Monitoring Progress Towards a Just and Equitable Transition in South Africa

The Initiative for Climate Action Transparency (ICAT) aims to help countries assess the impacts of their climate policies and actions, and fulfil their transparency commitments. It does this by increasing the overall transparency capacities of countries, including the capacity to assess the contribution of climate policies and actions on greenhouse gas (GHG) levels and on countries’ development objectives, and providing appropriate methodological information and tools to support evidence-based policy-making. ICAT’s innovative approach is to integrate these two aspects.

ICAT focuses on countries that can highlight the benefits of increased transparency to demonstrate policy impact and evidence-based action. ICAT will generate evolving methodological guidance and extract best practises, to be publicly available to all actors, increasing the global knowledge base. ICAT’s work is country-driven, and efforts build on existing Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) systems and knowledge in countries and complement previous or on-going activities by other initiatives, where applicable. 

The Presidential Climate Commission (PCC) is a multi-stakeholder body established by the President of the Republic of South Africa to advise on the country’s climate change response and just transition pathways to a low-carbon climate-resilient economy and society. The PCC facilitates dialogue between social partners on these issues—defining the type of society we want to achieve, and detailed plans for how to get there.

The PCC has recently developed a Just Transition Framework—a practical guide for giving effect to the just transition in the country. This framework is the first building block towards reaching South Africa’s vision for just and equitable transition. The framework sets out the vision, principles, planning elements and policy measures to achieve a just transition in South Africa, as well as the outcomes to be achieved over the short, medium, and long term. In so doing, the framework aims to bring coherence and coordination to just transition planning in South Africa.

With the vision and milestones for achieving a just transition increasingly concrete in South Africa, it becomes important to develop a framework to track progress towards those objectives.

The following sections set out the principles, scope, and proposed work plan for developing the Just Transition Monitoring and Evaluation System (the JT M&E System), which the Grantee must incorporate in their proposals.