Understanding change, inequality and adaptation in South Africa’s coal regions
The global transition towards cleaner energy is transforming coal-dependent regions around the world. In South Africa, this transformation is particularly significant in Mpumalanga, a province at the heart of the country’s coal mining and electricity production. As the energy sector changes, communities face uncertain futures, including potential job losses, environmental challenges, and the need to develop new economic opportunities.
Yet these transformations do not affect everyone equally.
INCOAL is a five-year international research project (2026–2031) investigating how communities in South Africa’s coalfields experience, respond to, and adapt to the energy transition. At the centre of our research is intersectionality: the recognition that people’s opportunities, vulnerabilities, and experiences are shaped by overlapping social inequalities, including gender, age, class, ethnicity, and migration status.
Rather than treating coal-dependent communities as homogeneous groups, INCOAL seeks to understand the diversity of experiences, aspirations, and capacities that shape their responses to economic and environmental change.
Our research
INCOAL combines social science research with participatory and arts-based approaches to investigate three interconnected questions:
- How are communities adapting? We explore the strategies people develop to navigate uncertainty, sustain their livelihoods, and imagine alternative futures beyond coal.
- Who benefits from the transition, and who risks being left behind? We investigate how social inequalities shape access to opportunities, resources, and decision-making processes.
- How can energy transitions become more inclusive and equitable? We examine how public policies, institutions, businesses, and civil society organisations respond to local needs and how community knowledge can contribute to better decisions.
Our research combines ethnographic fieldwork, photography, storytelling, interviews, participatory workshops, institutional analysis, and a large-scale survey of more than 1,000 households. By bringing these approaches together, we aim to connect people’s everyday experiences with broader processes of political, economic, and environmental transformation.
Research with communities, not only about them
INCOAL is guided by the conviction that people living in coal-dependent regions are not merely affected by the energy transition. They are also active participants in shaping their own futures.
Through collaboration with communities, researchers, artists, civil society organisations, and decision-makers, the project seeks to document local knowledge, support community-led adaptation initiatives, and create spaces for dialogue.
Our ambition is to contribute to a better understanding of what a just transition means in practice: not simply replacing fossil fuels with cleaner energy, but addressing the inequalities that determine whose voices are heard, whose livelihoods are protected, and whose visions of the future become possible.
An international research collaboration
INCOAL is coordinated by the University of Copenhagen (Denmark) in collaboration with South African research institutions and community-based partners, including the University of the Free State, the University of the Witwatersrand, and Kwaguqa Arts Initiative.
The project runs from April 2026 to March 2031 and is funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, with the grant administered by Danida Fellowship Centre.
Through research, training, knowledge exchange, and public engagement, INCOAL aims to generate evidence and practical insights relevant not only to South Africa but also to other coal-dependent regions confronting the challenges of energy transition worldwide.