Recently, the South African labour federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), has expressed its commitment to a ‘just transition to a low carbon economy.’ However, at this moment the content of that commitment is unclear. Members of Cosatu affiliates could have very different understandings of the scale and nature of the changes involved. A ‘just transition’ could involve demands for shallow change focused on protecting vulnerable workers, or it could involve deep change rooted in a vision of dramatically different forms of production and consumption. In this sense, the ecological crisis represents an opportunity to not only address the unemployment crisis in our society, but to demand the redistribution of power and resources, to challenge the conventional understanding of economic growth and to mobilise for an alternative development path.

This brief is written by Jacklyn Cock, a professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand and an honorary research associate of the Society, Work and Development (SWOP) Institute. She has written extensively on militarisation, gender and environmentalism in Southern Africa. Her latest book is The War Against Ourselves. Nature, Power and Justice. (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2007).

Published by Global Labour Column and edited by CSID at Wits University.