What is Just Transition?

Humanity needs the 2020s to be the decade of immediate and massive clean energy expansion, as well as mass-decarbonisation across every sector and the phase-out of fossil fuels. The IPCC’s latest assessments affirm that the technologies to cut emissions exist, but the pace and scale of climate action is currently insufficient. The IEA’s Net-Zero by 2050 Roadmap sets out the extraordinary growth in renewables needed.

But the necessary speed and scale of decarbonisation also comes with significant social risks to a wide range of people if transitions are not rolled out well.

The concept of a “just transition” reflects this imperative of managing the social impacts of decarbonisation. In essence, it is an approach to decarbonisation that respects human rights while promoting sustainable development, the eradication of poverty, and the creation of decent work and quality jobs. It is considered by many to be a once-in-a-generation opportunity - a chance to avert climate disaster while transforming economies and industries to address inequality and exclusion.

In many countries, poorly managed transitions have already resulted in job losses, protests against green policies, and widening inequality.

Significant social risks face a wide range of people if transitions are not rolled out well. For example:

• Workers: the ILO estimates that in the shift to a climate-neutral and circular economy 80million jobs will be lost. At the same time, 100million new jobs will be created. This highlights the varying ways employment can be impacted: (i) new jobs will be created; (ii) some jobs might be substituted; (iii) certain jobs will be eliminated; and (iv) almost all jobs will be transformed in some way.

• Indigenous Peoples are overlooked both in terms of the impacts that can occur, but also the importance of their role in driving solutions. Around half of the world’s land is governed by indigenous peoples, and this land contains around 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. One in three people on earth is dependent on these lands for their wellbeing and livelihood. Despite the majority of these lands being managed sustainably and providing highly valuable ecosystem services, only 10% of indigenous land tenure is recognised under national law. Indigenous peoples are estimated to receive just 1% of climate finance currently, putting at least 290 GT of carbon stored in their collective lands at risk - equivalent to five times the total global emissions for 2021.

• Land and environmental defenders: Environmental defenders, many of whom are indigenous peoples, also face intolerable risks as they champion sustainable solutions or raise concerns about harms associated with poorly planned transitions or irresponsible business operations. They are vital leaders of a just transition, yet trackers counted 177 killings of land and environmental defenders around the world last year, over 415 violent attacks, and also an increasing number of defenders subject to criminalisation as a silencing strategy.

Just transition has come increasingly centre stage in national and international discussions on finance, energy, agriculture, and other key industrial transitions to net-zero. This broad uptake of the just transition concept is essential to manage the impacts of decarbonisation on workers, indigenous groups, communities, and others - and to prevent social dissent and disruption slowing climate action.

But this growth in recognition has also been coloured by wide-ranging and conflicting definitions and interpretations of what “just” really means and how to go about achieving it in different geographic contexts and industries. There is a growing and serious risk that just transition language is increasingly misused and misapplied, intentionally and unintentionally, without sufficient clarity or accountability.

IHRB’s research and engagement advances the application of  four essential elements to ensure the “just” dimensions of transitions are realised, and contribute to greater coherence, comparability, and accountability across transitions globally:

• Risks and Impacts: The actions of public and private actors engaged in transition processes will inevitably pose risks to potentially affected groups, including workers, communities, indigenous peoples, and consumers. These adverse impacts should be actively prevented and mitigated through ongoing human rights due diligence.

• Opportunities and Benefits: The fulfilment of human rights and requirements for a dignified life are foundational to workers, communities, indigenous peoples, and consumers impacted by transition processes. These and other affected stakeholders should be able to negotiate and access the opportunities and benefits, as well as trade-offs, that the pathway to the green economy entails.

• Agency and Accountability: Deliberate inclusivity and meaningful engagement should be part of all transition plans, processes, and outcomes in order to achieve bottom-up support for the necessary disruptions to come. Both risk prevention and opportunity maximisation are dependent on building accountability to, and ensuring the agency of, potentially affected groups in transition planning and decision making.

• Transformational Systems Change: A just transition cannot simply replace an extractive carbon economy with a system of green extraction where fundamental power relations remain unchanged. A sustainable and just future requires more fundamental reshaping of economies to produce regenerative systems that address unequal power dynamics head on.

IHRB's Just Transitions programme seeks to contribute to a wider understanding of just transitions through research and testing effective approaches for companies and governments to integrate the voices and concerns of those impacted by climate-related policy and action at every level. Our foundational report, Just Transitions for All: Business, Human Rights and Climate Action, sets out the benefits of approaches that consider the rights of all potentially affected groups affected by transitions. IHRB's four essential elements for safeguarding the "just" in just transition offer further context and guidance for how to combat the confusion and risk of cooption that is growing as the concept gains popularity.

We are expanding upon this work through the exploration of key transition areas, including:

• Just Stories: Narratives illustrating the benefits of meaningful engagement between public and private enterprises and workers, communities, and indigenous groups are rare to non-existent within the net-zero agenda. This project will highlight change-makers – from transitioning institutions and the frontline groups most affected – who are finding ways of doing things differently, working in meaningful partnership to navigate the social, environmental, and economic trade-offs involved in the race to net-zero.

• Financing the Transition: There is significant potential for social impact considerations to be better baked into each component of the spectrum of finance, to harness the critical role of capital in driving rights-respecting and people-centred transitions across every industry.

• The Costs of Green Conflict: The growth of renewable energy around the world is bringing with it significant distress, disruption, and dissent from indigenous groups, communities, and workers. This two-year project will seek to evidence and demonstrate the operational and reputational costs to renewable energy companies across a mix of green technologies when they fail to secure or maintain their social licence to operate.

• The 'J' in 'JETP': Just Energy Transition Partnerships are fast becoming a go-to model for national-level decarbonisation initiatives. They represent the nexus of the financing and social imperatives at the heart of achieving net-zero. Our work on JETPs analyses the human rights risks and social opportunities associated with private sector involvement in JETPs, starting with a pilot study on South Africa, the first JETP country and most advanced in terms of implementation.

• The Built Environment: There is growing recognition of “social value”, “impact investing”, and the importance of the 2030 Development Agenda among some investors, developers, architects, construction and engineering firms. But there is much less awareness of the potential adverse human rights impacts that can arise throughout the built environment lifecycle, including in the growing wave of green buildings and retrofits.

• Coastal Renewables: The growth of wind energy globally is essential in the transition to net zero. To date, however, consultation by energy companies and investors with locally affected communities - whose livelihoods may be harmed if not destroyed by new wind installations - is largely inadequate