South Africa’s unjust climate reparations: a critique of the Just Energy Transition Partnership

This briefing critically discusses the moral question of whether South Africa deserves climate reparations. It examines the deeply unequal and polluting nature of the South African economy in order to demonstrate how claims from South Africa for climate finance and reparations are morally complex and fraught. For South Africa’s claims for climate reparations and finance to be justified, the article proposes two conditions. First, that South Africa act in line with its fair share of global climate action. Second, that climate finance must help to transform South Africa’s deeply unjust society and bring benefits not to the rich elite, who themselves owe climate reparations, but to the majority, especially the poor, Black and working class.Applying these two principles, the briefing asks whether the Just Energy Transition (JET) Partnership and the accompanying Investment Plan announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa meet those conditions. It argues that they potentially fail to meet both. The piece also warns that global South countries must be critical of JET Partnership funding models, as they may be used as tools to entrench the interests of international financiers who seek to dominate the clean energy future. To counteract such a possibility, climate justice movements should work to ensure that climate finance is a true fulfilment of climate debt owed to the global South, which works to ensure meaningful social, economic and ecological justice.The author writes this piece not just from an academic perspective as a postdoctoral research fellow. He also writes it from his perspective as the elected General Secretary of the South African Climate Justice Coalition – a coalition of over 50 trade union, grassroots, community-based and non-profit organisations working together to advance a transformative climate justice agenda. In his role as general secretary, he has engaged with coalition member organisations and worked to build a shared and critical activist agenda towards both the JET Partnership and the South African government’s response to the climate crisis more generally.