Town and several Western Cape towns were hit by two rounds of flooding, in June and then September. The costs of these events ran into billions.
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Municipal grants to respond to disasters
In his speech, Godongwana said nearly R400 million has been allocated to a municipal disaster response grant. An additional R1.2 billion was allocated to repair damages caused by floods during the year.
“R372 million has been added to the municipal disaster response grant, while R1.2 billion has been added to the municipal disaster recovery grant, to cover the repair and rehabilitation of infrastructure damaged by flooding in February and March 2023.
Mitigating the environmental risks posed by climate change must go hand-in-hand with addressing the financial and economic risks posed by climate change, he said.
“The National Treasury is making progress towards developing a disaster risk financing strategy, which will among others, enhance existing risk financing instruments.”
