Conference Agenda

South Africa is the most coal-reliant G20 country. Coal is the main source of electricity and, as an export product, it plays an important role for the country’s economy. A low-carbon transition thus has major impacts on the country. Nevertheless, South Africa was one of the earliest countries to include the term just transition in its climate targets.

The low-carbon transition in South Africa is not only a shift in the electricity system, but also a shift that has large-scale impacts on workers, their families, their communities and civil society at large. As one of the most unequal countries in the world and simultaneously also facing the challenges of poverty and unemployment, these aspects play a major role in South Africa’s just transition process and the debates around it.

By focusing on the debates on the just transition process by various stakeholders, including workers, trade unions, energy companies, environmental organizations and local governments, the paper aims to show the different narratives on just transition. The different stakeholders follow different narratives on who is bearing the costs and benefits of the transition processes, how participatory and inclusive the process should be and how workers’ rights can be protected.

The paper is embedded in transition literature, specifically in just transition literature, and uses narrative analysis to focus on the different dimensions of just transition – procedural justice, recognitional justice, and procedural justice – and how these dimensions are understood and differently prioritized by local stakeholders.

The paper draws on qualitative research conducted across South Africa with various stakeholders of the just transition, such the labor movement, trade unions, energy companies, environmental organizations, and local government representatives. Additionally, official policy documents are analyzed. Based on this body of data, the paper analyses the narratives on just transition by these different groups of stakeholders. Thereby, it contributes to the timely debate on just transitions and enriches the debate with insights from the Global South.

The results from the South African case are highly relevant for other countries around the globe, especially Global South countries, which face similar challenges of phasing-out fossil fuels and aiming for a just transition.

The phasing out of coal and energy transitions are inextricably linked to socio-political circumstances deeply embedded into institutional and policy design. However, techno-managerial approaches aimed at designing policies to jointly achieve social and environmental sustainability often disregard that transition processes produce winners and losers, and rarely consider trade-offs besides potential synergies.

South Africa, often positioned as the ‘climate champion of the global South’ is a crucial case in navigating tensions between just and low-carbon transitions as the country is affected by deep inequalities and is currently heavily reliant on coal. The paper explores trade-offs and potential synergies in South Africa’s just energy transition to assess the current state of awareness on climate-poverty interactions and mechanisms that support or hinder harvesting potential synergies.

For this purpose, the paper analyses the ambitious Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), launched by the EU, France, Germany, the UK and the US, a program aimed to advance the decarbonization of the South African economy through policy mechanisms focusing on the energy system. The partnership is particularly suitable to explore the potential of decarbonization efforts combined with a focus on social justice in addressing the interconnected and multi-faceted issues of climate change and social policy through energy transitions. Just and low-carbon governance trade-offs or synergies in the South African policy environment and the JETP will be analysed in the theoretical context of green growth, inclusive growth and inclusive (transformative) development.

The paper explores trade-offs and synergies in the South African energy transition using qualitative methods: namely through document analysis of secondary data and primary data collection of interviews during a two-month field trip in South Africa. The analysis is embedded into a critical political economy approach on navigating trade-offs and synergies in deeply politicized historical-political domestic settings, across international, transnational and local actors. This paper argues that win-win solutions for people and the planet cannot be achieved solely by effective design, and embracing a specific social and environmental justice perspective is necessary to jointly govern interconnected policy areas.

Over the past fifteen years, China has quickly surpassed other countries as the leading financier in the global energy sector. However, as most of these Chinese investments were in fossil fuels, especially coal, China has been seen as a major barrier to clean energy transition in the Global South for a long time. In September 2021, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced that China would stop supporting new coal-fired projects abroad. This pledge was made beyond the expectations of many observers of China’s overseas engagement as it deviates from China’s long-term approach of non-interference when providing development finance. What can explain this dramatic policy shift? Drawing on the literature on multi-level governance and Chinese politics, we argue that in the context of rising geopolitical tensions between China and the West, the Chinese government has become more receptive to the proposals of greening China’s overseas economic engagement. More specifically, the ‘no coal abroad’ policy was driven by factors through three channels: the pressure of Western governments, advocacy of transnational environmental organizations, and initiatives of domestic policy entrepreneurs. To substantiate our argument, we use government documents and elite interviews to show how these forces interact with each other to lead Beijing to make the decision. By unpacking the complex policy-making processes of China’s overseas energy finance, the paper contributes to the burgeoning literature on China’s global environment engagement, the politics of sustainability transformation, and the evolution of global governance structure.

The lack of study of the colonialist nature of environmental policies by international organizations is problematic. Yet, colonization has impacted and continues to impact the environment in previously colonized spaces in profound ways. This continual battering of the environment via colonial aggravations seem to persist in international environmental policies such as the ones produced by the International Labor Organization (ILO). The study of the ILO is particularly important as it merges the interest of labor and the environment and yet it remains under studied. This research fills this gap by studying the colonialist policies of the ILO by utilizing Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) and Homi Bhabha’s mimicry (1994) as its theoretical anchor. Further, the research examined the distinctive nature of the responses by India and South Africa. To achieve these outcomes, the study utilized discourse analysis to read green projects policy documents and digital observation as well as process tracing to examine the progression of the development and adoption of the ILO’s green policies in India and South Africa. Based on the findings, there is evidence that Orientalist discourses have been used as justifications for the implementation of green projects. Further, there are differences in the Indian and South African responses to the ILO with the latter engaging in mimicry of green policies while questioning Western enlightenment logic.

Himalaya constitutes headwater of some of the largest transboundary basins of the planet that sustain one-fourth global population dependent primarily on subsistence farming in South Asia. Climate change has stressed hydrological regimes of Himalayan headwaters and increased frequency of floods and drought in South Asia. This is causing a substantial decrease in water availability; an increase in the proportion of water, food, and energy insecure population both up-streams and down-streams; and posing a severe threat to peace and security in South Asia. An institutional cooperation architecture is therefore highly imperative not only for improving the adaptative and coping capacity of riparian countries to long-term impacts of climate change and weather extremes; but also for attaining water, food, and energy sustainability in the region which is inhabited by some of the poorest, undernourished and water-stressed people of the world. The study aims at evolving an institutional architecture to initiate hydro-diplomacy among riparian countries for transboundary river basin governance. The methodology included: [i] comprehensive consultation of relevant literature, including reports in print and electronic media; and [ii] interviews, meetings, and discussion with a range of international, regional, and local institutions, political leadership, government officials of riparian countries, academia, research and development institutes, and non-governmental and civil society organizations.

Study revealed despite geographical and cultural contiguity South Asia is one of the most geo-politically disintegrated regions. Growing power-disparities, economic imbalances, internal-external security threats, political distrust and long-standing conflictual inter-state dynamics have frozen hydro-diplomacy in the region. However, common environmental and economic benefits of transboundary river basin management that include [i] integrated flood forecasting and early warning system, [ii] storing water in upstream river-basins for flood moderation and increasing flow in dry seasons, [iii] harnessing water resources to generate hydroelectricity, and [iv] managing watersheds for increasing availability and access to water would stimulate the riparian countries to develop a geo-political architecture for transboundary river-basin cooperation. A dialogue forum consisting of International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development [ICIMOD], South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation [SAARC], Asian Development Bank [ADB], Asia Pacific Network for Global Change Research [APN], Sustainable Development Policy Institute [SDPI], Pakistan and G.B. National Institute of Himalayan Environment and Sustainable Development [GBPNIHESD], India has been proposed. The forum would interpret up-stream and down-stream interlinkages involved in food, water, and energy sustainability and present common environmental and economic benefits sharing mechanisms of integrated river basin governance to riparian countries.