Explore the overlooked parliamentary sessions that shape South Africa's climate change policies and discover how we can ensure effective implementation of the Climate Change Act.
There is a space in the life of our parliamentary processes that we have left unwatched - that is the annual series of mini-plenaries sessions in our Parliament, to outline and broadly approve the government’s annual programme of action and the departmental business plans– these plenaries are known as Budget Votes, and have over time fazed off our discourse as policy pronouncements and spaces to watch.
During these votes, various Ministers and their Deputies highlight several priorities for the new fiscal year, and as a Commission we stand with bated breath expecting policy announcements and programmatic response to tackling climate change.
This expectation is informed by need to give our climate commitments a helping hand and ensure the implementation of the Climate Change Act (the “Act”), which aims to enable South Africa to meet its emissions reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement and provides for a legal framework for the adaptation of climate change and mitigation response.
All these requirements of the Act, put every government department at the center of climate change.
