Paper short abstract:

The paper addresses two intertwined developments - the global imperative of climate action and the rise of social movements across the globe demanding low-carbon transitions and phasing-out of fossil fuels – and focuses on the environmental movement demanding a coal phase-out in South Africa.

Paper long abstract:

The global imperative of climate action, as agreed upon at international climate conferences, calls for a global low-carbon transition and a phase-out of fossil fuels. Increasingly, social movements across the globe demand more ambitious and faster transitions.

These two intertwined global developments can both also be seen in South Africa: South Africa has a highly coal-intensive electricity system and thus faces the challenge to phase-out coal. As a country with a long and rich history of protest, among them environmental protests, we currently also see the rise of climate protests taking place in South Africa.

The paper asks how social movements, such as the South African climate movement, frame the low-carbon transition and how they mobilize for their objectives of a just transition, which includes taking into account the interests of workers as well as environmental concerns and commitments to climate policies.

Drawing on qualitative research conducted across the country, the paper focuses on debates of social movements in transition processes and the roles that social movements play in them. Thus, it analyses how social movements demanding a low-carbon transition imagine the low-carbon future and the pathways to achieve this as well as which practices the social movement applies to achieve its goal.

Theoretically, the paper combines social movement literature and transition literature. With this, it contributes to the literature on low-carbon transitions – a literature that is so far dominated by Global North case studies – and to the understanding of agency of social movements in such transitions.