Up in smoke: Civil society organisations have called the environment department’s proposed emissions targets insufficient, especially as South Africa is the world’s 13th-largest emitter. Photo: Delwyn Verasamy
Civil society organisations are demanding major revisions to South Africa’s draft national climate commitments, arguing that they lack ambition, coherence and accountability.
They say the draft second Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) fails to address the climate crisis or meet South Africa’s constitutional and international obligations.
The organisations, affiliated with the Climate Justice Coalition and the Energy Governance South Africa Network, include social justice NGOs, and youth, faith-based and grassroots movements.
The department of forestry, fisheries and the environment published the draft on 30 July, setting out climate commitments for 2026 to 2030 and 2031 to 2035. Public consultation closed on Friday.
An NDC is a national climate action plan under the Paris Agreement, which commits countries to limit global warming to well below 2°C, ideally 1.5°C. Nations must submit increasingly ambitious five-year plans to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change.
South Africa’s updated NDC will be submitted next month, ahead of COP30 in Brazil in November.
“As such, setting detailed and ambitious objectives in the document should be a key driver for broader consistency across all development planning and for policy harmonisation,” the groups said.
They pointed to the Presidential Climate Commission’s (PCC) draft recommendations released in June, which stressed the need for greater ambition and time-bound, sector-specific targets.
They say the department’s proposed emissions targets are inadequate, given South Africa’s high historic emissions and status as the world’s 13th-largest emitter.
On mitigation, South Africa is to keep its 2021 target of 350 to 420 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2030, adding a new 2035 target of 320 to 380 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
The department describes this as “ambitious yet fair” in light of development problems and historical emissions and sets a long-term goal of a just transition to net zero by 2050, supported by green industrialisation and 36 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2035.
Eight national goals on adaptation are proposed for 2026 to 2035, covering water security, disaster risk management, resilient infrastructure, food systems, climate services, ecosystem-based adaptation, institutional capacity and climate-resilient settlements.
A just adaptation and resilience investment plan is being developed to mobilise international finance.
Loss and damage is included in the NDC for the first time, acknowledging climate-induced effects beyond adaptation and calling for stronger data, coordination and funding access, including through the Global Loss and Damage Fund.
South Africa aims to quadruple its access to international climate finance, seeking $8 billion annually by 2030.
The groups criticised the draft as vague and unquantified, with weak support for vulnerable people. There is “little mention of loss and damage” and no robust monitoring of financial flows, they said, adding: “The draft document reflects, rather than seeking to remedy, fragmented climate governance.”
They insisted that the NDC must align with South Africa’s just energy transition framework and net zero by 2050, warning that failure to do so could expose the government to legal challenges.
“Internationally, we have the International Court of Justice’s recent advisory opinion on climate obligations and emerging rulings from the African Court on Human and People’s Rights.”
The organisations want more ambitious, sector-specific targets that “fairly reflect our national responsibility and capabilities” and that “will justify the international support being sought”.
They also called for adaptation measures that protect marginalised groups, more climate finance, dedicated loss and damage mechanisms and transparent monitoring systems.
A strong commitment to multilateralism is critical in addressing a crisis of this scale, said Tlou Ramaru, the department’s chief director for climate change adaptation.
At a national colloquium on the NDC convened by the department and the PCC on Tuesday, he outlined South Africa’s framing: “Our approach looked at the issue of multilateralism, science and equity to inform ambition [and] our national circumstances, taking into account how South Africa is a vulnerable developing country [with climate action in the context of addressing poverty and unemployment].”
“[We’re] looking at the issue of responsible global citizenship, where we need to fulfil our obligations in terms of the Paris Agreement, but the fair and ambitious contribution, looking at how we can contribute both in mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage, and how do we then include the issue of clear, concrete support needs.
“But, above all, [we are] advancing our national interest as a country and still trying to provide leadership in the global space.”
The colloquium marked the culmination of extensive year-long consultations by the PCC to ensure the updated plan was ambitious, inclusive and reflected South Africa’s just transition goals.
Ramaru said the 2035 mitigation target reflects uncertainties about policy implementation, data gaps, economic growth, technology uncertainty and difficult geopolitics.
“The lower end of the target range is within the equity-based range for a South African target consistent with a global trajectory to meet the 1.5°C temperature goal target level, which will be achievable with sufficient international support, consistent with the full implementation of existing policies.”
It represents a progression from the first NDC, to the update of that, to the second NDC target and “is significantly more ambitious than the country’s 2011 ‘peak plateau decline’ trajectory”.
At the colloquium, Joanne Yawitch, a PCC commissioner and head of the Just Energy Transition Project Management Unit, spoke about how South Africa can safeguard trade competitiveness.
“There are two fundamental issues,” she said. “First, in a world that is at climate risk, the worse the mitigation globally, the worse the impacts, the worse the damage, the worse the loss of livelihoods, jobs and economies — and the worse the impacts for people.
“We cannot separate the discussion around mitigation from the discussion of impacts because that is why we need to mitigate. We must mitigate, because we want to prevent the impacts.”
The second issue is that competitiveness is not only about trade.
“It is also about how to grow resilient economic sectors in a world where climate impacts get worse and where there will be rapid technological shifts in order to invest in cleaner economies,” she said.
Yawitch stressed that South Africa, as a carbon-intensive economy, faces multiple challenges.
“There’s a risk to our emissions-intensive sectors but also to our tourism [and] agricultural sectors — sectors that millions of people depend on could be affected across the board.
“When we talk about how we go forward as a country, we’ve got to take that comprehensive view and be able to understand how all the sectors are affected.
“I think that we have a 25-to-30-year window as a country to transition. I think we need to do it in a well-managed and orderly way … that protects livelihoods and jobs and we need to do it in such a way that, in particular, workers and communities understand how that change is going to happen.
“That really is about transparency from both government and industry on how they see their futures and the development of their industries going forward.”
Mbulaheni Mbodi, a PCC commissioner and Numsa labour representative, emphasised that energy security underpins every economy — and coal workers must not be overlooked.
“If, in whatever thing we decide to do, we fiddle with the lifeline of the economy, which is your sustainability of electricity or energy, then it’s a freefall to the bottom. There is no country that will be able to sustain itself without sustainability of energy,” he said.
“Whatever NDCs we may have, whatever emissions that we look at reducing, we should know that we, as South Africa, are not acting alone.
“We mustn’t be superstars. We should watch what others are doing carefully. The reason for that is we can get all excited about wanting to be on the billboards for all the good reasons … but what are the majority of our people saying?
“If it will lead to job losses, if it will lead to casualisation of jobs, if it will lead to instability in the forums of the workers about where the next plate [of food] is going to come from, then you’ve got a problem.”
He said the decommissioning of the Komati coal power station in Mpumalanga was a cautionary tale.
“Livelihoods were affected. That old lady who sells pap around the corner there does not have anybody to sell to. The houses that are there now become a burden because no one can sell that house.
“When you destroy local economies or when you are going to disinvest, you need to know that it is a transition,” Mbodi said.
“It has timelines, it has journey maps but it has an emotion of its own. You need to check the pulse of everybody: the poor, the marginalised, the workers. It can’t be that we get excited just simply that we are changing the technology.”
Those who lost their jobs were unlikely to find another, he said.
“So, we can’t sell a dream and say, ‘No, you can kill all these cattle, something tomorrow is coming, there is something on the horizon.’ We need to be very measured indeed.”