Climate change and just energy transition in Africa.

Abstract

In order to achieve the climate change in the African countries, the governments both nationally and internationally have the opportunity to implement their climate and sustainability goals more coherently. Such coherent requires the coordination of interdependent policies across different policy fields, sectors, and actors. The purpose of this study was to explore how governments in African countries design and implement synergic solutions to both international agendas. Therefore, this paper is pure conceptual and has followed the secondary data and solicits salient data arguments on climate change and just energy transition in Africa. There are challenges in overcoming environmental, economic, and social burdens of the coals being phased out, especially related to jobs and inequality (SDGs 8, 10) and water, energy, food, and land nexus (SDGs 2, 6, 7, 15). Countries with different political, social, and economic backgrounds strive to manage such a transition. African countries when designing just energy transition pathway such as ensuring inclusiveness in designing making thoroughly assessing social, economic, and environmental impacts and adequately coordinating accurate actors the local, provincial, and national level. The key concepts of “energy justice” and “just energy transition” have become highly prominent in recent years. Previous studies have addressed the issues of energy justice (Sovacool & Dwarkin, 2015; Jenkins et al., 2016); we understand “energy justice” as a goal of achieving equity in the global energy system by taking into account social, economic, environmental and political effects of participating in this system.