The World Wide Fund for Nature South Africa (WWF SA), the South African Climate Action Network (SACAN) and the Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ) will work closely with environmental and social civil society organisations (CSOs) to build a strong community, including a cohort of youth climate champions, to ensure implementation of and accountability for ambitious climate policy.

The new four-year Climate Ambition to Accountability Project (CAAP), co-funded by the European Union (EU), will set up a CSO Climate Action Secretariat and empower youth through training, as well as conduct primary research for facilitating evidence-based policy making.

It will endeavour to bring cross-cutting issues into the mainstream debate around South Africa’s national climate policy.

“South Africa has a strong culture and tradition of social activism, but only a small number of environmental justice and green nongovernmental organisations and academics have engaged in tackling climate change, often in a fragmented way and with little influence on policymakers,” WWF SA said in a release on August 31.

Environmental CSOs have grappled with three key challenges in their attempts to increase ambition in South Africa’s climate policy, namely the disproportionate influence of vested interests, particularly on climate mitigation; overcoming the perceived dichotomy between development and climate objectives; and the limited institutional capacity of the State for ensuring implementation of stated policy objectives.

“South Africa is highly vulnerable to climate change and our economy is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Yet, as a country, our climate change ambition is regularly rated as poor and implementation is weak.”

Further, environmental CSOs’ relationship with two important constituencies, namely youth groups and social CSOs, especially trade unions, remains uneven and tenuous, stated the WWF SA.

“For realising a just transition away from fossil fuels, we need to forge bridges with both constituencies. Youth voices need to be amplified to influence climate-policy processes, not from the margins, but left, right and centre.

“Engagement with social CSOs, labour and trade unions is a prerequisite for ensuring the just transition breaks free from our structural socioeconomic inequities,” the WWF SA said.

While these challenges are interlinked, the limited capacity of environmental and social CSOs to actively participate in climate governance underpins all of them.

“The project, therefore, proposes to strengthen the capacity of CSOs to play a strong and constructive role in public policy processes for enhancing the ambition, action and implementation of, and accountability for, national climate policy for mitigation and adaptation in South Africa,” the nature advocacy and conservation organisation said.

“Participation of the youth, gender equality, accountability and inclusivity is at the heart of the EU’s climate action. I trust that CAAP will be an important tool to increase the participation of South African CSOs in tackling the adverse effects of climate change,” said EU in South Africa delegation head of cooperation Bernard Rey.

“I hope this project can help South Africa grow climate champions around a common cause, with each taking steps in their own worlds to build greener and a more sustainable country, thus contributing to implementation of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the [United Nations] Sustainable Development Goals,” he said.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC's) latest report establishes that human influence on climate is unequivocal, unprecedented and irreversible. Climate change is already affecting every region of the world, including South Africa, said WWF SA senior policy analyst Dr Prabhat Upadhyaya.

“It is pertinent that we shift the narrative from talking about what ought to be to talking about implementation and accountability for what is. There is no room for dithering, doubting and denying anymore. This might well be the last warning that we are still able to respond to,” he said.

South Africa must demand more ambition, aiming for a 1.5 °C goal because any higher temperature rise will only worsen the current climate conditions in South Africa, concurred SACAN coordinator Thandolwethu Lukuko.

“The time to act is now, and we have to hold decision-makers accountable for their action, or inaction, on climate change. The IPCC report gives further empirical evidence of the seriousness of the threat to the livelihoods of citizens, food systems and extreme weather conditions, especially for frontline communities. We need to act; we need solutions and we need them today,” he said.

Misinformation on climate change risks impairing the country's ability to deal with the impacts of climate change and chart a sustainable future, said IEJ senior researcher and climate, energy and infrastructure programme lead Dr Basani Baloyi.

“Therefore, we join forces with those seeking to build the capabilities in producing and spreading knowledge that will capacitate activists in their climate actions,” she said.