South Africa is one of the largest GHG emitting countries due to its heavy reliance on coal for most of its energy needs. The South African government is cognisant of the fact that shifting away from carbon-intensive forms of technology to more sustainable ways of production means that some jobs will be destroyed, and new ones will be created. A concern therefore for policy makers is ensuring that the transition is just and that it will not exacerbate existing inequalities.

South Africa comes into this employment transition discussion facing a triple challenge: persistent high unemployment, inequality, and poverty. This situation has worsened since the 2007-2008 financial crisis and was further exacerbated by the recent COVID-19 pandemic. This complicates the discussion of an optimal social transition to a “green” economy.

This project is part of a wider research program on the just transition in South Africa, conducted with several South African research centres and in close collaboration with the South African authorities.

The project will carry out a study of the South African labour market with the aim of identifying the proportion and distribution of workers engaged in “green” jobs and “brown” jobs – in other words, jobs that are ecologically sustainable and jobs that are not. It will also examine the possibilities of transitioning labour from brown jobs into low emitting sectors.

We will measure green intensity as the share of total tasks in an occupation that are green. We will also identify the share of workers in green jobs using employment information from surveys such as the Quarterly Labour Force Surveys (QLFSs) and the Census. Using industry level information on pollution, we will go further to identify occupations more likely to be in highly polluting sectors than in any other sectors. This will be described as brown jobs. Next, we will utilise occupational tasks, skills, and knowledge information from the O*NET dataset to identify important skills for brown and green jobs. This will enable us to estimate the probability of transitioning workers to green jobs. Finally, to map the location of green jobs, we will use employment information from the Census, the Community Survey, and the Spatial Tax data.

South Africa’s Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan was launched in October 2020 by the Presidency in response to the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides the Presidential Employment Stimulus program, it included emergency social protection measures, among which the introduction of a special Covid-19 Social Relief of Distress grant (SRD), providing ZAR350 per month for unemployed people not covered by any other form of support. The South African government now seeks to develop options for the future of SRD grant.

Find out more about the Extension in South Africa

The objective of this research project is to produce motivated recommendations on how the SRD should be designed going forward into the longer term, in order to maximize the impact of the grant on employment outcomes and to ensure it effectively reduces poverty, while maintaining its cost to an acceptable level:

1. To maximise the impact of the grant on employment, the project needs to understand how to design and label the grant to encourage its use for job search.
2. To ensure the grant effectively reduces poverty, the project must figure out the most cost-effective way to target and assess the eligibility of recipients. Moreover, poverty reductions can be scaled up by determining measures that could encourage take up among the most disadvantaged. 

Once these goals have been achieved, and in order to inform public decision-making, these findings must be communicated to a number of stakeholders in government and civil society.

This project is part of a wider research program conducted with several South African research centres and in close collaboration with the South African Presidency. Four other research projects analysing the externalities of the Covid-19 stimulus policy are currently being developed as part of the first pillar of the Extension's activities in South Africa.

This research project uses the model generated to conduct the 2014/2015 fiscal incidence assessment and introduces updated data for 2019-2021. It simulates five scenarios around eligibility criteria, targeting mechanisms, value, disbursement model and conditionalities and computes the potential impact on poverty and employment outcomes.

You will find below the research paper related to this project: 

• Proposal for the extension, redesign and repurposing of the SRD for the goal of poverty reduction

It is worth noting that another paper has been published on the implications of the SRD grant, funded by AFD outside the Research Facility on Inequalities: Systemic exclusion from a South African social assistance transfer (February 2024)

Despite several efforts to promote pro-poor growth, South Africa remains one of the most unequal countries in the world. While the country's colonial history and apartheid are known to have contributed to this inequality level, the nature and dynamics of its impact on society are yet to be fully understood.

Literature suggests that better institutions and lower level of inequality improve subjective wellbeing. However, evidence that examine how the interaction between these two variables explain variation in wellbeing is relatively scarce. This study will thus contribute to a deeper understanding of inequalities in South Africa. 

This research project has two main objectives:

1. Explore how variations in governance (such as audit outcomes) across South Africa's district municipalities explain the variation in the well-being of individuals.
2. Investigate how the interaction between the variation in governance across local government municipalities and inequality among individuals explains variation in subjective well-being.

To investigate the interactions between the quality of institutions and of the governance, the level of spatial inequality and the subjective wellbeing, researchers will use the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), a nationally representative survey of individuals across South Africa, which is repeated over five waves between 2008 and 2017. They will also use audit outcomes of local municipalities to proxy for the quality of governance.

You will find below the research paper related to this project:

• Spatial Inequality, Sub-regional governance and Subjective Well-being - The case of South Africa

Public actors need to monitor the state of the environment in order to assess the effectiveness of their actions, prioritize management policies and measures, and thus objectively establish their contribution to the conservation of natural capital. To do so, they must be able to rely on science-based standards to identify the thresholds at which environmental functions can be considered sustainable.

The ESGAP (Environmental Sustainability Gap) is an innovative tool for assessing the condition of a territory’s environmental functions and how sustainable they are. For all critical components of natural capital in the territory concerned (air or water quality, pollution, forest resources, fisheries, etc.), this indicator calculates the difference between their current state and a state that would be sustainable (i.e., a state compatible with the sustainable functioning of the processes necessary for the preservation of life, human activities and well-being). This allows for the calculation of the “environmental sustainability gap”, which highlights the path to environmental sustainability. This can then serve as a guide for public policies to estimate and preserve the critical functions of the natural capital of a given territory. ESGAP has already been tested in New Caledonia, Kenya and Vietnam.

Within the framework of the ECOPRONAT research programme, AFD aims to develop methodologies for assessing strong sustainability, that is, adopting demanding criteria concerning the non-substituability of natural capital by other forms of capital (physical among others) in a territory or country. AFD also wants to promote their use in international frameworks and contribute to emerging international standards on the good ecological state of ecosystems.

Find out more about ECOPRONAT

Building on the previous work of University College London (UCL) on the application of ESGAP in countries of the Global South, this research project led by UCL aims to implement the ESGAP framework in Colombia and South Africa. It will test its relevance in fostering public policy dialogue in these two countries that already have a regulatory framework and natural resources management, but where not all data on biodiversity is available. 

More specifically, this project has four objectives: 

1. Developing the ESGAP components related to biodiversity and the state of ecosystems that could be used by Colombian and South African governments, and promoting the use of science-based targets for ecosystem maintenance;
2. Promoting reflection on strong sustainability in Colombia and South Africa through the ESGAP framework, by assessing whether the activities carried out in these countries are within the safe operating space for humanity;
3. Clarifying how the ESGAP framework aligns, complements and adds value to other types of existing sustainability indicators that national governments are already using;
4. Strengthening the capacity of partner countries to implement the ESGAP framework beyond this research project. 

The ESGAP framework is based on a dashboard that provides information on changes in the functional state of 23 components of the environment, focusing on the gaps that exist between these changes and the objectives of maintaining or achieving a "good environmental state". These components cover the 4 main categories of critical and essential environmental functions: resource provision, pollution reprocessing, biodiversity and human health. The scores for each of the twenty-three components are then aggregated to form a synthetic indicator and a dynamic indicator.

The research activities in the two pilot countries is carried out by researchers from Stellenbosch University (South Africa) and the National University of Colombia (UNAL). Capacity building will include training four postgraduate students as well as awareness-raising activities targeting policymakers and other stakeholders, in order for them to take ownership of the ESGAP and use it during public policy formulation.

The research teams will produce scientific papers on the relationship between the ESGAP framework and other sustainability indicator initiatives, as well as on the work and calculations of the ESGAP indicators carried out in each country, comparing the cases of Colombia and South Africa. A specific report will be produced on indicators of the state of biodiversity and ecosystems as well as the identification of data sources for the two countries studied.

In addition, an international workshop will be organized to present the complementarities between the ESGAP framework and relevant initiatives of existing sustainability indicators.

Finally, the research team intends to produce several documents for decision-makers and public policy actors:

• A summary of the review of biodiversity indicators and the state of ecosystems, which may be useful for negotiations at the Conferences of the Parties (COPs) to the Convention on Biological Diversity and for the design of national biodiversity strategies and action plans (NBSAPs);
• A webinar with a webinar report on the relationship between the ESGAP framework and other international sustainability reporting initiatives;
• A summary for decision-makers in each partner country on the rationale of the strong sustainability development approach and the methodology and ESGAP indicators that enable it to be implemented.

Download the publications related to the project: 

• The SDGs Provide Limited Evidence That Environmental Policies Are Delivering Multiple Ecological and Social Benefits, Earth's Future vol.12 (May 2024)
• Enhancing Environmental Sustainability Through the Environmental Sustainability Gap (ESGAP) Framework in Colombia, Policy Dialogues n°67, Editions Agence française de développement (October 2024)
• Strong sustainability in the SEEA and the wider indicator landscape, One Ecosystem (May 2025)
• Assessing environmental sustainability in Colombia: Metrics and policy recommendations, Environmental and Sustainability Indicators n°27 (September 2025)

A "Research Conversations" webinar presented the results of the articles to the scientific community in November 2024: