CAN Guidance on Just Transition

The concepts of Just Transition, Just Energy Transition, Just and Equitable Transition, etc, are being used more and more often, sometimes interchangeably, and with different intentions. For example, Just Energy Transition can be used to talk about the energy transition itself, its goals, challenges and policies. It can also be used to define how to re-organise the energy sector in a just way. It can also be a disingenuous way to avoid talking about a fossil fuel phase out. Similar trends can be observed in other uses of Just Transition.

The CAN network has been and will continue to work on the sectoral pathways to achieve 1.5°C (whereas it is on energy, on agriculture, etc). Those pathways face many challenges – not only the social justice element (transition minerals, overall financing needs…). Clarifying those is not the purpose of this document. This document aims at guiding the network on better describing what is needed to realise a Just Transition in all sectors undergoing transformation – something critical for achieving public support and preventing inequalities and social ills perpetuating themselves through climate policies. It will therefore not touch on the specifics of the energy or any other sectoral transition, while hopefully still being relevant to it. This document should also assist the CAN network in distinguishing when Just Transition is being used to advance justice, with workers’ and communities’ enjoying their rights to a decent job, quality of life and a healthy environment, from those who are just “social-washing” business-as-usual policies.

That said, the departing context, the conditions and the expectations from different communities and peoples around the world on Just Transition are diverse. It is therefore also important to recognise that the different regional and local dynamics in which Just Transition processes take place have implications in terms of level of development, mobilisation of resources, pace of the transition, as well as the social and economic effects of the transition. 

This document aims at supporting convergence, first among CAN members, but hopefully beyond, across a variety of groups willing to fight and win the Just Transition and systems change we need, and organise accordingly. It is not a prescription, a one size fits all definition or a definite description of what Just Transition is.