Decarbonise, yes. De‑develop, no.

We’re out of time on the science of climate change; 2025 was the third-hottest year since records began – earning the famous climate stripes graphic created by University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins, another dark red stripe. This despite the fact that it was meant to be a cooler year as El Niño tailed off, to be replaced by its opposite pattern, La Niña.

Even without the visual evidence of a warming planet, climate change impacts aren’t a future scenario; in Africa, they’re baked into daily life in the form of water shortages, food insecurity, and catastrophic flooding.

So, there’s no hedging on decarbonisation: we have to phase down fossil fuels fast. The real question, from a South African and wider African vantage point, is how we do that without deepening poverty, inequality and political fragility – and without simply repainting an old extractive model in green.

Branding upgrade or concrete change?

From a distance, the “just transition” can look like a branding upgrade: the same decarbonisation curves, now garnished with fairness. Up close, in coal towns and townships, it is much more concrete. It’s about whether a coal worker in Mpumalanga has a real bridge into another job, whether a municipality can still fund clinics when a power station closes, and whether a family that already lives with blackouts can trust that “green” power will be more reliable and not just more expensive.

If climate action shows up as higher prices, less secure work and decisions taken elsewhere, people will resist it – and that resistance will be rational. The only politically durable climate action is the kind that feels like an upgrade in dignity, opportunity and reliability, especially for those who have had the least of all three.

That’s why the line “we will decarbonise, but we will not de‑develop” matters. As we change the way we power and run our economies, we cannot ask highly unequal societies to accept more sacrifice so that countries that have already enjoyed 150 years of carbon‑fuelled growth can feel better about themselves. If those who lit most of the fire now insist everyone shares the water bill equally, the politics will collapse.

Power, payoff and permanence

Justice requires that the biggest historic emitters move first and fastest in their own economies, but also put serious grant and ultra‑concessional finance on the table, and accept that debt relief, technology transfer and fairer trade rules are part of the price of a liveable planet – not radical extras.

At the same time, justice is not only about who pays; it’s about who decides. Too many “just transition” plans are written in capitals and international agencies, then presented to workers and communities as a fait accompli. To push back against that, I find a simple test useful: Power, Payoff, and Permanence.

Power denotes, who actually sets the agenda and controls the money and data? If communities, workers and local institutions join only after the main decisions are made, we’re not doing inclusion; we’re doing theatre.

Payoff is about who gets the concrete benefits – the jobs, the cheaper and cleaner energy, the resilience – and who carries the risk and disruption? If the main winners are Northern balance sheets and domestic elites while the poor absorb the shocks, we’ve just rebranded extraction as climate policy.

Finally, permanence translates into what exists in ten years – stronger municipalities, skills systems and local industries, or a handful of expired pilot projects and a shelf of reports? We need to start where people are by mapping, in detail, who depends on the fossil economy, what skills they have, and which sectors can genuinely absorb them. Tie plant closure timelines to visible ladders into new work, not to vague promises of “green jobs”.

The next big arena of competitive advantage

The reality is that as 2026 unfolds and the temperatures continue to rise, the energy transition is becoming one of the main arenas in which countries compete and companies differentiate themselves. There is a reason China is powering ahead with the most ambitious energy transition in history, and two-thirds of every dollar globally spent on energy is already going to cleaner options. Countries are betting that this will be the strategic differentiator of the next decade. Imagine, for instance, how regions able to offer cheap, reliable, and clean electricity at scale will have a structural advantage in attracting energy-intensive AI-driven investment in the future.

Not everyone, of course, is convinced by this argument. There are critiques from all sides. But a just transition is not a technocratic puzzle; it’s a contested political project. There will always be arguments about how much change is enough, about how fast we can move, about whether green growth is a contradiction in terms. A wise approach doesn’t try to wish those arguments away. It acknowledges them, then asks: given the constraints we actually have – fiscal, political, institutional – what is the most ambitious, fair and workable path we can fight for now?

To get there we will need to insist that global alliances – whether university networks, development banks or climate clubs – behave less like networking forums and more like delivery systems: co‑producing research with cities and communities, translating evidence into real rules and curricula, and sharing methods and tools at scale.

The point is not to soften the demand for decarbonisation in the here and now. Quite the opposite: by tying it to inclusion, dignity and visible opportunity, we give it a chance of surviving the political and social stress that is coming. We say, in effect: yes, we are all‑in on cutting emissions. But we are equally all‑in on making sure the transition does not once again ask the poorest to pay the highest price.

Decarbonise, yes. De‑develop, no. If we can hold that line – in budgets, in projects, in how we negotiate and who we put in the room – then “just transition” can be more than a slogan. It can become a direction of travel that all people can recognise as their own.

Jon Foster-Pedley is the dean of Henley Business School Africa and Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University of Reading, Global Engagement (Sub-Saharan Africa). The University of Reading is the host of the Secretariat of the International Universities Climate Alliance (IUCA) from 2026 – 2028.

This article was originally published in News24 Business.