About this brief
Climate change is necessitating a transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Despite policies implemented to mitigate the impacts, marginalised groups – including indigenous people, women and youth – remain disproportionately affected.
The unjust transition in this policy brief highlights the exclusion of young people in Mpumalanga Province’s Steve Tshwete Local Municipality (STLM) in South Africa, an area heavily reliant on coal-mining industry. The limited scope of the STLM’s solar installation project, the exclusion of youth from meaningful employment opportunities and their marginalisation from ownership and control of productive assets reveal the disparities in the transition process. The findings underscore the need for more inclusive and targeted policies to ensure that youth are not left behind in the transition to a sustainable future.
To ensure a just transition, it is crucial to implement policies and projects that provide comprehensive training, sustainable job opportunities and equitable access to resources for all, particularly marginalised groups. This policy brief contributes to the ongoing just transition discourse by emphasising that the diverse needs of youth must be prioritised in policy making processes.
This policy brief aims to:
• Inform policy makers of the challenges that youth face to access opportunities within the just transition.
• Draw attention to the need to increase youth participation in just transition policymaking.
• Encourage policymakers to fund innovative youth ideas.
