Publications
2011
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Joint report from Industrial Development Corporation, Development Bank of Southern Africa and TIPS
In its recent green economy study, UNEP9 concluded that environmental sustainability and economic progress are not opposing forces and that significant benefits will flow from the greening of the world’s economies. Greening generates increases in wealth, measured in classical terms of higher growth in gross domestic product (GDP) – even in poorer or developing countries – as well as in the form of ecological gains due to positive impacts on the natural capital of ecosystems and biodiversity. An important synergy exists between poverty eradication (ensuring food supply, water, energy and health, as well as support to subsistence farmers) and enhanced conservation of natural capital.
The green economy could be an extremely important trigger and lever for enhancing a country’s growth potential and redirecting its development trajectory in the 21st century. A burgeoning green economy will reflect a clear expansion of productive capacity and service delivery across many existing areas of economic activity, and the introduction of numerous new activities in the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors.
This should be evidenced by substantial investment activity in conventional and non-traditional activities, meaningful employment creation, sustaining competitiveness in a world that is increasingly determined to address adverse climate change trends, and by opportunities for export trade, among others.
The imperative of stabilising greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations in the atmosphere within particular boundaries, so as to contain atmospheric warming trends and other associated forms of climate change, is leading to discernible behavioural change in societies around the world, and to the consideration of (or a commitment to) specific national targets.On top of this, there is a “growing threat of increasing ‘eco-protectionism’ from advanced industrial countries in the form of tariff and non-tariff measures such as carbon taxes and restrictive standards”. Such trends are proving to be a powerful force for the evolution of a green economy to protect biodiversity, address adverse climate change trends, pollution and unsustainable resource use.
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The Community Work Programme (CWP) has been based in the Department of Cooperative Governance (DCoG) since April 2010. In the 12 months to March 2011, 89 689 people participated in the programme putting in 5 449 376 workdays. A total of R307 million was paid in wages, and the CWP had a massive impact on communities in 56 sites all over South Africa.
As well as these nationally-funded sites, six sites were funded by the Gauteng Provincial Government, with a further 7 164 participants. The Employment Creation Fund of the Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) also funded the CWP Watershed Services River Cleaning Project, employing an additional 2 326 people. This brings total participation in the CWP to more than 99 000.
The CWP was started as a pilot project in late 2007. It was initiated as part of a strategy process commissioned by the South African Presidency and located in Trade and Industrial Strategy Projects (TIPS). This strategy process culminated with a framework document, Second Economy Strategy: Addressing Inequality and Economic Marginalisation, approved by Cabinet in January 2009. It was also included in full in the final report of AsgiSA (Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa) in April 2009.
This strategy framework emphasises the need for structural change to deliver sustainable jobs in the South African economy – but it also recognises that this will take time, and that a complementary strategy is needed to enable economic participation by those excluded from employment. In this context, the strategy framework calls for the adaptation of the concept of a minimum employment guarantee to South African conditions –with the CWP as an example of how this could be done.
The CWP pilot programme was supported by The Presidency and the Department of Social Development, which constituted a National Steering Committee to provide strategic oversight to the programme. The National Steering Committee was expanded in 2009 to include representatives from the Department of Public Works, DCoG and National Treasury. The pilot phase and further roll-out of the programme was project managed by TIPS in partnership with two Implementing Agents, Seriti Institute and Teba Development.
Much of the focus of 2010/2011 has been on institutionalising the different elements of the programme in DCoG.
