A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

298 development dialogue september 2006 – carbon tradingBellville, viewedfrom thedumpsite.beneficiaries. It is also, unusually, actively supported by local residents,who have been consulted from the beginning. Kuyasa’s warddevelopment forum put together a broad-based steering committeeof community members who assisted in the design of the project, decidedwhich households would participate in it, and mapped out howthe project would move forward into its next phase. The steeringcommittee also helped facilitate contacts and a flow of ideas betweenthe community and the project developers.The project has a particularly high Gold Standard rating in terms of‘social sustainability and local development and has a minimal impactapart from the reduction of GHG on the natural environment’. 161Kuyasa also creates jobs in installing and maintaining the solar waterheaters, which are locally manufactured. Furthermore, the R625average annual savings on electricity bills can go back into the localeconomy and create further economic spin-offs. 162One pilot project participant, Muzelli, an unemployed man in his thirtiesconfined to a wheelchair, confirmed that he now saves over R600per year on his electricity bills, which he is able to send back home tosupport his children still living in the Eastern Cape. When the weathergets cold at night (it can drop below 10 degrees Celsius during winterevenings), all of Muzelli’s neighbours come over to visit, as his ceilingkeeps the house much warmer than anywhere else in the neighbourhood.Though he admitted that he did not know much about climatechange, Muzelli made it clear that people support the project for manyreasons, namely the money they save and having warmer houses. ‘This