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The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the release of the National Climate Change White Paper. It is an improvement on the Green Paper, and provides guidance on the broad framework that government intends pursuing. Anthropogenic climate change is one of the greatest challenges that our country and the rest of the world have to deal with. The response is complex because it involves serious equity and moral considerations, as well as difficult economic issues of sequencing and competitiveness. No policy maker should ever treat the response as easy. If our country does get it right the benefits should be a transition to a low carbon economy with new job creating sectors, improved technologies, increased efficiencies and a better quality of life for all our citizens. If we get the response wrong it could lead to lower economic growth and increased joblessness with no environmental benefit.

The White Paper is not an end in itself. It signals the beginning of a lot more work that needs to be done on policy instruments, financial mechanisms, institutional arrangements and the establishment of a reliable fact base. The White Paper suggests that at least 12 national government departments will be involved in the response, as well as local and provincial governments. This immediately raises the first major concern of the DA: policy coherence. The national government at the best of time finds it difficult to obtain policy coherence across departments, the best example being the contest over economic policy between the various departments in the economic cluster. No response to climate change can be effective unless all the relevant government departments on are on board, include the response projects in their strategic plans and appropriately budget for the response. The climate change response is not just another government policy; it is an overarching reworking of the way government goes about its business.

Getting the fact base right is of critical importance. The White Paper introduces a radical new approach of carbon budgets for individual economic sectors. A two year period is proposed for drawing up budgets for these sectors including energy, mining industry and transport. This will inevitability be a programme that will be fraught with conflict. It is thus important to understand what the emissions are from each sector, and how changes in emissions are going to be monitored and verified.

Government needs to be very conscious about not rushing policy and financial instruments into operation without understanding the full consequences of these measures. While the intention of the climate change response instruments will be to transition the economy to a lower carbon future, we need to understand the risks and unintended consequences of any proposed policy instruments, particularly with regards to employment levels. While there is undoubtedly much potential for new jobs in various sectors, including energy efficiency and renewable energy, there are almost certainly going to be job losses in carbon intensive industries in the medium to long term. Government must not make assumptions that workers who lose jobs in one sector will easily be able to find work in another sector. The skills requirements of a green economy are unique, and hence there are barriers to entry unless there is skills transfer and training.

The second major concern of the DA is sequencing. Government needs to introduce the right policy instruments at the right time, and must have an excellent understanding of the order in which various instruments are deployed. This must be backed up by a rigorous system of regulatory impact and risk assessment.

On a global scale government must make sure that the competitiveness of our economy, especially in relation to the other major emerging economies, is not undermined by our domestic climate change response.

Responding to climate change is important. But we need to start this journey with our eyes wide open. The White Paper provides South Africa with a good framework of response, but it is in working out the details of the response that vigilance is required.