South Africa's Low Emission Development Strategy 2050.

This Strategy moves from the considerations that climate change is regarded as a considerable threat to socio-economic development of South Africa and that the country is one of the top 20 global emitters, due to its high dependency on fossil fuels. Therefore, limiting the growth in global greenhouse gas emissions is considered the best strategy to counter climate change and its effects and thus achieve Paris Agreement’s goals. This Strategy, which focuses primarily on greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, has been elaborated aiming at accomplishing these goals, with the objective to develop a long term vision in 2050 and to drive harmonisation of government plans and policies.
The Strategy is structured as follows: 1) Introduction, including the global climate crisis, the Paris Agreement, methodological elements for developing the Strategy. 2) South African Economy, emissions profile and policy landscape, including core sectors of South African Economy affected by emissions; greenhouse gas emissions profile; previous policy, legislation and strategies; the role of sub-national government and of the private sector. 3) Vision Statement. 4) Greenhouse gas emissions mitigation measures, including core sectors, cross-cutting measures. 5) Going Further to Achieve Paris Goals, including: enhancing the vision for development; enhancing institutional capabilities and arrangements for the transition; creating right financial environment; providing broad access to fund; driving innovation, research and skills for future valid capital; promoting sustainable development through education and culture; ensuring a just transition with jobs for all. 6) Concluding remarks.
The vision of this Strategy provides for the achievement of a low-carbon growth path and for the commitment to ultimately moving towards a goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, while making a fair contribution to the global effort to limit the average temperature increase and ensuring a just transition and building of the country’s resilience to climate change. The Strategy identifies the following core sectors of South African Economy particularly affected by emissions: energy supply; mining and industrial sector; agricultural, forestry and land use, including field crops, horticulture, animal products, maize, wheat, sugar, deciduous fruit and citrus, wine, beef, dairy, lamb, pork, poultry and game; waste sector. The related issues identified are: low performance in environmental sustainability due to the heavy reliance on coal, oil petroleum and natural gas; low level of renewable energy, in particular hydropower and biomass; high level of emissions in mining and chemical industry; livestock sector is one of the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions; rural employment; excessive amount of solid waste, wastewater and waste landfilled. The Strategy defines the following measures, implemented by government to address greenhouse gas emissions mitigation across the key sectors of the economy: adoption of integrated energy plan to drive energy sector towards a low carbon future; implementation of biofuels to increase mitigation impact; support efficient energy utilisation; replacing fossil electricity or gas in water heating and other clean energy services; tax incentives for industrial green project development and activities registered with the Clean Development Mechanism; promotion of land afforestation, conservation agriculture farming methods and agroforestry; actions to reduce emissions from the waste sector; role of the carbon tax as an intention to implement the “Polluter pays principle”.