Overview

SEACC SF aims to lead a student crusade to tackle issues of sustainability and climate change. We recognise that students, as potential leaders and key players in society, have a responsibility to respond to what has become one of the strongest moral callings of our time by exerting our influence to create more sustainable societies in order that we can protect our natural environment, as well as the rights, of current and future generations, to an environment that is not harmful to their health or well-being, as enshrined in Section 24 (a) of the South African Constitution. Importantly as students we are constantly learning and trying to reflect in our work the realisation that environmental socal justice are indivisibly linked.

SEACC SF is made up of four different nodes at the four different universities in the Eastern Cape. Each working to promote the principles of SEACC SF. 

 SEACC SF espouses a commitment to the principles of the Green Generation:

• A carbon-free future based on renewable energy, ending our dependency on fossil fuels;
• Collective individual commitment to responsible, sustainable consumption;
• Establishing a green economy, to lift people out of poverty and create sustainable green jobs;
• Creating a green global education system.
   

In order to achieve these principles we espouse the following aims:

• Our primary aim is the creation of a network that hopes to establish, as a moral and social norm amongst students across the Eastern Cape and beyond, an engagement with issues of sustainability and climate change;
• To facilitate discussion and cooperation amongst members, societies, NGOs and individual student researchers;
• To create and develop a knowledge base, which can be utilised by students and non-students and SEACC SF and non-SEACC SF members alike in their endeavours to tackle climate change and issues of sustainability;
• To create a broad activism base from which to influence policy on an institutional, business and governmental level;
• To create and develop on-the-ground, practical sustainability initiatives and models that can be utilised to tackle issues of climate change and sustainability in varying contexts;
• To raise awareness and funding in order to strengthen the response to issues of sustainability and climate change;
• To work in conjunction with SEACC in order to assist them in realising their goals and objectives.
• To stimulate and collate research in the field of climate change and sustainability.
• To educate the broader public on issues of climate change and sustainability.

In the words of the late Nobel prize-winning Wangari Maathai one of Africa's great and courageous leaders, "In a few decades, the relationship between the environment, resources, and conflict may seem almost as obvious as the connection we see today between human rights, peace and democracy." More than this we realise, in the words of Rhodes Vice-Chancellor Dr Saleem Badat, that environmental and social justice are" two sides of the same coin" which need to be dealt with "simultaneously and not consequently or sequentially." If we want to solve the one we need to deal with the other and vice versa. As such, SEACC SF aims to labour under the dual banners of environmental and social justice in order to create world that is not only more sustainable, but also just and equitable too.