SA will need R3.7-trillion over the next decade — about 4.5 % of GDP each year — to finance its shift to a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy, according to the country’s latest climate-action plan submitted to the UN.
The updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), SA’s formal pledge under the Paris Agreement to help limit global warming, was tabled on Friday, just three weeks ahead of COP30 in Belém, Brazil, which has been billed as the “adaptation COP”.
NDCs set out each member country’s targets to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and adapt to the worsening effects of climate change. Under the Paris rulebook, they are updated every five years to reflect “progression” and the highest possible ambition.
“Many aspects of the NDC indicate an increasing commitment to thorough and science-based climate action on the part of government,” said Brandon Abdinor, a climate lawyer at the Centre for Environmental Rights and member of the Presidential Climate Commission.
“This will hopefully translate into more effective and proactive management of climate risks, which could result in increased safety and decreased losses.”
He also hopes it will attract further climate financing and grants, “which relieves the strain on the fiscus to come up with these resources”.
The NDCs highlight growing climate risks — from food insecurity and job losses to rising heat-related illness — as the country braces for more frequent and severe shocks. In recent years, SA has faced a range of extreme weather events, including devastating floods in KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and Western Cape, record-breaking heatwaves in the Northern Cape, prolonged droughts across several provinces, more intense storms in Gauteng and severe wildfires in the Western Cape. Poor communities are suffering the worst effects and municipalities are struggling to recover between disasters.
Mobilising concessional and private capital
The scale of investment needed highlights how dependent SA remains on international partnerships and concessional finance.
While the R3.7-trillion investment requirement far exceeds existing climate-finance flows, it builds on the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JET-P) launched in 2021, under which SA secured $8.5bn in pledges from partner countries.
That deal — focused mainly on decarbonising the electricity sector — remains the prototype for mobilising concessional and private capital. The new NDC broadens this approach through two additional instruments: a Climate Change Response Fund, established under the Climate Change Act to co-ordinate domestic and external flows; and a forthcoming Just Adaptation and Resilience Investment Plan (JAR-IP) aimed at financing local-level adaptation.
The NDC submission follows the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion earlier this year, which clarified that states have a legal duty to act on their climate commitments.
The 2025 NDC tightens SA’s emissions target to 320 Mt CO₂-equivalent to 380 Mt CO₂-equivalent by 2035, roughly 20% below its 2030 range in the 2021 update. It also quantifies the investment required: R3.47-trillion for mitigation and R250bn for adaptation between 2026 and 2035.
Since the previous NDC in 2021, SA has passed the Climate Change Act, giving statutory force to emission-reduction and adaptation plans; it has begun the second phase of the Carbon Tax Act (2019) with higher rates; and it has updated the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP 2025) to include 44GW of new renewable capacity by 2035.
No meaningful increase in ambition
Abdinor called the 2025 NDC a “more focused document”.
“This second NDC of 2025 is substantially more detailed and specific than the 2021 update and provides more clarity on the way forward in terms of SA’s climate-response ambitions,” he said.
“Specifically, it now includes a clear commitment to attempting to achieve net-zero CO₂ emissions by 2050, whereas this was quite vague in the 2021 update. There is now a specific section on loss and damage, which has the effect of elevating the importance of this issue.”
But he also warned that SA’s mitigation ambition remained limited.
“The 2035 emissions range is disappointing and does not represent a meaningful increase in ambition, as is required by the Paris Agreement and the best available science,” he said. “Modelling undertaken by the Presidential Climate Commission resulted in a recommended range of 248 Mt CO₂-equivalent to 329 Mt CO₂-equivalent in 2035. Decarbonising too slowly is as economically harmful as decarbonising too quickly.”
On the inclusion of a new section on loss and damage, Abdinor said: “This spotlights that SA is starting to engage with this issue in terms of recording and quantifying climate-related damage, which again will form a basis on which to advocate for stronger loss-and-damage financing on the global stage, as well as potentially claim from the currently severely underfunded Loss and Damage Fund.”
He said a strong NDC is “a powerful tool for mobilising climate finance” because it “indicates a solid case for investment”.
But he warned that SA’s 2025 NDC “does not send an adequately strong signal to the global community,” and that “inadequate ambition also hampers efforts to establish green industrialisation, which will lead to much-needed economic opportunities.”
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