Institutional coordination of climate change policy: Lessons from the South African experience

1. B A S C I B A S I C Institutional coordination of climate change policy: Lessons from the South African experience B.A.S.I.C Project Beijing Michael Goldblatt 18th February 2006

2. Paper structure • Structure • Background • Problem statement • South African situational analysis • South African experience with a multi-stakeholder approach • Review of other country experiences • Conclusion

3. Background • Context of the paper • Task 3 addresses the challenge of policy coherence and institutional coordination with regards to policy and implementation responses to climate change • Relationship to other tasks

4. Problem statement • Outline • Description of the problem of preparing and implementing climate change policy in a developing country context • Character of the climate change issue • The character of the climate change issue is a particular one and poses substantial challenges to policy formulation and to the development of societal consensus and institutional coordination. The key characteristics of the climate change issue will be outlined, including: • Long term • Cross sectoral • Multi-disciplinary • Strong interest groups • Small numbers of losers and dispersed winners • National/International disjuncture

5. South African situational analysis • Analytical framework • This section will draw on the framework prepared by the German Development Institute (d.i.e.) for analyzing environmental capacity development. Including: • Actors: proponents and opponents of special issues. The nature and the relative power of the various actors will be described and discussed. • Strategy: the general approach to the problem and the purposeful use of available resources to achieve long-term goals • Structural framework conditions: the opportunity structure of the various actors. This includes issues relating to knowledge and information about the problem; the political and institutional conditions in which the actors operate; and the economic and technological possibilities and constraints. • Situational context: specific factors of the current situation that may hinder or promote policy change and development • Description • Description of the South African situation in some detail • Stakeholders • Focus on the stakeholder/actors involved in developing and responding to climate change policy and their relative power

6. South African experience with a multi-stakeholder approach • South African policy development experience • SA experience with the National Climate Change Coordinating Committee and the Government Committee on Climate Change • Methodology • Based on examination of the history of the NCCC and the GCCC through its minutes and through interviews with key participants on the committee • Question posed: have the NCCC and GCCC been useful forums for addressing the problem statement as characterized?

7. Cross country comparison • Review of other country experiences • Briefly describe the approach taken in the other BASIC countries to addressing the problem of coordinating an institutional response to climate change • Based on the questionnaire and follow up discussions at the workshop and over email with the other country teams

8. Conclusion • Conclusion • Conclusions and possibly recommendations on approaches to providing coordinated responses to climate change. • The paper will not provide specific institutional models as recommendations but rather try to describe the problem better and hence provide some insight into locally valid solutions

9. Thanks and apologies for the delay in preparation of the paper