Just Share’s new report, The Obstruction Playbook: How corporate lobbying threatens South Africa’s Just Transition, provides an evidence-based account of how the country’s largest corporate polluters have worked persistently over two decades, in public and in private, to derail an effective climate policy response by the South African government.
The report, published today, sets out in detail the twenty-year history of industry interventions in climate regulatory processes.
Using corporate submissions on draft legislation, and records of industry’s private meetings with government (largely obtained via requests under the Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000), the report demonstrates how these interventions – predominantly via Sasol Limited and industry associations Business Unity South Africa and the Minerals Council South Africa – have achieved significant regulatory concessions and extensive delays which have substantially compromised the effectiveness of the Carbon Tax Act 15 of 2019 and the Climate Change Act 22 of 2024.
Almost twenty years after it was first mooted, and after repeated extensions of the low-rate, introductory “Phase 1”, South Africa’s carbon tax is among the world’s lowest and is now set to continue to allow up to 85-95% of tax-free allowances to remain at least until 2031. It has failed in its primary goal: to incentivise emission reductions that support the country’s climate commitments.
Implementation of the Climate Change Act has been repeatedly delayed, and its ability to drive corporate emission reductions has been significantly weakened. Crucial provisions relating to corporate carbon budgets remain inoperative and are still subject to further regulatory development.
Major polluters with powerful financial incentives to maintain the status quo inevitably resist regulation aimed at forcing them to internalise the social and economic costs of their operations – costs which are often borne by the rest of society, especially the poorest and most vulnerable. It is government’s role to stand firm in the face of such resistance and to develop effective regulation which benefits the public interest.
But as this report demonstrates, government is susceptible to industry pressure. The corporate actors responsible for the pushback against climate regulation do not act for the benefit of the majority of South Africans but instead represent a narrow set of elite vested interests. Their historically powerful role in the economy, and the access that this affords them to policymakers, means that a cohort of major polluters dominates the national economic dialogue and appears to have succeeded repeatedly in persuading government to roll back its progressive climate-related policy initiatives.
The implications of this corporate influence are profound: the failure of government’s climate policy response to drive meaningful greenhouse gas emission reductions by big polluters means that the just transition to a low-carbon economy is not supported by a robust regulatory framework which holds emitters accountable. This threatens to leave South Africa economically vulnerable, environmentally compromised, and increasingly out of step with global efforts to mitigate climate change.
As is evident in the sources cited in the report, and in the twenty-year timeline of industry interventions in South African climate policy, high emitters repetitively deploy a series of arguments to convince policymakers that their proposed course of regulatory action is unwise and will have devastating “unexpected” consequences. These arguments are framed around three themes, expanded on in the report: the emitters’ “positive contribution” to society, South Africa’s status as a developing economy, and the need for “alignment”, incentives and low ambition.
All these arguments frame climate action in opposition to developmental goals, ignoring the fact that the purpose of the just transition is to achieve growth and development which replaces the current high unemployment, high poverty, coal-based economy with one that is more just and sustainable.
The report’s findings demand urgent action, and Just Share calls for three critical reforms:
- greater transparency in government dealings with industry;
- inclusive policymaking that elevates marginalised voices; and
- evidence-based policy impact assessment that is free from corporate interference.
Without these changes, South Africa’s climate policies will continue to serve elite interests at the expense of people and the planet.
“This report demonstrates the extensive influence of corporate actors over climate policymaking in South Africa, and the strategic use of key narratives by high emitters to undermine policy. The three key narratives identified as being used to oppose ambitious climate policy corroborate InfluenceMap research on the topic, further confirming the existence of a corporate playbook used to weaken climate policy globally. The lack of transparency highlighted in this work is an added obstruction to ambitious climate policy, allowing actors like those Just Share has identified to have unregulated influence over climate-related regulations,” says Ciara Ellis, senior analyst at InfluenceMap (an independent think-tank producing data-driven analysis on how business and finance are impacting the climate crisis).
The development of climate-related regulation in South Africa has been fundamentally imbalanced, allowing corporate interests to consistently override the public interest in effective climate action. By implementing the recommended reforms, South Africa can begin to restore the legitimacy of its climate policy process and accelerate the just transition that President Ramaphosa has correctly identified as essential to the nation’s future prosperity.
The full report, the Obstruction Playbook: How Corporate Lobbying Threatens South Africa’s Just Transition, is available here.
