This worker-centred framework has been co-produced with the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
South Africa’s transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy must be fair, inclusive, and centred on workers and communities. A Worker-Centred Framework for Financing the Just Transition sets out how this can be achieved by restructuring fiscal, monetary, and development finance policies to prioritise people over profit.
While the government’s current Just Energy Transition Investment Plan (JET-IP) estimates that R1.5 trillion is required for the energy sector alone, existing pledges fall drastically short. Moreover, the reliance on private financing risks reinforcing inequality, raising energy costs, and sidelining workers’ rights. This framework responds to these shortcomings by proposing a cohesive, economy-wide approach that views the just transition as a public good to be financed and delivered in ways that create jobs, reduce poverty, and expand equity.
The framework is grounded in COSATU’s Just Transition Blueprint for Workers (2022), which outlines worker demands across key sectors such as energy, mining, transport, and agriculture. These include protections for jobs and livelihoods, investment in skills development, social protection, and access to land, water, and energy. Central to the framework is a call for eco-socialism—an economy designed to serve people and planet, not profit.
Key financing tools include:
- Fiscal policy reforms, such as creating a Climate Response Fund (CRF), scaling up green bonds, and ring-fencing revenues from carbon taxes, fuel levies, and mineral royalties.
- Monetary policy reforms that go beyond inflation targeting to address climate-induced inflation, stabilise the financial system, and redirect investment towards green industrialisation.
- Reorientation of Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) to fund long-term, socially just climate projects rather than prioritising short-term returns.
By placing workers’ voices at the centre and aligning macroeconomic frameworks with climate justice goals, this framework charts a pathway towards an inclusive, sustainable, and truly just transition for South Africa.