The importance of monitoring, evaluation and learning in the Just Transition

WITH rising global temperatures and associated impacts on countries and communities, numerous countries around the world have committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, South Africa included. This is being done to limit temperature increases and reach net zero emissions by mid-century.

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If a transition to a low-carbon, cli-mate-resilient, green economy is to be effective and importantly just, countries will need to employ effective systems to track progress and retrogressions.

In February this year, the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC), World Resources Institute and the Initiative for Climate Action Transparency hosted a workshop on Tracking Just Transitions attended by monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) practitioners from around the world, particularly Africa, Central and South America and Asia.

It was clear from the workshop that many developing countries around the world are grappling with the very question above and are developing and tweaking MEL systems in an effort to track progress, identify gaps and measure the impact of their transitions.

What was abundantly clear, was the importance of MEL systems and learn-ing in a just transition to ensure that mistakes made in past development scenarios, were not repeated.

Justice Elements

The triple burden of poverty, ine-quality and unemployment has plagued South Africa for decades, with minimal improvements in development indi-cators. In 2022, the PCC published a Just Transition Framework (JTF), which was developed through broad engagement and consensus-building.

The JTF can be used as a blueprint for various departments and organisa-tions to guide and align just transition projects, while ensuring that develop-ment in South Africa is not impacted by a just transition, or that the impacts are minimised.