Why we need place-based “just transitions”
Ed Atkins
In the first few days of COP26 at Glasgow, a flurry of announcements pledged to ramp up efforts to mitigate climate change. A reduction of methane emissions, a promise to end deforestation and — albeit somewhat obscured by the more headline-grabbing pledges — the launch of an International Just Energy Transition Partnership.
This partnership, between South Africa and the UK, USA, France, Germany and the European Union, represents two key developments. First, the channelling of $8.5 billion of climate finance from the global north to the global south — supporting the decarbonisation of South Africa’s economy.
Second, the partnership describes this funding in a language that is explicitly grounded in justice, equity and inclusion — particularly for those workers and communities who will be negatively affected by decarbonisation.
In doing so, the partnership provides an important illustration of how international climate negotiations have increasingly couched climate action in terms of a necessity of not only rapid decarbonisation, but supporting those who may be left behind. We can see this in the 2018 Silesia Declaration, made at COP24 in Katowice, Poland, that stressed that carbon reductions must be accompanied by a just transition of the workforce, by ensuring the availability of new forms of employment.
The term “just transition” has its roots in the labour movement. Its first use can be found in the calls of the US activist, Tony Mazzocchi, for a “Superfund for Workers” to support those moving away from hazardous jobs. In doing so, it is a powerful tool in overcoming the narrative of environmental regulation being a jobs-killer, and in increasing representation of working-class communities in present-day environmentalism.
Today, a call for a just transition highlights how any transition to net-zero will not be sustainable if it creates or exacerbates inequality. This has been linked to participation in decision-making or how new technologies can be made accessible to all. These are significant developments that highlight important inequities, with the result that the term has far greater reach than ever before.
There are some exciting political changes. In Scotland, the work of the Just Transition Commission has been widely celebrated for putting such policies at the heart of government (although concrete policies are forthcoming). The European Union has set up the Just Transition Mechanism, involving over €65 billion of funding to support communities. Yet, more needs to be done. The International Trade Union Congress keeps scorecards of countries adopting policies of just transition in their Nationally Determined Contributions, key documents submitted to climate summits to detail efforts being taken. Going into COP26, only nine countries, plus the European Union, have such policies.
The presence of a language of just transition at COP26 also represents an important change. While its origins can be found in bottom-up movements, its application today can often be top-down — with world leaders at global summits detailing what such a framework might entail.
However, the terminology of “just transition” is now at risk of strictly becoming a policy term. A recent survey of North Sea oil and gas workers (a key group targeted by just transition policies) found that 91% of respondents had never heard of the term “just transition”.
The role of communities in any net-zero future should not be neglected. Policies cannot just be forced upon communities from the top. Nor can they be blind to how they impact people in different ways. Doing so risks pushback — as seen in the Gilet Jaunes movement in France.
This involves grounding a just transition in the places where it will happen and, with it, taking into account local insight and the broader factors that can often be forgotten. Such as the histories of deindustrialisation and change that disrupt a community or arouse suspicion when outsiders turn up talking of “transition”. Or specific, local patterns of vulnerability and resilience that may alter how policies are received — and how these could be addressed. Or how new schemes can be targeted to help marginalised members of the community.
One route to this is through participatory politics and the hosting of citizen’s assemblies — a representative group of citizens, often selected at random, who meet to discuss and make recommendations on particular issues. In Bristol, the citizens’ assembly discussing climate change made recommendations that were grounded in a deep local knowledge of the city. All represented a series of important steps to not just mitigating climate change, but also improving the lives of citizens.
To ensure a just transition, net-zero policies must listen to these local voices. But there should also be honesty about what policies might mean in the future. The infuriating thing about the planned coal mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria isn’t just how it will affect the climate. It’s also how it will lock a community into a carbon-heavy industry — the need for which, according to the Climate Change Committee, should not exist past 2035. While there are many promises of jobs now, what comes next?
Workers and communities so often see employers leave and manufacturing plants close without an answer to this question of what happens next. Yet, they can be empowered to define how shuttered plants might be re-used and how they can contribute to the building of a net-zero economy. Earlier this year, the announcement of the closure of the GKN Automotive factory in Birmingham led to workers putting together a plan of how production could be reorganised and put to work to support the transition to electric vehicles. This follows the historic example of the 1976 Lucas Plan — where workers at Lucas Aerospace, also in Birmingham, proposed converting their work to the production of goods that were more “socially useful”.
Such policies represent the assertion of a community’s voice in processes of transition. How “just” such a transition is should not solely be down to those at COP26 and in the corridors of government. Decarbonisation will create new winners and losers and, as a result, communities must have space in defining what a just transition looks like. A failure to do so results in the prioritisation of “transition” over “justice” and, with it, a death-knell for the term and framework itself — just as it’s finding new resonance.
Ed Atkins is a Lecturer at the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol. He is currently writing a book on renewable energies, energy democracy and social justice — focusing on how localised, place-based approaches might allow for a just transition to a low-carbon economy.
