# 1 Introduction

Like many parts of the world, South Africa is experiencing deteriorating climate conditions. Rising temperatures, droughts and water shortages have become the new normal (Republic of South Africa 2021; Arndt, Gabriel, Hartley, Strzepek, and Thomas 2021; World Bank Group 2022; Engelbrecht et al. 2015). These weather events are destroying and disrupting communities and livelihoods.<sup>4</sup> At the same time, South Africa’s high reliance on coal for its energy needs may be contributing to the climate crisis. Global pressure to move away from carbon-based energy is a challenge in a labor market where the mining industry directly and indirectly creates thousands of jobs (Maseko 2021; Makgetla and Patel 2021; Makgetla 2021) even as aggregate employment rates have been on the decline and unemployment has been on the rise since 2008 (StatsSA 2022; Maseko 2021; World Bank Group 2018).<sup>5</sup> The South African government is committed to growing its economy and creating jobs through environmentally friendly strategies (Inglesi-Lotz 2021, DEA 2011, NPC 2011). The National Development Plan of 2011 envisions the green economy – which can be characterized as industries and outputs that do not create significant environmental risks<sup>6</sup> – as an avenue for job creation and a pathway to alleviate the challenges of high levels of poverty and inequality by promoting an “environmentally sustainable, climate change resilient, low-carbon and just society” (NPC 2011). The education and skills sectors are preparing to train workers for green jobs, which can be defined as jobs that aim to reduce the human-induced negative impact on the environment and climate change.<sup>7</sup> Research supports the view that the transition to a green economy could be a job-creator in South Africa (World Bank Group 2022; PCC 2021; Merven et al. 2019, Maia et al. 2011, Rutovitz 2010), though these studies do not directly measure green jobs. Instead, they use an “output approach” (Granata and Posadas 2024), where they select industrial sectors that are directly linked to energy, natural resources, or waste pollution and estimate job growth scenarios based on how the industries are expected to grow. The estimates range from 149,000 (Rutovitz 2010) to nearly 500,000 (Maia et al. 2011) new jobs over the next few decades. While these studies give rough orders of magnitudes of the future number of jobs 4 For example, during the severe 2018 water crisis in the Western Cape, two-thirds of tourism businesses reported being adversely affected (World Bank Group 2022).

> 5 Employment rates in South Africa have been on the decline and aggregate unemployment has been on the rise since the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, exacerbated by the recent Coronavirus (COVID19) pandemic. In the first quarter of 2022, the unemployment rate stood at 34.5 percent (StatsSA 2022) for the working age population but was much higher for young people (63.9 percent for those aged 1524 years). Of 10.2 million youth aged 15-24 years, 37 percent were not in employment, education nor training (NEET) in the first quarter of 2022 (StatsSA 2022).

6 Specifically, the NPC adopts the UNEP definition of the green economy which is “...a system of economic activities related to the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services that result in improved human well-being over the long term, while not exposing future generations to significant environmental risks and ecological scarcities”.

7 There is no consensus in the literature as to the concise definition of green jobs, making the process of measuring green jobs complex. There is however a convergence on the concept that green jobs are those that aim to reduce the human-induced negative impact on the environment and climate change, as defined by UNEP and the ILO (Stanef-Puică et al. 2022).

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