Explore how innovative governance strategies can combat global climate change and foster an inclusive green economy, addressing the complexities of resource management and societal adaptation.
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Addressing ongoing global climate change impacts through inclusive economy-wide mitigation efforts and large-scale societal adaptation requires one-of-a kind approaches to governance.
Literature has attributed the inadequacies of governance to natural resource management including climate change to many factors like complexity and uncertainty, failures of neoliberal economic reforms, and institutional arrangements.
Climate governance is the aggregate estate of laws, policies, institutions, state and non-state actors that makes up the global, national, and local responses to climate change, led by government to prevent, mitigate, or adapt to climate risks while addressing the social, economic, and environmental impacts of climate change.
This phenomenon of statecraft further encompasses, subnational policies, corporate commitments, and civil society initiatives, across multiple levels -it has no single canonised authority, but a system of healthy conflict and confrontation, dialogue, and complementarity towards a common goal - addressing humanity’s existential threat.
The recent parliamentary led roundtable on Climate and Green Economy Governance (held on 8 June 2026) was a key parliamentary engagement in South Africa focused on strengthening local climate governance.
Lawmakers reviewed how to boost citizen participation in climate policy to drive a just, inclusive green transition, as government continue to rethink, rewrite and strengthen environment and climate-related legalisation and more importantly practical measures to address the expectations and anxieties of their constituencies.
Key areas of focus included practical approaches for the public, local municipalities, and civil society to participate in green economy decision-making.
The themes highlighted included regulatory alignment and agility, sustainable climate finance to support the shift to renewable energy as well as intergenerational equity and climate justice informed by youth perspectives in the country's long-term climate and development.
Within this governance paradigm, the Presidential Climate Commission has pledged that igniting climate action cannot simply be about advice and oversight, but needs to move South Africa from planning to execution, ensuring that national climate targets are grounded in socio-economic reality and scientific feasibility.
The PCC has translated high-level policy into practical on-the-ground solutions - whilst we remain an advisory multistakeholder body in the climate governance ecosystem, we have emphasised the need for an equitable transition to be supported through coordinated scaling of institutional capacity and partnerships, and with this, mobilisation of climate finance.
To this end, the commission prides itself of research and stakeholder coordination that underpinned South Africa’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) which ensures the country’s emissions trajectory balances ambition with energy security, affordability, and developmental imperatives.
The Komati Redevelopment Initiative also serves as a primary example, where the PCC is coordinating a multi-stakeholder governance approach to repurpose a decommissioned coal power station into a hub for green agriculture and manufacturing.
To underwrite procedural justice through inclusive and strategic engagements and awareness, the PCC has fostered a robust social compact, to ensure that the voices of labour, youth, civil society, and business shape the transition thus ensuring that those most affected by climate change are active participants in designing solutions.
The commission has placed a specific focus on inclusion as evidenced by platforms like the NDC Colloquium and the Skills Indaba, Hosting G20 and COP30 Youth Climate Dialogues , and engaging directly with communities in the coal belt, we continue to convene diverse social partners to align on contentious issues, ensuring that climate policy is socially owned and not viewed as a top-down imposition.
The PCC’s engagements around the Code of Good Practice for a Just Transition and Social Ownership of Renewable Energy (SORE) have operationalised the principles of fairness and equity, giving communities a stake in the emerging green economy and to create sustainable social security nets for workers and local economies in distress.
Tracking and monitoring climate action and a just transition with monitoring, impact assessments and course correction is in the eyes of the commission necessary to catalyse a low-carbon, climate resilient economy- its is not a just self-fulfilling.
The PCC has developed robust systems to measure progress and drive course correction, ensuring that climate action delivers real developmental outcomes, which primarily includes embedding Just Transition Indicators and to integrate such indicators into the government’s Medium-Term Development Plan (MTDP) – this will lay the basis of well-governed, accountable, and high-performing institutions as the foundation for sound delivery of climate action.
These intervention have exponentially increased public literacy countering misinformation and building societal support for the necessary transformation of our economic landscape.
As the PCC solidifies its institutional foundation to ensure it remains a stable, independent, and a credible and multistakeholder statutory body capable of steering the country’s long-term transition, we need to empower it as a critical cog in the climate governance ecosystem, and the litmus test will be how, all and sundry and particularly government supports the commission as it transitions into a Schedule 3A public entity as required by the Climate Change Act , and therefore by our lawmakers.
Blessing Manale is the executive manager: consensus building, communications and outreach at the Presidential Climate Commission.
Blessing Manale is the executive manager: consensus building, communications and outreach at the Presidential Climate Commission.
Image: Supplied.
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