The big-picture significance of our Cabinet endorsing a R1.5-trillion Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP) seems to be lost on many in civil society and organised labour, with little discussion of the strategic shift this could presage for our development pathway.

Taking a step back may help to foster some appreciation of the merit of having such a mandate, imperfect as it is, and a Presidential Climate Commission to inform and guide the translation of this plan into projects and investments, equipped with the most extensive analysis to date seeking to get to grips with a national carbon budget, consistent with our recently updated mitigation commitment.

I recall discussions 20 years ago when the first Climate Change Response Strategy was being developed, under the auspices of the National Climate Change Committee (in part prompted by having hosted the World Summit on Sustainable Development).

As civil society, we suggested that a national council or commission in the Presidency should be provided for in the strategy. What was adopted in 2003 was really an initial discussion of strategic options. In 2005 a Cabinet mandate was secured to develop a National Climate Change Response Policy (NCCRP) and a national conference in 2008 provided multi-stakeholder support for the foundations of the NCCRP White Paper finally adopted in 2011.

At the 2018 Jobs Summit, a call for a Presidential Commission on Climate Change was taken up under the auspices of Nedlac and two years later such a Presidential Climate Commission (PCC) was established, and has been hard at work ever since. This was not accomplished without resistance, every step of the way.

While formation of the PCC came together in a little-known and less-than-ideal manner of which some critique is appropriate, this should not crowd out strategic consideration of how power relations — including around our energy system — may be shifting through the work of the commission, which includes 10 ministers.

Similarly, the pragmatic value of the most up-to-date modelling and analysis being produced under the auspices of the PCC, in the absence of coordinated or integrated energy planning by successive administrations, should not be lost in the pursuit of some idealised articulation of a Just Transition.

Much work has been done to mainstream and elaborate the 2011 NCCRP, inter alia the adoption of the National Adaptation Strategy and recently the tabling of a bill in Parliament. However, there was no substantive update of the mitigation objectives (based on the science as in 2008) until the scientific review under the PCC and its subsequent recommendations to Cabinet which last year adopted significantly improved targets in our Nationally Determined Contribution to implementing the Paris Agreement.

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This year Cabinet adopted a Framework for a Just Transition in South Africa. Considering the many years of advocacy for the inclusion of Just Transition provisions in climate-change response, led by organised labour and elaborated by a growing proportion of civil society, any strategy or commitment in this regard by government is bound to be subject to sceptical scrutiny. What we have seen very little of is analysis of what this document does contribute to efforts to drive implementation of solutions, inter alia to our electricity crisis.

The framework document was put together as such in a fairly short time, though building on years of research and analysis, some also mandated by the Jobs Summit, particularly value-chain studies for four key sectors for mitigation, so it is not as inclusive as many would like. However, the principles of distributive, restorative and procedural justice have been welcomed and the framework is just that — something to build upon.

For example, objectives include “eliminating energy poverty”, and while there is little more in this regard in the fairly short document approved by Cabinet, it is an issue that is taken up in the JET-IP which acknowledges some key challenges consistent with civil society critiques and embraces the question of increasing the provision of free basic electricity, including providing for cost-benefit analysis. While not a clear breakthrough, this is a step forward from the indifference of the DMRE.

Being a reflection of what the commissioners, drawn from all social partners including government, can collectively agree on, the Framework for a Just Transition certainly does not contemplate the system change that we call for as climate justice activists; thus getting behind it may be seen as undermining the prospects for radical change, but such criticism begs an interrogation of any such prospects.

Similarly, the Investment Plan does not reject amendments to electricity pricing policy proposed by government, or implementation of the Eskom Roadmap (DPE 2019), but it does offer a way forward for rebuilding our electricity system while reducing coal dependence — more systematically and timeously than anything we’ve seen from government before.

It also endorses calls for exploring diverse forms of ownership, with some funding proposed for “piloting social ownership models” and could thus serve as a platform for advancing specific proposals in this regard.

These documents and extensive underpinning research, with associated briefing documents as well as recordings of all the meetings and a series of Energy Dialogues, are available on the commission’s website. For those complaining that they weren’t properly consulted along the way, there is at least plenty of opportunity to catch up.

It was quite a deft move, building on last year’s pledge of $8.5-billion from a group of international partners (still well below R150-billion), to lay out a five-year investment and funding portfolio of R1.5-trillion as the requirement to kick-start a Just Energy Transition.

The Secretariat to the PCC has just launched consultations on the substance of this JET-IP, with a detailed briefing on 1 December 2022 promising details soon of sessions being planned for January and February 2023. This will be closely followed by the development of “a comprehensive implementation plan”.

This is all rather daunting for the individual commissioners from trade unions and civil society organisations who seem to face more scepticism than support from their constituencies, in the absence of a critical assessment of the actual opportunities and threats for advancing climate justice for all South Africans in our immediate national context.

The Presidential Climate Commission is not a silver bullet or a new dawn for democratic process. Neoliberal capitalists have been appropriating the language of just transition, requiring the kind of critique that identifies “green structural adjustment” as the agenda of some powerful role-players.

Nevertheless, it is advancing science-based decision-making, challenging the status quo and pushing beyond the intransigence of vested interests in the energy incumbency.

I would argue that as a country we have never had better prospects for making real progress on climate action, including adoption of active labour policies and social protection that need to accompany decarbonisation.

We will not know if this is unduly optimistic unless there are concerted efforts to use and build upon the work being overseen by the commission. DM