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Government's austerity policy must be confronted and state spending increased to realise promise of Climate Change Act

Government's austerity policy must be confronted and state spending increased to realise promise of Climate Change Act
The People's Movement for Change (PMC) during a protest march to the Cape Town Civic Centre on September 14, 2023 in Cape Town, South Africa. The group is protesting lack of service delivery, unlawful evictions, high electricity tariffs, unemployment, unfair treatment of informal traders, and housing issues. (Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach)
Robert Krause
By Robert Krause
26 Aug 2024
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The effects of austerity have been devastating, including years of a moribund economy, infrastructure backlogs, insufficient staff to serve the public, the collapse of municipalities, and basic service delivery grinding to a halt.

On 23 July 2024, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law the Climate Change Act, marking the first time the country had an overarching law governing efforts to address the climate crisis, arguably the defining challenge of our times. 

The act provides for responses addressing the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions (mitigation) and to protect society, and the most vulnerable in particular, from the worst effects of climate change (adaptation). 

While the overall positive coverage of the act shows the increasing irrelevance of climate denialism, I argue that another form of denialism still permeates mainstream media discussion: that for the aspirations of the act to translate into reality, the so-called “Government of National Unity” must not only ignore the calls to intensify reductions in state spending, but will need to dramatically increase state spending and reject the austerity doctrine.

This is the only way resources can be marshalled and government capacity be expanded for the many measures and systems that will be required for climate adaptation and ensuring a just transition in particular. 

Wreaking havoc


It is now a matter of scientific consensus that the rising temperatures driven by the greenhouse gases emitted since the Industrial Revolution are wreaking havoc in many ways, including the decimation of ecosystems, deadly extreme weather events, destruction of livelihoods and displacement of whole communities. 

Residents queue for water in Swazi township on 30 July 2024 in Daveyton, South Africa. It is reported that residents of Gauteng are facing water interruptions due to infrastructural maintenance. (Photo: Gallo Images / OJ Koloti)



The Climate Change Act, together with a range of policy instruments such as the Just Transition Framework, confers a mandate for government action covering a diverse array of responses to this multifaceted crisis and which will require a more active, resourced, capacitated and democratic state. The state will need to oversee and regulate systems to reduce emissions, including sectoral emissions targets and carbon budgeting at a company level. 

The required measures to protect society and the most vulnerable in particular from the effects of climate change (adaptation) will, in particular, require significant state action. National as well as provincial and local governments are required by the act to identify the array of climate change impacts, and to develop and implement adaptation plans.

Adaptation responsibilities


Chapter 3 of the act sets out the adaptation responsibilities of provinces and local government, while Chapter 4 of the act does the same for the national government. 

Effective adaptation requires an array of preventative and responsive measures of which the following are only the tip of the iceberg:

  • Adaptation means that the state assist households and communities devastated by extreme weather events such as the floods in KZN of 2022 and 2024 to put their lives together again.

  • It means an expansion of immediate disaster relief efforts in relation to floods and fires, as well as early warning systems and flood and fire prevention.

  • Adaptation also means proactive measures to build and rebuild habitable homes that can better withstand extreme weather,and building more climate-resilient public infrastructure, including rail and roads.

  • It means training smallholder farmers on farming methods and crops that can withstand changes in temperature and rainfall patterns.


 The act’s objective of a just transition requires a broader and more ambitious programme to reconstruct the economy and society away from the fossil-fuel-based neo-colonial capitalist one that produces racial and gender inequality to one serving the working-class majority.

This requires an active state that intervenes in the economy to drive green industrialisation that can absorb the more than 30% of the public who are unemployed, reskills workers in sectors to be  phased out, embarks on an extensive public works programme and invests significantly in public education drives.

How will this be funded? Section 15 of the Climate Change Act provides for a mechanism in consultation with the minister of finance. However, the National Treasury in South Africa has historically exercised its veto power to curtail state spending and is staunchly committed to the austerity (labelled as fiscal consolidation) that has been the hallmark of macro-economic policy under the Ramaphosa presidency. 

Cuts and freezes


While the largely pro-business media calls for even deeper cuts, few public institutions have been spared cuts or freezes in nominal or real terms in annual budgets and in the National Treasury’s Medium-Term Expenditure Framework. Examples include departments of housing, education, local government and even the Electoral Commission of South Africa.

Austerity, which is in direct contradiction to the climate action the act requires, has been presented in mainstream South African debate as being as scientifically grounded as the causes of climate change – but is it? 

The People's Movement for Change during a protest march to the Cape Town Civic Centre on 14 September 2023 in Cape Town, South Africa. The group were protesting lack of service delivery, unlawful evictions, high electricity tariffs, unemployment, unfair treatment of informal traders, and housing issues. (Photo: Gallo Images / Brenton Geach)



The simplest definition of austerity involves a programme of reducing government spending while (sometimes) increasing taxes. However, this definition is too simple.

For example, at the same time as governments such as South Africa’s spend less on social services, they spend more on repaying debt. As the economist Clara Mattei argues, austerity is a tool of the capitalist class to keep its control over the economy by making sure the working class are as dependent on capital as possible, and that particular kinds of government spending are reduced under austerity.

Mattei has identified different forms of austerity:

  • Fiscal austerity involves reducing government social spending (on services and grants) as well as taxes that hit the working class most (eg VAT) which has the convenient effect that workers are dependent on bosses for survival and are therefore in a weaker position to demand better wages and conditions.

  • Monetary austerity is a manufactured recession generated through making credit harder to access (eg interest rate hikes). Monetary austerity is designed to increase unemployment so that workers are scared to demand more.

  • Industrial austerity involves weakening legal protection of labour rights and protections (for example making it more difficult to join a trade union or strike).


The effects have been devastating, including years of a moribund economy, infrastructure backlogs, insufficient numbers of staff to serve the needs of the public, the collapse of ever more municipalities and basic service delivery grinding to a halt.

Yet adaptation measures under the act would for example require far more training and resources being made available to municipalities to play their envisaged role. 

Fundamental contradiction


There is therefore a fundamental contradiction between the government’s commitments to climate action and justice and to austerity. The adaptation promised in the Climate Change Act will remain a cruel pipe dream to left-behind communities and workers unless the government is compelled to abandon the austerity project, restore its capacity, and embark on social and public works spending. 

Further, for adaptation to be effective, it will need to be part of a broader programme of sustainable reindustrialisation, reconstruction and giving real decision-making power to workers and communities over their lives. DM 

Robert Krause is the acting head of Environmental Justice at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, Wits University. He has an LLB and an LLM in Public and Constitutional Law from the University of Cape Town.

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