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The report examines oil exploration by Shell South Africa off the Wild Coast, highlighting a legal interdict against seismic blasting due to inadequate environmental authorisation under NEMA and poor community consultation. It identifies legislative discrepancies between the MPRDA and NEMA and calls for strengthened governance, transparency, and better alignment of regulatory frameworks to manage natural resources.

The briefing evaluates 16 countries against 1.5°C-aligned power sector benchmarks, finding that no assessed country is fully on track. It argues for a global phase-out of coal and fossil gas by 2040, noting that while some countries are making progress on coal, there is a critical lack of explicit fossil gas phase-out plans and insufficient renewable energy acceleration globally.

The Centre for Environmental Rights, acting on behalf of Appellants, submitted a statement to the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment opposing a request by Tetra4 (Pty) Ltd for condonation regarding the late filing of its responding statement in an appeal against an environmental authorisation granted on 13 July 2023.

China's solar panel exports grew by 34% in the first half of 2023, reaching 114 GW. While manufacturing capacity is sufficient to meet 1.5C pathway goals, bottlenecks in installation and grid integration are leading to increased stockpiles, particularly in Europe.

The COMPACT stakeholder engagement session focused on enhancing local government accountability and responsiveness through innovative public participation. Key findings emphasize the value of hybrid engagement systems—combining traditional and digital methods—and the role of civil society in amplifying community contributions. The event led to the establishment of a COMPACT Reference Committee and the gathering of inputs for a public participation toolbox, with attendance from eight partner municipalities, various sector departments, and research institutes.

The report examines the sugar cane sector, noting that while it supports over 100 million people globally, many smallholder farmers in developing countries remain in poverty due to low farm gate prices and high production costs. It evaluates the role of Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSSs) like Bonsucro and Fairtrade, noting that while approximately 8% of global production is VSS-compliant, the impact on farmer income is limited by a lack of demand for sustainable cane sugar. The document highlights that farmers face climate-related crop losses, biodiversity loss, and water depletion, alongside economic pressures from the COVID-19 pandemic and rising fertilizer costs.

The Joint Strategic Resource (JSR) submits that the Public Procurement Bill 2023 remains rooted in an 'administrative paradigm' that prioritizes rigid compliance over procurement outcomes. The JSR argues that the Bill fails to clearly define the 'public procurement system' or the authority for preferential procurement policy, potentially violating section 217 of the Constitution. They advocate for a 'strategic procurement paradigm' that grants accounting officers more flexibility to tailor purchasing strategies to specific project needs and suggests that the Bill should embed clear procurement principles at the statutory level rather than relying on National Treasury instructions.

PARI argues that the Public Procurement Bill 2023 misinterprets Section 217 of the Constitution, particularly regarding preferential procurement, and risks legal instability by deferring too much substance to unpublished subordinate instruments. The submission proposes specific rewrites to Section 17 to ensure a mandatory national legislative framework for economic development and local content. It further recommends strengthening whistleblower protections, expanding automatic exclusions for political office-bearers, and clarifying access and disclosure clauses to prevent the Bill from becoming a 'secrecy clause'.

The Procurement Reform Working Group (PRWG) supports the introduction of the Public Procurement Bill 2023 as a means to simplify South Africa's fragmented procurement legal framework, which currently consists of over 100 pieces of legislation. However, the PRWG argues that the Bill fails to provide clear definitions for 'preferential procurement' and 'public procurement' and grants excessive law-making power to the National Treasury and the Public Procurement Office. The group advocates for the Bill to contain concrete core rules and principles—including open contracting and proactive transparency—rather than relying on subordinate legislation, to ensure the system is fair, equitable, transparent, competitive, and cost-effective.

The Institute for Economic Justice criticizes the South African National Treasury for presenting expenditure cuts as the only solution to a 'fiscal cliff'. The author argues that austerity leads to the collapse of critical services, increased poverty, and long-term GDP decline. Proposed alternatives include removing tax breaks for high earners, returning the corporate income tax rate to 28%, and lowering borrowing costs through state-mandated lending and capital controls.

Analysis of G20 coal power emissions reveals that while 12 of 20 economies saw per capita declines since 2015, Australia and South Korea remain the top polluters, each emitting more than triple the global average. In contrast, emerging economies like Indonesia, Türkiye, China, and India experienced increases in per capita emissions as electricity demand outpaced renewable growth. The G20's combined per capita emissions rose slightly from 1.5 to 1.6 tonnes of CO2 between 2015 and 2022, underscoring a slow overall transition despite individual national progress.

The Corporate Climate Finance Playbook, developed by the Climate Policy Initiative and Salesforce, argues that meeting global climate targets requires corporations to move beyond piecemeal efforts toward an integrated climate finance strategy. The document categorizes financial tools into capital deployment, capital management, and capital raising, providing a decision-making flowchart to match instruments to the innovation stage of a project and the company's risk appetite. It highlights best practices from companies like Autodesk, Microsoft, and Cisco Foundation, emphasizing the use of blended finance to de-risk early-stage technologies and scale existing solutions.

Global power sector emissions plateaued in the first half of 2023, increasing by only 0.2%. While wind and solar generation grew and increased their share of the global power mix, a historic decline in hydropower due to droughts—particularly in China—prevented a more significant emissions drop. Low electricity demand in high-income economies further suppressed emissions growth.

The document argues that M&E is inherently connected to power and can either promote equity and resilience or reinforce dominance and exclusion. Through the analysis of six South African case studies, it identifies four 'enablers' for transformative M&E: contextualized learning, inclusive processes, increased agency for Global South actors in design, and institutional arrangements that ensure long-term continuity. It emphasizes that achieving equitable resilience requires shifting power dynamics and moving beyond funder-driven compliance toward locally-led development.

The report finds that while the South African Parliament possesses sufficient legal powers to oversee the executive, its actual capacity to enforce accountability is weak. This failure is attributed to a political environment that disincentivises scrutiny, inefficient committee processes, inadequate technical and research resourcing, and a lack of capability or commitment among many MPs. The authors distinguish between 'explanatory accountability' (giving reasons), which is routinely performed but often procedurally superficial, and 'amendatory accountability' (remedying defects), which is described as 'barely extant'. Key recommendations include establishing a dedicated committee to oversee the Presidency, reforming the appointment of committee chairs to include more opposition members, and creating a formal system to track and enforce executive compliance with parliamentary resolutions.

The document identifies significant gaps in Africa's 'hard' (physical) and 'soft' (electronic) digital infrastructure, noting that limited wired connectivity and a lack of formal identity systems exclude large portions of the population from the digital economy. It recommends that the African Union establish continental regulatory forums to reduce policy fragmentation and that the African Development Bank prioritise wired, terrestrial networking to lower costs and increase reliability. To address 'last-mile' connectivity, the report suggests using blockchain-based social-impact bonds to attract private investment. Furthermore, it proposes adopting open-access identity and payment platforms based on the India Stack model and creating an African digital integration index to track progress.

The South African Youth Gender Action Plan (SA YGAP) is a framework developed by youth aged 13-30 to address systemic gender inequalities in South Africa. It proposes specific interventions across seven pillars: education, health, safety, gender-based violence (GBV), identity and sexuality, the public/private sector, and sustainable transformation. Key demands include the national adoption of inclusive school policies, the provision of free menstrual products, the recognition of obstetric violence as a form of homicide, and the integration of marginalised genders into 'Just Transition' climate policies. The plan emphasizes an intersectional approach to dismantle patriarchal and heteronormative structures affecting women, youth, and the LGBTQIA+ community.

The document analyzes the 'structural disjuncture' between the European Union's bilateral approach to international relations and the BRICS bloc's pursuit of an inclusive, South-South multilateral model. It argues that BRICS challenges the EU's historical hegemony in global governance, economic power, and trade policies. While the Russia-Ukraine war has further polarized the EU and BRICS, the author suggests opportunities for cooperation on the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) and the energy transition.

The Centre for Environmental Rights, on behalf of the Life after Coal Campaign, submits that the draft South African Renewable Energy Masterplan (SAREM) fails to sufficiently integrate gender justice. The submission highlights significant underrepresentation of women in South Africa's energy sectors—including only 14% in renewable energy and 21% in coal—and argues that without deliberate design and measurable targets, the transition will maintain existing inequalities. It recommends that SAREM explicitly elevate gender equality as a key outcome, implement conditional state support for women's employment, and provide dedicated financial and developmental support for women-owned businesses through mechanisms like the proposed Transformation Fund.

The submission argues that the draft SAREM over-relies on private investment and fails to sufficiently address the impact of the global supply chain crisis on renewable energy costs. It advocates for a state-led industrial policy, including the use of import tariffs and the central role of Eskom in renewable generation, to avoid 'boom-bust' cycles and ensure a just transition for workers. Key recommendations include establishing a 'decent work' framework, implementing aggressive local content requirements (suggesting 50% for future RFPs), and creating a technology transfer system to support local manufacturing.