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Through its sixth and most recent assessment cycle reports The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, (IPCC).It has been shown that human influence on climate has been unequivocalThese changes are of immense magnitude. UnprecedentedThese changes are not all bad. It is irreversible. While mitigating climate change — through a just transition away from fossil fuels — has been the defining response, the need to build ResilienceThe central point of the article is to guard against the inevitable consequences of a changing climate. latest report of the IPCC’s Working Group II.
Resilience — notwithstanding disagreements over its definition — is a pillar of adapting to climate change (adaptation). A resilient socio-ecological system ‘In the face of significant disturbance, core structures and functions are maintained while still allowing for development..’ At its core, ResilienceRefers to the ability to predict, prepare for, and respond in a social, economic, and ecological manner to hazardous events.
This raises normative questions of ‘Resilience for who and what’ — in a nutshell, does building resilience to a changing climate entrench or transform our exisHow can we improve our social, economic, and environmental systems? Who benefits and who loses?
Resilience measures could be viewed as a continuation of the unjust status quo without a thorough investigation of these questions. Climate impacts cannot be separated from their developmental impacts. This would not only be unjust but also, As stated by the IPCCTo simply advance Prioritize your coping strategies “‘bouncing back’ is an increasingly insufficient goal,” as it must be complemented by adaptation strategies of ‘bouncing back better’.
We must ask ourselves if the existing socio-ecological system we have is desirable, and if so, who will benefit from it. Bahadur et al. (2013)We have identified several traits of resilience:
- High degree of diversity in terms adaptation and livelihood options
- Effective governance and institutions that can be connected across all scales
- Acceptance of uncertainty, and not resistance to change;
- High equity
South Africa’s history and political economy have made the country extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and to the risks that a transition away from fossil fuels entails. This applies to society and the economy as a whole. However, certain racial and gender groups are more vulnerable than others to these risks. While resilience must be built into the system, it is important to pay attention to vulnerable individuals, households, and communities. This requires a transformative approach to resilience, one founded on transformative social policies aimed at achieving socio-ecological well-being, a state defined as sustained ecological resilience in which “Human needs are met, and individuals’ quality of life is maintained.”
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In what follows we propose a framework for pursuing a transformative social policy agenda that speaks to South Africa’s political economy by situating resilience as the centrepiece of our just transition framework. This framework embodies the most important features of resilience as identified by Bahadur et al. (2013)As outlined above (i.e. a high level diversity in adaptation and livelihood options as well as a high degree equity
First, we outline how South Africa’s political economy has contributed to the vulnerability of its people in the face of multiple socio-ecological crises.
South Africa’s political economy and socio-ecological crises
Three features of South Africa’s political economy have contributed to the country’s socio-ecological crises: the fossil-fuel-dependent system of capitalist accumulation, the prevailing macroeconomic framework and the related spatial inequality.
South Africa’s high carbon emissions are rooted in a fossil-fuel-dependent system of capitalist accumulation termed the Complex minerals-energy (MEC). The MEC is a dominant industrial structure that includes key sectors in mining, energy, and related industries. It operates in isolation from non-MEC sectors, which are particularly labour-intensive (excluding finance).
The MEC is also constituted by vested interests in the state and fractions capital that shape economic policies in their favor through conflict and compromise. While non-MEC service sectors — particularly, retail, telecommunications, and business services — have grown since apartheid, these do not provide a basis for ‘structural transformation’: the ability to shift the economy towards more productive, labour-intensive, higher-skilled and higher-value-added activities. This growth path has been shaped by the financialised MEC’s interests, which prioritizes industrialisation over liberalization.
The MEC and orthodox macroeconomic framework are partly responsible for the multiple social (unemployment. poverty. and inequality) and environmental crises South Africa faces. Because the MEC is dominated mainly by upstream industries that are capital-intensive, that is, they employ more workers and have a higher level of structural unemployment, the economy is defined in part. The MEC is highly concentrated with only a few large firms having preferential access to important resources like minerals, land, and energy.
Thanks to liberalisation of the financial sector and capital accounts, investments by companies linked to the MEC are mainly in short-term and speculative financial assets, rather than in employment-generating productive activities, particularly ones that do not harm the environment.
The MEC’s highly financially oriented nature only exacerbates existing wealth inequalities. This is compounded by the fact that the MEC is a highly financialized organization and the misuse of public resources through corruption or maladministration has been exacerbated by austerity policies, which have reduced the ability for productive and sustainable sectors of the economy to create jobs. The MEC is part and parcel of a system which also exploits Black labour by low wages and poor working conditions. It also devalues the reproductive labour and does not bear the social cost. Due to its intensive use of subsidised fossil-fuel based energy and appropriation, the MEC has contributed towards environmental degradation and climate changes.
Apartheid segregation policies and the MEC have shaped the geography of economic activity, the urban worker class, and greenhouse gas emissions. The historic location of the mineral endowments in Johannesburg, Tshwane has facilitated the growth and concentration in industrial activity, especially heavy industry manufacturers, in these areas. Inefficient and unequal land use has resulted in urban sprawl. Inequalities in distribution of public services have also contributed to high GHG emissions.
Rural areas are also affected by spatial inequalities. South Africa is highly unequal in terms of ownership and access to land. It is also deeply racist and largely privately owned. This is a continuation of a history that has systematically deprived Blacks, particularly Black women, access to land ownership, security, and ownership.
The country’s market-based land reform has been ineffective at bringing about equality. One, the restitution process is slow and has increased gender inequality with the number of evictions occurring since 1994. The other is that land and market reforms have increased rural land ownership by capital-intensive white farmers.
Three pillars to resilience for a transformative just transformation
We have reviewed how South Africa’s political economy has contributed to the socio-ecological crisis. This section will outline three pillars as part of a transformative social policy agenda for prioritising resilience, responding to the existing conditions of South Africa’s political economy.
We will show you how policies for green decent work, social protection, and land reform could help build resilience for a just transition. A green decent work program would help to increase resilience by supporting the creation and maintenance of decent jobs in climate mitigation, adaptation and other related areas.
Social protection provides safety nets that help vulnerable communities cope with climate change impacts. Secure access to productive land can reduce exposure to climate risks and increase resilience. This helps people adapt so that they can create livelihoods, improve their food security by subsistence farming, or improve their credit access by using their land to secure their loans.
Pillar 1: Green decent work agenda
A green decent work agenda, or GDWA, can make a difference in climate resilience in two ways. A GDWA helps to build resilience. sustainable livelihoodsThere are many sectors that help workers adapt to climate shocks, including those in climate-mitigating or adaptation. A livelihood encompasses the material and social resources and incomes that are necessary to live. However, a sustainable lifestyle is one that can deal with socio-ecological shocks and crises and improve current capabilities and assets without compromising natural resources.
A GDWA also supports job creation in climate mitigation and adaptation sectors, which can also build resilience. Climate-adaptation includes not only water conservation and harvesting but also drought proofing and protection and creation climate-resilient infrastructure (roads and buildings), as well as social services (healthcare, education).
Work that promotes resilience must not only be green, but also be decent. The International Labour Organisation’s Decent Work Agenda (DWA) best demonstrates how workers’ well-being can be promoted through decent work regimes. The DWA comprises four pillars: job creation, social protection, labour standards and rights at work, and social dialogue, all important contributors to a worker’s sustainable livelihood and well-being.
These three complementary policies are necessary to promote green decent work (adapted by Straus et al. 2021).
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- Green macroeconomic policyThis includes fiscal and monetary policy, which help to generate green good work by increasing the aggregate demand and aggregate supply for socio-ecologically valuable goods and services. Green jobs can be created if the aggregate demand is increased by shifting the level and composition towards socio-ecologically valuable goods and services. This can be achieved by spending-raising policies (e.g. Government spending, monetary policies measures) are supported by revenue-raising policy (e.g. commensurate with wealth, land, and carbon taxes It can also be achieved through expenditure-switching policies (e.g. You can also achieve this through spending-switching policies, such as import tariffs and exchange rate management. These policies promote domestic production and exports rather than imports. This can be achieved by increasing the quality and availability of the factors necessary for the sustainable production and use of socio-ecologically beneficial goods and services. Proper spending on human development, including education and health, is crucial to ensure that workers have the skills and are available. Similar investments, such as in water management systems that are better, will make agriculture more resilient.
- Green industrial policyGreen macroeconomic policies should be used to support the restructuring of the MEC in order to shift it from fossil fuels, reduce GHG emission, and diversify its productive base towards socioeconomically useful goods and service that promote socio-ecological wellbeing through their employment intensity, carbon neutrality, climate resilience, and social-ecological well being. Climate policy should encourage the creation of decent green jobs in sectors like climate-resilient infrastructure (railroads and buildings), social services, health care, education, water conservation, harvesting, and other related areas. These sectors can be strengthened by localisation measures such as subsidies, public procurement, and technological transfer.
- Green labour market policiesCan help build climate resilience through direct support for worker well-being, and enterprises. Green labour market policies can help increase the balance between the demand for labour and the supply in environmentally sustainable productive industries. This can be done, for example, by supporting human capabilities (e.g. Skills training. Furthermore, green labour market policies can support worker wellbeing by improving worker conditions to create a green decent employment system. These measures include minimum or maximum working hours, equal opportunity and treatment and safety in the workplace. They also provide access to social protection (e.g. paternity and maternity leave, pensions and unemployment insurance), social dialog, living wages, and work stability, security, and
A Guaranteed job This is an example showing how job security can be increased in the face climate and transitional threats.
Guaranteed employment
A variety of models have been used to offer assurances about the number and types of jobs that will result from renewable energy generation. A job guarantee is a public employment scheme which can improve resilience to climate change by minimising the impoverished worker’s exposure to transition risks, transferring these risks to the state as the employer of last resort. This scheme can provide a safety net for smoothing income fluctuations and accumulating assets to manage climate-related surprises. It can also be used in public employment programs that provide public goods and services that increase resilience, such as the maintenance, construction, and provision of public goods. The scheme provides guaranteed work alternatives and shifts power relations towards empowerment of workers in the labor market.
Pillar 2: Social protection
Social protection can provide safety nets to vulnerable communities in the face climate change.. Social protection also improves resilience and reduces economic pressures and inequalities faced by vulnerable communities by providing financial resources such as unemployment coverage, pension grants, savings schemes or cash transfers. Social protection BuildsDirect resilience through anticipatory capacity, adaptive capacity, and absorptive capability.
Absorbtive capacity is a way for vulnerable communities to cope with shocks and stresses, such as droughts, heat waves, flooding, and heat waves. Preventive capacity, on the other hand, builds resilience and allows communities and individuals to plan for and prepare for climate shocks that could reduce their impact.
Finally, adaptive capacity is according to Bahadur et al. (2015)It provides long-term resilience by enabling communities to learn from and adapt to climate shocks and reduce vulnerability to future ones. Thus, Social protection is also an important element of a just transition.
South Africa Research is ongoingTo support the establishment of a universal minimum income guarantee (Ubig), as a means to provide social protection to citizens. The Ubig provides social protection for citizens, unlike welfare support and social grants that are limited to a certain group based upon financial criteria. Cash withdrawals are subject to a minimum incomeEvery South African citizen can meet their basic needs. In addition, the Ubig is substantial enough to cover basic needs, while current social grants barely cover households’ basic necessities.
In communities that are affected by climate change, this is a common scenario. Ubig could make jobless and at-risk workers more resilient. Successful rollout of the Ubig will be essential for a just transition that addresses South Africa’s three biggest challenges — inequality, unemployment and poverty — which will all be exacerbated by climate change.
Pillar 3 – Land reform
Climate change puts additional pressure on land, especially on land-based livelihoods and biodiversity, infrastructure, and food systems. Global evidence shows that redistributive and inclusive land policies are effective. Can provide flexibility and security for adaptationIn the face of climate change.
Due to the inequal access to land, many South Africans are highly vulnerable to a range of shocks and crises including fires and floods. People are forced onto marginal, degraded, or unproductive land. This increases their vulnerability to risk and reduces the adaptive capacity of their bodiesBecause marginal land is not suitable for livelihood creation, food security via subsistence farming, collateral, or food security, it cannot be used.
People are forced to live in informal settlements that lack access to land, which increases their vulnerability to climate-related impacts. Unfair access of land, in combination with other factors, can severely impact the well-being, resilience, and well-being, of individuals, households, as well as communities. It puts a significant burden on those with precarious access to land and can lead to the loss of any small gains in land redistribution.
To build a more resilient and equitable land system, radical redistributive land reform will be required. This will also require extension and public service. A just land system allows for transformative resilience from climate impacts as people’s adaptive capacity is strengthened. This occurs partly through the ‘traditional’ goals of land reform, such as poverty and inequality reduction, which in themselves increase resilience.
Land distribution addresses inequality as one its root causes. It is not just about redistributing wealth, but also one of the most important aspects of land distribution. The power to produce wealth and the means to do it. This can bring restorative justice in the context of South Africa’s history of dispossession, in both material and intangible ways.
Secure access to land can also be provided Provides residents withThe flexibility to implement climate-adaptation measures through traditional knowledge systems allows for greater diversification of livelihoods. It also protects people from losing land or being evicted during times of crisis or natural disaster. It also provides incentives to invest in land. And, thanks to the recognition of communal rights allows for cooperation and security between communities.
However, transformative resilience through a just land system cannot be achieved through market-based mechanisms and a focus only on ‘commercially viable’ enterprises, as has increasingly defined South Africa’s land reform strategy.
South Africa A pro-poor, state-led redistribution program is needed. This includes prioritizing land for farmworkers and labour tenants, as well as landless people in rural and urban areas. It also involves improved legislation, monitoring, and evaluation to address corruption and slow pace in land reform. Financial resources are focused on supporting recipients and not buying back land at high prices.
For rural people to be truly empowered, they must be able to adapt their lives by combining land reform policies with water rights, sustainable living, and transport infrastructure. This Participatory land-use planning must be usedThis combines climate change projections, community needs, and prospects for mitigation or adaptation measures such as agroecology, agroforestry and water-saving, landscape diversification and biodiversity conservation, improved soil, crop, and livestock management.
Like many other terms in the environmental debates, resilience has been misused and mainstreamed in different contexts. Transformative resilienceIt allows us to look beyond the potentially regressive definitions of the word and to emphasize its transformative potential to help households and communities avoid the uncertainties and volatilities that climate change impacts can have on their lives. This requires fundamentally changing the structures which underpin South Africa’s vulnerabilities.
By doing so, the three pillars we have outlined — a green decent work agenda, social protection and land reform — can provide a safety net of resilience, acting in complementary and mutually reinforcing ways to support well-being in an uncertain and volatile world. This shifts the focus from requiring people adapt to precarious living circumstances to instead to addressing the structural inequities that are largely responsible for fostering vulnerability. DM/OBP
Read Part One, Part 2, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five ,Part Six, Part Seven Part Eight
Basani Baloyi Senior Researcher and Climate Energy and Infrastructure Programme Programme Leader IEF. Katrina Lehmann-Grube, former Previous Researcher at IEJ Hlengiwe Radebe, WWF-SA Engagement Officer for Civil Society Organisations Prabhat Upadhyaya, Senior Policy Analyst, Climate and Plastics, WWF-SA
This essay is part in a series exploring the challenges and opportunities associated with a just transition in South Africa. The focus of the series is on increasing resilience in ways that improve lives, and livelihoods. The series is being published in the lead-up to the Presidential Climate Commission’s multistakeholder just transition conference on 5 and 6 May. This essay series was created by the Presidential Climate Commission Secretariat with support from New Climate Economy. The interpretations and findings set forth in the essays are the authors’ alone.
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