Cap & Share for South Africa

A recent report has looked at the effects that Cap & Share would have in South Africa if introduced as part of a world climate treaty. It was commissioned by Feasta from Jeremy Wakeford, who was an economics lecturer at the University of Cape Town until earlier this year and is now Research Director for both the South African New Economics (SANE) Network and the Association for the Study of Peak Oil South Africa.

The report shows that 70% of the South African population would benefit financially from the use of C&S to reduce emissions. The report assumes that C&S is introduced overnight and that all its price effects happen instantaneously, and it looks at who would win and who would lose in such a situation. Of course, as Jeremy stresses, C&S would not be introduced that way. As everyone would get a lot of warning about the higher energy prices it would bring, it would begin to have effects months before it actually began to be used. However, it is impossible to say what all these effects would be and how rapidly they would proceed, so looking at the initial "balance of advantage" is all a study like this can do.

The report is a key part of the Feasta strategy for getting C&S adopted internationally. We would like to use it as a model for similar reports on the other BRICSA countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - as these countries will play a crucial role in determining what climate strategy the world adopts. We need to find funding before we can commission those studies and have already written to two foundations. We will also be circulating Jeremy's report to development organisations in order to convince them to support and promote C&S.

You can download the final version of the report here.