Cape Town - The Climate Justice Charter Movement (CJCM) has critiqued the Presidential Climate Commission’s (PCC) report titled “A Framework for a Just Transition in South Africa” – the first building block of the commission’s objective to facilitate a just transition to a low-emissions and climate-resilient economy in South Africa.
The framework was accepted by the government last month but the CJCM, which was launched by the South African Food Sovereignty Campaign (Safsc) and the Co-operative and Policy Alternative Centre (Copac), believed there were glaring omissions throughout the document.
Copac board chairperson and veteran activist Vishwas Satgar said: “The biggest failure of the PCC framework is its commitment to a shallow conception of the just transition, including a failure to foreground decarbonisation, and a complete lack of appreciation of climate extremes which were now a lived reality – with our carbon emissions contributing to worsening this problem.”
The PCC report stated: “The framework does not deal with climate mitigation and adaptation policies per se. Rather, the framework focuses on managing the social and economic consequences of those policies, while putting human development concerns at the centre of decision-making.”
It stood on the shoulders of years of research done by the government, business, civil society, academia and labour unions.
The CJCM critique highlighted two major flaws in the principles of this report. First, the rights of the Constitution were considered as adequate and “sufficiently green” to ensure survival through the ecological crises, including the worsening climate crisis.
“We do not accept this as the CJCM, hence we approached Parliament to adopt the Climate Justice Charter, as per section 234 of the South African Constitution, to ensure the SA Constitution can be strengthened with an emancipatory ecology thrust which recognises humans are part of nature. We are one among many life forms and nature also has intrinsic value, which we must all respect,” the critique stated.
Second, the CJCM said the principle of climate justice was absent from this document, yet this framework was meant to deal with the worsening climate crisis.
Another omission, the CJCM highlighted was the failure to acknowledge the country’s carbon emissions.
“Our carbon footprint and intensity across different parts of the economy, including of the wealthy, should have been acknowledged in this document and what this means for the decarbonisation challenge,” the CJCM critique stated.
Greenpeace Africa climate and energy campaigner Nhlanhla Sibisi said: “South Africans are suffering in a multidimensional way, yet the solution is staring us in the face: a just transition to renewable energy is the best and most immediate solution to the many intersecting crises we face.
“A just transition that centres the voices, concerns, and needs of South Africans is what we need, and the opportunity to shift gears and lead the world away from fossil fuel dependence is ripe as we recover from the pandemic.”
Sibisi said the government has said all the right things but impactful action still remained to be seen.