Co-Host Plenary Session - Making ‘Just Transition’ Happen: Exploring Coalitions and Partnerships for ‘Just Transitions’ at Multiple Levels of Earth System Governance

Co-hosted by German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)

Global heating is accelerating while multilateral climate policy is failing to slow it down. These are at the same time causes and symptoms of this ‘era of polycrisis’. While the latest UN climate change conference has resolved for the world to “transition away from fossil fuels”, it remains a paramount conundrum for earth system governance how this can be made to happen. Hopes and visions in the public policy sphere revolve around a notion of ‘just transition’. Since its origins in the US labour movement, the concept has come a long way in establishing a strong foothold in global environmental politics and climate governance. 1 Indeed, at all levels of governance, policy approaches to advance a transition to a low-carbon economy come with the imperative of being just and equitable. While this reflects a growing recognition that equity and justice are fundamental for climate policies to work, profound re-imagining will be required at international, regional, national and local levels to really achieve a just transition amidst the political and economic status quo 2.

• Internationally, how can the ‘Global North’ and the ‘Global South’ come together around meaningful just energy transition partnerships that are fair and collaborative rather than reproducing structurally unjust relations between donor and recipient countries?
• Regionally and nationally, how can institutions of social, economic and political power be re-arranged to distribute the benefits and burdens of a low-carbon transition more equitably?
• Nationally and locally, how can the historical injustices that have marginalized certain social groups in the current socio-political order be adequately addressed in transitional governance? Crucially, how can their voices, interests and needs be represented in pertinent decision-making processes?

Accordingly, this forum plenary session asks what kind of transformative changes are required in the social and political contexts at all levels to create spaces for just and equitable energy transitions to come to fruition and sustain over time? How can countries as well as state and non-state actors partner with each other across scales to create and utilise conducive transformative policy spaces to increase synergies and to minimize inequitable trade-offs? It considers these overarching questions against the backdrop of a diverse array of specific case study examples of what is seen to be working or obstructing approaches towards ‘just transition’ in different regions of the world. It looks for learnings on how power is being (re)arranged within and across governance levels as well as between state and non-state actors. Specifically, it explores how different forms of coalitions and partnerships are emerging at different levels of governance and how they may be conducive to a globally ‘just transition’. These include inter alia plurilateral Just Energy Transition Partnerships with designated countries of the ‘Global South’, like South Africa and Indonesia; specialised coalitions between state and non-state actors working towards a just transition in European coal regions; and other cases, in which environmental NGOs, labour organizations, philanthropies, community-based organizations, and the private sector collaborate in place-based efforts towards just (energy) transitions. On balance, the forum explores what can be learned collectively from ongoing attempts of just (energy) transitions as it deliberates a re-imagining of feasible future avenues.

1 Stevis, Dimitris. 2023. Just Transitions: promise and contestation. Elements in Earth System Governance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2 Klinsky, Sonja, J. Timmons Roberts et al. 2017. Why equity is fundamental to climate change policy research, Global Environmental Change, 44: 170-173.

Session outline

• Welcome and introduction by the co-convenors Dr. Aparajita Banerjee and Dr. Steffen Bauer
• Conceptual keynote by Prof. Dr. J. Timmons Roberts: "Why equity and justice are fundamental to climate policy and how this applies to ‘transitioning away from fossil fuels’"
• "Real world roundtable" with empirical insights from Sholahudin Al Ayubi, Dr. Aparajita Banerjee, Dr. Marie Claire Brisbois, Jordan McLean, Alexia Faus Onbargi
• Critical appraisal by discussant Prof. Dr. Dimitris Stevis: "Promise and contestation in real world just transition efforts"
• Open discussion/Q&A with the online audience
• Wrap up by the co-convenors Dr. Aparajita Banerjee and Dr. Steffen Bauer