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Policy Briefs
- Janet Wilhelm
Auto industry’s EV roadmap aims to accelerate sales and production
Engineering News - 9 October 2020 by Irma Venter
Read online at Engineering News.
South Africa’s exports to China were surprisingly better in the 'pandemic quarter'
Read online at Engineering News
TIPS Tracker: The economy and the pandemic
Read online at Engineering News.
Jobs bloodbath, tourism gutted
Business Times (Sunday Times) - 4 October 2020 by Hilary Joffe
Read online at Business Live
TIPS Webinar - Unravelling South Africa's Just Transition: Unpacking the ground-level impacts in the coal value chain
Muhammed Patel - TIPS
Report: Sector Jobs Resilience Plan: Coal value chain
Pulane Mafoea Nkalai - Sam Tambani Research Institute
Presentation: Energy Mix choices and the protection of workers’ interests in South Africa
Michelle Cruywagen, Megan Davies and Mark Swilling - Centre for Complex Systems in Transition, Stellenbosch University
David Hallowes - groundWork
Presentation: Down to Zero
Report: Down to Zero - The politics of just transition (David Hallowes and Victor Munnik 2019)
Gemma Gatticchi, Bloomberg. 4 November 2020: Renewable energy drive threatens 120,000 South African jobs
Pulane Mafoea Nkalai is a Senior Researcher at the Sam Tambani Research Institute (SATRI), the research arm of the National Union of Mine Workers (NUM). She has conducted extensive research on the welfare of workers and workers communities especially in the mining, energy and construction sectors of Southern Africa. Pulane will present on Energy mix choices and the protection of workers’ interests in South Africa.
About the Facilitator
Background
South Africa, a carbon-intensive economy, has initiated a transition to a more sustainable development pathway. While this is an economy-wide transformation, the progressive decline of the coal value chain is at the centre of this shift. In a highly unequal society like South Africa, the need for a just transition, which would empower vulnerable stakeholders, has emerged as an imperative. Beyond the stakeholders who rely on it for their livelihood, the coal value chain plays a singular role in the South African economy, society, politics and psyche. As such, the transition in South Africa’s coal value chain has the potential to influence the country’s entire socio-economic trajectory. This dialogue aims to inform this just transition process. It explores the ground-level impacts associated with a just transition away from coal.
This webinar builds on a two earlier dialogues, hosted on 7 July and 29 September.
FDI Tracker Q1 and Q2 2020
This report presents investment projects captured in Q1 and Q2 of 2020. Q1 and Q2 have been combined mainly because of the low number of investment projects announced in Q1 2020, combined with general delays in the release of certain data, such as those which inform the investment environment analysis. This was anticipated when investment globally was impacted by the slowdown in economic activity as strict measures were implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 35 projects were recorded over the two quarters, with 27 projects identified in Q1, and eight projects in Q2. Over half the number of investments captured over the two quarters were by three companies. The total pledged investment value is R43.8 billion from 30 projects. Tracking further captured 3 320 job opportunities from eight projects, seven of which are by one company representing 3 300 jobs. These jobs are likely a mix of permanent and temporary opportunities as the company did not explicitly distinguish jobs by this segmentation. In this period seven projects were upgraded.
South Africa’s forestry value chain and the transition to climate compatibility
The forestry value chain faces many challenges. These include rising costs for transportation, labour, raw material inputs, energy and imported raw materials, exacerbated by poor road infrastructure that contributes to high maintenance costs and inefficiencies. Increasingly, climate change is an additional stressor that demands transitioning from business-as-usual practices. There is a close link between climate change and the forestry value chain. On the one hand, forests are affected by climate change physically through higher mean annual temperatures, changing precipitation patterns and more frequent and extreme weather events, and also economically through climate change related policy measures. On the other hand, forests help to mitigate climate change through sequestrating carbon if the forests are sustainably managed, but with land-use conversion and forest degradation, can contribute to climate change through more carbon emissions. Climate change thus represents both a challenge and an opportunity. As such, a proactive approach is required to harness the profitability associated with embracing sustainability.
While climate change impacts have been assessed for various ecosystems across the world, the risk to industrial forestry plantations in South Africa is not yet well understood. The objectives of this report are to identify and explore the climate-compatibility in South Africa’s forestry value chain; and to suggest solutions to address the climate-compatibility problems in South Africa’s forestry value chain.
South Africa in a low-carbon world: Trade green or trade not
Daily Maverick - 29 September 2020 by Gaylor Montmasson-Clair
Read online at Daily Maverick
Covid-19 grant is vital, SAA not so much
Business Day - 28 September 2020 by Neva Makgetla (TIPS Senior Economist)
Read online at Business Day.
RESPONSE TO COLUMN
Letter in Business Day - 30 September 2020
Read online at Business Day.