ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a key element of the Sustainable Development Goals target to foster economic growth through the process of structural change, from low-productivity sectors to high-productivity sectors. In its most essential form, structural transformation is a shift in employment and output from agriculture to industry and then to services. The global climate crisis has important implications for the process of structural transformation and significantly complicates the core elements of this approach to economic development. Many advanced economies in the Global North, and more recently China, industrialised on the basis of massive carbon emissions to foster industrial development. Net-zero targets in the 21st century mean that this route is now not available to developing countries in the Global South. To explore this issue, we focus on South Africa, where this challenge is particularly acute. South Africa has experienced premature deindustrialisation and concomitant high unemployment and the world’s worst income and wealth inequality. In this chapter, we examine the nexus of the crises of unemployment, inequality, and the climate in South Africa, and examine ways in which a process of renewed structural transformation could address some of the existential challenges facing the country.
