Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism

Climate change is already a measurable reality and along with other developing countries, South Africa is especially vulnerable to its impacts. This White Paper presents the South African Government’s vision for an effective climate change response and the long-term, just transition to a climate-resilient and lower-carbon economy and society.South Africa’s response to climate change has two objectives:• Effectively manage inevitable climate change impacts through interventions that build and sustain South Africa’s social, economic and environmental resilienceand emergency response capacity.• Make a fair contribution to the global effort to stabilise greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that avoids dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system within a timeframe that enables economic, social and environmental development to proceed in a sustainable manner.This response is guided by principles set out in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the National Environmental Management Act, the Millennium Declaration and theUnited Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.  The overall strategic approach for South Africa’s climate change response is needs driven and customised; developmental; transformational, empowering andparticipatory; dynamic and evidence-based; balanced and cost effective; and integrated and aligned.

The report, presented to Parliament, outlines the achievements of the Department in the financial year 2015/16, in tandem with our constitutional mandate – toensure the right to an environment that is not harmful to the health and well-being of South Africans and all those who live in our country.The 2015/16 financial year has been remarkable for the Department, and South Africa, on a number of fronts. Not least the leadership role played by South Africa in reaching a legally binding climate change agreement at the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in Paris in December 2015.The agreement is the culmination of a four-year negotiation process that was initiated in Durban in 2011 at the 17th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC. The conclusion to the Durban Mandate, which was to develop a protocol, legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force, under the Convention, by no later than 2015, will see the new agreement come into effect from 2020.In preparation for the international climate change talks, all Parties to the UNFCCCwere required to submit Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) to the UNFCCC Secretariat, to show what is being done to address climate change. South Africa’s INDC, submitted to the UNFCCC in September 2015, encompasses three distinct components namely mitigation, adaptation and the means of implementation.

The purpose of this Framework is to enunciate South Africa’s national vision for sustainable development and indicate strategic interventions to re-orientate South Africa’s development path in a more sustainable direction. It does not present detailed strategies or actions, but rather proposes a national vision, principles, trends, strategic priority areas and a set of implementation measures thatwill enable and guide the development of the national strategy and action plan. It describes in broad terms how the existing activities of government and its social partners will be strengthened, refined and realigned in a phased manner to achieve inter-related sustainable development goals relating to the economy, society and the environment, and how governance systems will be capacitated to facilitate this process.This Framework provides the basis for a long-term process of integrating sustainability as a key component of the development discourse and shows South Africa’s commitment to the principles developed at international summits and conferences in the economic, social and environmental fields, including the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development.