This presentation was delivered by Joan Stott at the COSATU Global South Exchange (GSE) 2025, during a session on Climate Finance and Equity, held from 27–29 October 2025 at Birchwood, Boksburg, South Africa. It presents a worker-centred framework for financing a just transition that extends beyond the energy sector to the wider economy and prioritises people, decent work, and public value over private profit.
Reframing the just transition
The presentation critiques South Africa’s Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP) for its narrow energy focus and reliance on private and international finance. It proposes an economy-wide approach centred on structural transformation, climate resilience, green growth, and workers’ socioeconomic rights.
Financing a worker-centred transition
The framework proposes an alternative fiscal policy and a Climate Response Fund (CRF) of approximately R100 billion per year, designed to provide sustained financing for mitigation, adaptation, and worker-centred development. Potential financing instruments include carbon taxes, fuel levies, reforms to mining and petroleum royalties, savings restructuring, and retirement tax reforms.
Reforming monetary and financial policy
The presentation calls for a broader mandate for the South African Reserve Bank to support green structural transformation alongside price stability. It proposes a stronger green finance taxonomy, climate-risk disclosure, measures to prevent regulatory arbitrage, and credit-allocation tools that incentivise investment in transition-aligned sectors.
Strengthening public institutions
Four institutional pillars are proposed: the Climate Response Fund, government, financial institutions, and Development Finance Institutions (DFIs). The framework calls for the recapitalisation and governance reform of the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) to support patient, long-term investment in socially beneficial sectors and reduce entrenched influence from mining, energy, and finance interests.
Workers, communities and equity
The framework places employment creation, skills development, decent work, health and retirement benefits, and a basic income guarantee at the centre of the transition. It also prioritises equitable access to land, water, and energy while opposing austerity and approaches that shift transition costs onto households and workers.
Conclusion
The presentation argues that South Africa’s just transition requires a living, adaptable and publicly supported financing framework. Aligning fiscal, monetary, industrial, and financial policies around worker and public interests can support an equitable, climate-resilient, and transformative economy.