The National Council of Provinces (NCOP) has passed SA’s first piece of legislation which aims specifically to address the effects of climate change.
The Climate Change Bill was passed on Thursday and will now go to president Cyril Ramaphosa to be signed into law.
The bill aims to “enable the development of an effective climate change response and a long-term, just transition to a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy and society”.
When it was passed by the National Assembly in October, minister of forestry, fisheries & the environment Barbara Creecy said it was a historic moment. The bill, she said, “would ensure our country has a legal instrument to build resilience against the impacts of climate change and to reduce emissions in a manner aligned with our national circumstances and development pathways”.
At the time, The African Climate Foundation said it was a “landmark” bill which “empowers the government to enforce more ambitious measures” to hold emitters of greenhouse gasses (GHG) to account.
The bill will enable the environment minister to set emissions targets for various sectors, such as energy and transport, as well as prescribe emission thresholds or carbon budgets at a company level.
But, the foundation said, to ensure successful implementation of the bill, government would still have to determine “meaningful penalties” for companies that exceed their carbon budgets, with a potential higher carbon tax rate as a penalty. This would require specific amendments to the Carbon Tax Act.
Shareholder activism organisation Just Share raised similar concerns in comments they submitted on the bill.
Even though Just Share “supported the urgent adoption” of the bill it said amending the Carbon Tax Act to introduce additional taxes for companies that exceed their carbon budget does not go far enough.
“Unless there are significant penalties attached to violation of a carbon budget and/or GHG mitigation plan, corporates will simply ‘budget’ for any excess carbon tax (particularly if this is not set at a rate that will disincentivise noncompliance) and emit in excess of their budgets. This would severely limit the prospects of the Climate Change Act achieving its objectives,” Just Share said.
The organisation proposed that provision should be made for personal director liability and for authorisations to be revoked when there is noncompliance with a carbon budget.
The NCOP also passed the Upstream Petroleum Resources Development Bill on Thursday and sent it to the president for assent.
This bill provides for the “sustainable development of SA’s petroleum resources” and “to create an enabling environment for the acceleration of exploration and production” of these resources.
When it was passed by the National Assembly in November the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER) said the bill’s primary objective was to separate the oversight of petroleum resources from that of mineral resources, both of which now fall under the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act.
“This separation sets the stage for a new regulatory framework dedicated to the upstream petroleum industry,” the centre said.
It did criticise the bill for having the “express objective to accelerate oil and gas exploration” in SA which it said would have “profound implications” for SA’s climate change goals, including its greenhouse gas reduction commitments.
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