The Environmental Policy Research Programme studies the risks and opportunities at the intersection of the environment and the economy. We invite you to join us in exploring how environmental and climate policies can support economic growth and productivity in South Africa, and how they coordinate with fiscal, monetary, trade, industrial, competition, health, education, and labour policies. The Programme works at the level of policy design, sequencing, and implementation, and welcomes research from across applied economics and political-economy traditions. Our key thematic areas include:

• Sustainable growth — theory and architecture: How can environmental and resource constraints be integrated into South African growth strategy, and how can natural capital accounting inform fiscal and development planning?
• Reforming South Africa's energy system: What market design, pricing, and transition policies will deliver reliable, affordable, and competitive electricity in a partially unbundled system, and how does the political economy of decision-making shape policy outcomes?
• Trade, competitiveness, and climate policy instruments: How should South Africa's carbon pricing regime evolve, how does CBAM affect exposed firms, and where does South Africa have a defensible position in emerging green industrial value chains?
• Climate adaptation, environmental health, water, and natural capital: What financing architecture is appropriate for adaptation given South Africa's middle-income status, how can water service delivery reform be sequenced, and what are the productivity costs of air pollution and natural capital depletion?
• Distributional impacts of the green transition: How does the transition affect households, labour markets, and firms — particularly the firm-size-distributional consequences of compliance costs given South Africa's missing-middle problem?