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MEDIA ADVISORY
IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
DATE: 10 April 2025
A Just Transition for All: groundWork launches its latest report on the just transition
WHAT: groundWork will launch its latest flagship research report on the state of climate (in)justice in South Africa. The report titled System Change for a Just Transition – Living well with each other and the earth reflects on the current state of the just transition at ground level.
BACKGROUND: The fifth in a series on the (un)just transition, the 2024 groundWork Report records the increasingly destructive nature of climate driven events and how, in spite of this, big oil remains hell bent on expansion. The research reflected in key chapters conducted by community activists living on the fence lines of polluting industries across the country reflects the disastrous extent to which their lives, health and wellbeing, and livelihoods are directly impacted by ongoing violations Section 24 of the SA Constitution perpetrated by mines, petrochemical industries, corporates and state actors among others.
The 2024 groundWork Report tracks the Presidential Climate Commission’s drive for a politically steered transition and the obstacles in its way. It updates the story of Komati, the first coal power station to be decommissioned during the transition. Of the three dimensions of justice in the PCC’s Just Transition Framework, only procedural justice is visible as an active, albeit contested, principle. Distributive and restorative justice are lagging, hobbled by the economic concentration and dependencies created by the minerals energy complex, and low resolve to rehabilitate coal mines and the river catchment they have ruined.
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT: The report posits that, for the just transition to work, distributive justice needs to result in a redistribution of land, water, income and opportunities. Restorative justice needs to address our extractive colonial and apartheid past and the past 30 years of broken promises.
WHEN: Tuesday April 15, 2025
TIME: 17:30 for 18:00 – 20:00
WHERE: Apollo Hotel, Randburg, Johannesburg
(please note that it is essential to book your seat as limited places are
available.)
“The basics of life that have not been delivered constitute the just transition people need first. That is what the just transition is about. It is about far more than energy; it is about life in all its facets, where we are always seeking to live in relations of solidarity and equality with each other and in a positive relationship with our environment. It is about placing the elite last, and the people first”.Bobby Peek – Director of groundWork
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FOR EDITORS
Media Access: Journalists and media outlets are invited to cover this significant environmental justice event.
For media inquiries or to arrange interviews contact:
Tsepang Molefe – groundWork Media Campaigner
Launch Programme:
The launch programme will include Keynote by groundWork Executive Director, Bobby Peek, a dialogue with directly affected community activists and researchers and the team authors. An embargoed digital version of the report will be made available for those interested and attendees will receive a hard copy of the report.
Other groundWork reports in the series:
Into the Climate Fire: Harsh realities and Fossil Fantasies in South Africa’s Conflicted Transition
Contested Transition: State and Capital Against Community
The Elites Don’t Care: People on the Frontlines of Coal, Covid and the Climate Crisis
Down to Zero: The Politics of a Just Transition
