Climate and Energy Justice

Established in 1999, groundWork is an environmental justice organisation working through the lens of a Just Transition and Open Democracy. We work with communities to resist dirty energy and toxic production, building local alliances with workers and advocating for open debate and democratic decision making about the future. groundWork is a principles-driven NGO with committed and capable staff who make a significant contribution to building the environmental justice movement in South Africa and the region. We work with a broad spectrum of people, from NGOs, community organisations and peoples’ movements, to governments and academia, to hold government and corporates to account and challenge environmental racism and injustice on the ground. We also work with communities who are fighting for democratic control over resources such as energy, waste, and health for their Constitutional right to ‘an environment that is not harmful to their health and well-being’, and to secure their livelihoods. To achieve the objective of environmental justice, groundWork works through six thematic campaigns, these are: 1) Climate and Energy Justice; 2) Coal; 3) Waste; 4) Environmental Health; 5) Communications; and 6) Environmental Justice Education.

Based in Durban or Johannesburg, groundWork seeks to appoint a suitably qualified and experienced:
CLIMATE AND ENERGY JUSTICE CAMPAIGNER

The Climate and Energy Justice (CEJ) Campaigner reports to the Senior Climate and Energy Justice Campaign Manager, who manages the CEJ Campaign within groundWork, aligned to the groundWork Programme.

The Climate and Energy Justice Campaign

The CEJ Campaign seeks to support and work with fenceline communities who cultivate community resilience to climate impacts and build social power through mutual solidarity and alliances with workers and the wider justice movement. This includes people’s food, energy, and water sovereignty, to create resilience to climate impacts and to demonstrate steps to a just transition towards a regenerative economy.

The CEJ Campaign focus includes:

- The movement to resist oil and gas development (onshore and offshore) is sustained and expanded in South Africa and the region.
- Identifying and resisting (in the media, on the streets, and in the courts) plans that support dirty energy, false solutions and peoples’ exclusion from decision making.
- Community Based Organisations (CBOs) mobilising for people’s energy sovereignty and food sovereignty.
- Community exchanges to share information in climate change, respond to local, national, international, and corporate climate policies and strategies for people’s solutions in an open democracy context.
- The social and environmental impacts from an extractive economy reorientated to renewable energy technologies are monitored and explored through regional/international exchanges.
- Working across global initiatives and in coalition with several leading environmental campaigns internationally, including Friends of the Earth International. At a regional level, the Campaign will link with Friends of the Earth Africa (FoEA), Oilwatch Africa (OWA), and the African Climate Justice Convenors (ACJC), to resist dirty energy and advocate for an equitable climate response within the continent and in North-South relations. Nationally, the campaign supports the Life After Coal Campaign (LAC), a partnership with groundWork, Centre for Environmental Rights and Earth Life Africa, and works with national gas resistance and climate movements.
- Intersections with groundWork’s other campaigns. The Coal campaign aims to keep coal in the hole. The Waste Campaign aims to prevent incineration. The Environmental Health campaign aims to make health workers advocates for climate and energy justice. The CEJ campaign brings these strands together and adds resistance to oil and gas expansion to make a ground-based movement for climate and energy justice.

CEJ Campaigner

Key Responsibilities include:

- Under the guidance of the Senior Climate and Energy Campaign manager, implement work plans aligned to groundWork’s programme and campaign indicators.
- Working to collectively, and efficiently, respond to environmental justice needs from society and support movement building on the ground.
- Supporting Campaign staff to effectively deliver the objectives of the Campaign and groundWork’s vision.
- Supporting the needs of groundWork partners - ensuring that campaign activities are efficiently communicated to groundWork and responded to by groundWork.
- Responding to/and coordinating the development and implementation of relevant strategies for dirty energy phase out, including gas and false solutions, addressing climate change vulnerabilities and the Just Transition in South Africa and regionally.
- Working with our global partners to respond to the global urgency of the phase out of dirty energy and transition to just clean energy within an open democracy framework.
- Supporting an