How does everyone get a stake in the transition?

We know that the green economic transition is necessary, urgent, and already underway. But we need to ensure that the new green economy improves the lives of ordinary people everywhere - and our meeting will focus on how we can help to make the economies of the future equitable, inclusive, and people-focused.

This year marks a milestone in our evolution as a network. With 7 country programmes now up and running around the world, our partner organisations will be sharing their stories from the frontlines of the green economic transition: evidence of real and positive improvements, with the potential to achieve scale across nations, and change lives.

Co-hosted with our South African partners, The African Centre and Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS), we will be taking stock of the global transition and planning our next steps together as the largest civil society movement for fair, green economies. For a copy of the two day agenda, download attachment or read online.

This year we also hold our meeting back to back with the UN-PAGE Ministerial meeting, on 6 – 7th September, South Africa. If you are interested in attending the PAGE Ministerial, please make sure you have registered for passes here.

Useful contacts:

catriona.mclean@greeneconomycoalition.org

stuart.worsley@greeneconomycoalition.org

Venue: Hilton Cape Town City Centre 126 Buitengracht St, Cape Town, 8001 Tel: +27-21-4813700

In addition to the Hilton, we can recommend the following hotels, within easy reach of the venue: #GetAStake; Holiday Inn Express; Marriott Protea Fire & Ice

Follow the build-up on social media: @GECoalition | #GetAStake

Download conference materials here.

Green Economy Coalition policy dialogues are funded in #GetAStake
collaboration with the European Union (DCI-ENV/2016/372-847)

Numerous discussions are being held throughout the country on the alignment of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the National Development Plan (NDP), and how this alignment could be reinforced through the domestication of the SDGs and associated indicators.

To foster further multi-stakeholder discussions, the South Africa-European Union (SA-EU) Sustainability Transition Dialogue is supporting the organisation of five multi-stakeholder workshops to be hosted in different locations in the first half of 2017.

The SA-EU Sustainability Transition Dialogue is organised in partnership with the The SA-EU Dialogue Facility, the Departments of Environmental Affairs, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, and Science and Technology, and in collaboration with Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS), the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA), the University of South Africa (UNISA), the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), and the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC).

The discussions will focus on the implementation of both the NDP and the SDGs and, specifically, on the most appropriate metrics and indicators that could be used to track the progress of South Africa’s transition to sustainability.                                                                                                     

The workshops are as follows:

Workshop 1: 23-24 February 2017 (Mannah Guest Lodge, 39 Pomona Rd. Pomona, OR Tambo Int, Gauteng – closing date for expression of interest is 17 February 2017)

Workshop 2: 16-17 March 2017 (Limpopo – venue to be decided)

Workshop 3: 18-19 April 2017, alongside the SEED Symposium (Diep in die Berg, Pretoria, Gauteng)

Workshop 4: 4-5 May 2017, alongside World Economic Forum (KZN, Ethekwini – venue to be decided)

Workshop 5: 3rd or 4th week June 2017 (Western Cape ­– venue to be decided)

The workshops aim to facilitate an exchange of information between the South African and EU stakeholders.

You are invited to express your interest in participating in the workshops. Expressions of interest should be sent to the logistics team: ron@majorproductions.co.za

For any technical queries, please contact:

Mapula Tshangela: MTshangela@environment.gov.za or

Anna Mampye: AMampye@environment.gov.za.

Event: Thursday, 30 July 2015, 09:00 – 12:00 followed by lunch

TIPS, in association with the Department of Trade and Industry, the Embassy of Japan and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), hosted this workshop to discuss the Special Economic Zone (SEZ) programme and the lessons emanating from the Asian experience. The objective of was to reflect on the policy experiences of SEZs in Asia, and to have practical discussions on relevance to South Africa.  As South Africa deepens and expands its approach to using SEZ as a lever of industrial policy, it is important to understand the lessons from Asia and experiences of Japanese companies.  

This workshop is part of a series that aims to highlight policy lessons from industrial development in Asia, and to have discussions with high level government officials. The Embassy of Japan was responsible for bringing out the two speakers, who both have extensive experience working in both an Asian and African context, with important insights.

The aim of this workshop is to build research and policy capabilities in the South African government to better understand the dynamics of value chains and in so doing, to contribute to employment growth and productivity enhancement through upgrading.

The workshop will address the following issues:

• What are value chains? What differentiates them from simple input/output economic linkages?
• How are value chains governed, and by whom, and how does this affect the capacity to upgrade?
• What role do standards play in value chains?
• Given intense competition, how do value chains upgrade and in what directions?
• How does an understanding of value chain dynamics help firms to position themselves sustainably in various profitable end markets?
• How can value chains be aligned to support and promote policy design and implementation?

The workshop will focus on four value chains which are representative of other sectors:

• Capital equipment into the mining sector (also relevant to oil and gas and related sectors).
• Automobile assembly and components (also relevant to other assembly and metalworking
• industries).
• Clothing and textiles (also relevant to footwear, furniture and other consumer products).
• Agro-processing (relevant to a range of other soft commodity based sectors).

TIPS has the pleasure to invite you to a follow-up workshop discussing the impact of China on South Africa. The main objective of the workshop is to engage in a discussion on the impacts of bilateral trade with China on the domestic economy (in terms of employment, wages, output and productivity) and the impact of Chinese competition in third markets on South African exports of manufactures.

About the Project Leaders
Professor Rhys Jenkins is Professor of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia. Rhys is an economist interested in international development issues, but particularly those related to trade, foreign investment and industrialization. Rhys has worked closely with UNCTAD, UNIDO and with the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) as well as for the Department of International Development. Rhys' current research focuses on the impact of the growth of China on other developing countries, especially Latin America. Rhys has published extensively. Some of his published books include Transnational Corporations and Uneven Development (Methuen), Environmental Regulation in the New Global Economy (Edward Elgar), Industry and Environment in Latin America (Routledge) and Corporate Responsibility and Labour Rights (Earthscan). Amongst his long list of journal article publications is a recent piece for Revista CEPAL on “'The Chinese Effect' on the Price of Basic Goods and on the Value of Exports from Latin America” (2011), “Measuring the Competitive Threat from China for other Southern Exporters” in World Economy (2008), "The Impact of China on Latin America and the Caribbean" (with others) for World Development (2008).

Lawrence Edwards is an Associate Professor in the School of Economics, University of Cape Town. Lawrence's research falls within the field of international trade with a specific focus on international trade and labour, the determinants of trade flows and economic adjustments to trade liberalisation. He has published in a number of international and local journals including World Development, Journal of International Development, South African Journal of Economics and Journal of Studies in Economics and Econometrics. He has also consulted widely with the World Bank, the National Treasury, the Department of Trade and Industry and was recently a member of the South African Growth Project managed by the Centre of International Development at
Harvard University.

Trade and Industrial Policy and Strategies (TIPS) and the World Bank cordially invite you to a conference on Improving Competitiveness for Job Creation: Technology, Access to Finance and Industrial Policy, to be held on October 27, 2011 in the Vulindlela Auditorium, Development Bank of Southern Africa.

Competitiveness and Job Creation 

Employment has been identified by various actors as the top development challenge for South Africa, not least because of its implication for income inequality and social unrest. A less prominent – but closely interrelated – economic challenge is that of competitiveness. Growing employment requires growing the economy, which in turn, requires that the country grows its market share in the global economy - an achievement which requires improved competitiveness.

However, over the last decade or more, the modest growth of the South African economy has been driven, and constrained, by credit-fueled consumption, rather than by improved productivity and exports. Exports remain dominated by basic resources, but even in this sector, the stagnation or (in the case of gold) decline in export volumes (a local factor) was masked by a commodity price boom (a global factor).
A transformation of the economy towards a New Growth Path of higher growth and greater job creation requires that net exports and investment must together displace consumption as the principal sources of increased demand. A crucial issue for South Africa is whether its businesses can rapidly diversify into product categories for which global demand is expanding and whether production can be scaled up rapidly. Tapping into global growth, would result in the creation of local jobs.

Technology

Technology is sometimes considered as competing with job creation in that the massive decline of agricultural and mining jobs in South African and elsewhere around the world has been largely attributed to increased mechanization. However, at the same time, it is undeniable that no country has attained a high level of income, growth or employment without embracing technology.

While technological progress is often associated with reduced demand for low skilled labor (a phenomena know as “skill-biased technical change”), it does not mean technology progress is irrelevant to job creation. To many firms and countries technological upgrading is a matter of survival in the context of global competition, simply because competitors are embracing the productivity gains provided by technological upgrading.

Technological progress and productivity growth can be achieved through either technology innovation or absorption. Technology innovation is the development and commercialization of new, unproven technologies and untested processes and products. Technology absorption on the other hand is defined as the application of existing technologies, processes, and products proved and tested in new markets where commercial applications are not fully known. Simply put, innovation involves creation of “new-to-the-world” technology, while absorption is about “new-to-the-firm” technology.
South Africa has maintained technological advantage in some areas such as mining equipment, and has developed a fairly strong innovation system. Yet, most South African industries are not operating in the global technological frontier and could therefore benefit greatly from technological upgrading. Innovation and absorption are therefore two parallel and mutually reinforcing routes for South Africa to strengthen its global competitiveness. The National Planning Commission (NPC) Diagnostic also acknowledges the interrelated challenge (which it places on par with job creation as the country's top two challenges) of education as a means for growing skills and, in turn, the national ability for technological innovation and absorption.

Access to Finance

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) contribute greatly to competitiveness and job creation. This has been confirmed by numerous studies worldwide. A study of 76 developed and developing economies, for example, found that SMEs account for more than 60 percent of total manufacturing employment and that SMEs contributed significant proportions of GDP. SMEs are also found being positively associated with economic growth.

SME growth requires external financing, but constraints to accessing credit, consistently rated as some of the greatest barriers to the operation and growth of firms, affect SMEs more severely than large firms. Historically, the performance of the South African financial sector in providing access to finance to medium-sized and large firms in the formal sector was seen to be satisfactory, with the financial sector in general rating highly in global assessments of competitiveness. However, at the same time, many micro and small enterprises in the informal economy were facing more severe constraints. Worsening macroeconomic conditions during 2007–09 negatively impacted SME financing, due to both the reduced demand for goods and services sold by SMEs and the tightened credit conditions. Given South Africa's entrenched economic divisions, where an advanced economy operates in parallel (and some would argue, co-dependently) with a much poorer, less developed economy, there remains an important role for government in taking an active, market-leading policy stance to address structural obstacles and to ensure access to finance for all entrepreneurs.

Industrial Policy

Industrial policies are widely employed by governments to promote industrialization, technological upgrading and improved competitiveness. There are few economies in the world that do not offer incentives for industrial development. Advanced market economies are as wedded to incentive policies as are industrializing socialist economies such as China and Vietnam. But industrial policies are risky. It is always challenging to get industrial policies right, and when they go wrong, they cost dearly in terms of growth and jobs.

Additional challenge arises from the fact that the global economy is changing rapidly; industrial policies that worked before in other countries may not work today in South Africa. In particular, the strength of global demand for manufactured goods and export competition from China and India directly impinge upon the composition and pace of industrial change in South Africa and the effectiveness of industrial policies.

In implementing the Industrial Policy Action Plan, South Africa would benefit from acknowledging a historic legacy of industrial development, with good and bad elements, that gave rise to the so-called Mineral-Energy Complex. In optimizing the gains from industrial development, policies should strike a balance between persisting in programmes of industrial development that deliver significant returns in the long term, while continuously adapting policies to changing global conditions. Both persistence and change informed by evidence of improvements in investment, employment and competitiveness.

Objectives

Building on a range of analytical products completed recently by TIPS, the World Bank and other researchers, this conference is intended to provide a platform for in-depth discussion on important policy issues that have implications for competitiveness and job creation, with particular focuses on technology, entrepreneurship and SME finance, and industrial policy. It is expected that the discussions will move forward the debate on policy actions that can be taken to foster job-creating competitiveness in South Africa as well as identify knowledge gaps with policy reference that require further study and debate.

• To increase the supply of policy-relevant research in SADC by creating a pool of suitably-skilled researchers based in institutions in SADC;
• To improve the policy-relevance of research through growing the capacity of policy-makers to be discerning research users;
• To develop an appreciation of evidence-based policy making by engaging policy-makers in the design, specification, implementation and review of research projects; and
• To build institutional capacity in key organizations in SADC by creating centres of excellence in focused thematic areas of research.

The objective of the workshop was to present preliminary results from two studies carried out in South Africa as part of a UK Department for International Development funded research project which has been looking at the impact of globalisation on poverty in four countries (Bangladesh, Kenya, South Africa and Vietnam).

No Further information is available.