CLIMATE CHANGE ACT COMMENCEMENT BEGINS

CLIMATE CHANGE ACT COMMENCEMENT BEGINS

• 17 March 2025
• Environmental Law
• SA Legal Academy

Please note: On 17 March 2025, well after the publication of the presidential proclamation, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries & the Environment issued a media statement on the significance of Act’s commencement, nevertheless drawing attention to sections not yet in force.

Although the 2024 Climate Change Act is now largely in force, pending the development of the necessary secondary legislation the commencement of a raft of key provisions has been deferred. A presidential proclamation announcing this was gazetted in the Government Gazette nearly a year after Parliament passed the Bill concerned – and eight months after it was signed into law. According to a memorandum on the objects of that Bill, among other things the new statute’s commencement is expected to:

• ‘enable the development of an effective climate change response’, and
• facilitate South Africa’s ‘long-term, just transition to a climate-resilient, lower-carbon economy and society’.

To that end, the Act requires ‘every organ of state’ exercising powers or performing functions ‘affected by climate change’ or ‘entrusted with powers and duties aimed at the achievement, promotion and protection of a sustainable environment’ to:

• ‘review and if necessary, revise, amend, co-ordinate and harmonise their policies, laws, measures, programmes and decisions’ in order to:
  • ‘ensure that the risks of climate change impacts and associated vulnerabilities are taken into consideration’, and
  • ‘give effect to the principles and objects’ set out in the Act.

With that in mind, the Act:

• provides for the establishment, management and functions of provincial and municipal climate change fora, as well as a presidential climate change commission, and
• requires the Minister, within prescribed timeframes, to develop:
  • specific plans and strategies
  • ‘determine a national greenhouse gas emissions trajectory’, and
  • ‘list the greenhouse gas emitting sectors and sub-sectors … subject to sectoral emissions targets’.

The commencement of the following sections of the Act has been deferred:

• 12(6) (remuneration of commissioners)
• 13(1), 13(2), 13(3)(b) (appointment of a presidential commission executive director)
• 14(3)(a) (funds earmarked for the commission in the Minister’s departmental vote)
• 15(5), 15(6) (ministerial and directorial reporting requirements)
• 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 (provincial and municipal response to climate change; and national adaptation to climate change impacts)
• 25(4)(c) (quantitative and qualitative greenhouse gas emission reduction goals)
• 26(2) to (6) (listed greenhouse gases and activities)
• 27 (carbon budgets)
• 28 (phase-down and phase-out of synthetic greenhouse gas emissions and related declarations), and 
• 30(2)(a) and (b) (regulations).

Please click the links below for more information:

• presidential proclamation
• Act

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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