South Africa’s climate change commitments are due for an overhaul

The time is upon us to update the country’s climate change commitments, known as the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). 

According to the schedule that was agreed at the multilateral negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, parties to the Paris Agreement must submit their NDCs by 2025. 

Next year, South Africa will submit the second update of its NDC. The first was submitted in 2016 and that was updated in 2021. The first update covered the years 2025 to 2030 and the second will cover 2030 to 2035.

Global climate governance is a critical determinant of the well-being of people, their livelihoods and nature. 

Failure to curb greenhouse gas emissions will lead to increased climate impacts — flooding, drought, severe storms, fires — which affect the poor the most, potentially causing hunger, displacement and increasing poverty. 

Despite, and because of, its significance, global climate governance is a strongly contested policy arena, as is the nature of the outcomes of multilateral agreements. 

The Paris Agreement and the outcomes of subsequent Conference of Parties managed to circumvent, without avoiding or resolving, key areas of divergence in global climate politics. 

As a response to what some writers refer to as a “fragmented”, “decentralised” or “polycentric” global climate governance landscape, the Paris Agreement adopted a hybrid pledge-and-review approach that placed emphasis on coordination and goal setting. 

Importantly, this hybrid approach placed the responsibility for climate action at country level and did so without explicitly dealing with the thorny issue of what would constitute an equitable global response to climate change.

NDCs are the cornerstone upon which the pledge-and-review approach of the Paris Agreement is built. There is tacit agreement on two issues — first, that the primary purpose of the NDCs is the achievement of the global temperature goal of the Paris Agreement (mitigation).

Second, that existing governance instruments are inadequate to realise the other two goals of the Paris Agreement, namely adaptation to climate change and making financial flows consistent with low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.

In the absence of suitable governance instruments for finance and adaptation, the NDCs submitted by developing countries provide varied formats and perspectives on adaptation, finance, trade, capacity building, technology transfer and other important areas of climate commitments. 

This structure of NDCs points to thinly coded messages on how climate action should be allocated among countries in an equitable and fair manner.

The NDCs could be understood as serving a dual purpose. First, they have an outward looking purpose, that is, to serve as a policy instrument that outlines national climate commitments to the UNFCCC. 

For this purpose, the NDCs serve as instruments for governing global climate conduct as they become catalysts of global cooperation towards ambitious global climate action. 

Second, the NDCs have an inward-looking purpose, that is, to serve as a domestic instrument for aligning expectations of state and non-state actors on the prospect of a low-carbon and climate-resilient future.

In this role, the NDCs serve as social-political documents that convey the underlying national political positions, values, needs and priorities in responding to climate change.

It is in this context that NDCs are often recognised as more than national pledges for climate action but also as instruments for expressing national positions that could influence shifts in the multilateral negotiations on global climate governance towards their national interests. 

A more subtle, but intentional, purpose of the NDCs among developing countries is to use them to demonstrate their readiness to receive international financial support.

As we enter the era of the second revision of our national NDC, the adequacy, transparency and equity of the process for its review comes into focus.

In South Africa, an NDC revision culminates in cabinet approval. In the past, the process has played a critical role in advancing the national climate agenda.

It has helped to raise the level of awareness about climate change within and beyond the “climate change community”. 

It has provided opportunities for tangible cooperative governance across ministries by fostering coordination across diverse policy areas.

It has provided platforms for meaningful engagement on climate issues with non-state actors and tested the breadth and depth of the analytical capabilities that exist in the country. 

Furthermore, it is worth noting that access to funding for NDC preparation is a far less onerous exercise than access to funding for action to implement the NDCs — at the scale that is required to have a transformative effect. 

Also, it is possible for the NDC preparation process to include the participation of international think-tanks and partners to South Africa’s climate agenda.

Power relations are front and centre during NDC preparations. The preparations necessitate governing through networks made up of a variety of actors — the state is not the sole determinant of the substance and framing of the NDCs.

Role players go beyond relying on the formal stakeholder consultation sessions and use other levers available to them to influence the substance and framing of the NDCs.

This aspect is not unique to South Africa. However, because we are one of the most unequal societies in the world, and have low levels of trust in our government, power relations take on a significant meaning in our domestic context.

The South African government has a strong culture of public consultation on policy matters. The increasing emphasis placed on a just transition in South Africa’s climate discourse has expanded the diversity of voices contributing to co-production of climate policy.

This broad diversity has created a need for more innovation in fostering meaningful participation. 

While a recent report commissioned by the Presidential Climate Commission confirmed that climate change in South Africa has shifted from being a fringe issue for environmentalists to the mainstream, the medium of messaging climate change in the country remains dominated by analysis and scientific method — inadvertently privileging those that can master the mediums. 

In pursuance of social partner consensus building on the national position on climate change, innovation is needed to ensure meaningful interaction with society.

The NDC preparation process must balance prevailing competing stakeholder interests; seek societal legitimacy and ownership; ensure diversity in engagements and gather political support — and this must be done in the sterilising presence of public scrutiny.

It is clear, therefore, that the design and the undertaking of the NDC preparation process requires a keen understanding of multiple processes and activities of governance (beyond climate governance), as opposed to assuming that authority lies with conventional institutions. 

Dr Brian Mantlana is the manager of Holistic Climate Change Impact Area in the Smart Places Cluster at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. Steve Nicholls is head of mitigation at South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission.