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The Importance of a Just Transition

Carbon Brief Mar 20, 2021
This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
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The Importance of a Just Transition giving compass
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Giving Compass' Take:

  • Sophie Yeo explains what a “just transition” is, and explores what just transitions could look like for industries and livelihoods in decline as a result of climate consciousness.
  • Why are just transitions an important part of ensuring equity and developing political buy-in for climate action? How can you support climate legislation that provides support for workers displaced by disinvestment in carbon-intensive sectors?
  • Read about achieving just transitions.

If emissions targets are to be met, coal has to go. From the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign to President Obama’s anti-coal policies, efforts to fight climate change often hinge on dismantling the industry. Even if there is sudden and rapid progress on carbon capture and storage (CCS), sometimes seen as coal’s lifeline technology, the industry looks set to to continue on its long-term downward trend as long as efforts to tackle warming continue to be scaled up.

But the human impact of this decline is often overlooked. Men and women who have spent their lives working in the fossil fuel industry may not have the skills to take part in emerging professions; these jobs may not be available in the same places that jobs were lost; and they will not necessarily materialise at the same time as workers find themselves out of work. The long-term slump in the US coal industry has led to unemployment, poverty and fragmented communities — and it is a pattern being repeated around the world.

In China, for instance, around 1.3 million people are set to lose their jobs, thanks to government plans to close thousands of coalmines in an attempt to address overcapacity and tackle climate change. And while coal is the obvious example, the impacts of climate change and policies will stretch across various sectors of the economy. A report by the Labor Network for Sustainability suggests that jobs in Maryland’s tourism industry in the US could be threatened by higher temperatures, and along with it the jobs that rely on the activities and revenue it brings. Healthcare workers could come under more pressure as air quality deteriorates and short term changes in temperature cause harm to the elderly and vulnerable.

As concerns grow that the livelihoods of miners and other labourers could be lost, the volume has been raised on calls for a “just transition” for workers. This is where old jobs in dying industries are replaced by new jobs that offer security and quality of life, while not compromising the health of the planet, with safety nets in place to minimise hardship in the meantime.

Arizona’s Navajo tribe is one example of a community already fighting for a just transition. This Native American group signed a lease in 1964 allowing Peabody Energy, America’s largest coal company, to mine for coal on reservation lands. Now, 50 years later, many are battling against the impacts of this deal.

When they signed the lease, the company agreed to “employ Navajo Indians when available in all positions for which…they are qualified”. Since then, Peabody has been a major employer of tribe members — 90% of the 430-person workforce of its Kayenta mine are native people.

Yet, while Peabody has provided jobs and money, poverty rates on the Navajo Nation Reservation are more than twice as high as the Arizona state average, and benefits have come at the expense of the local environment.

The Navajo tribe has seen their water sources dwindle as Peabody has used the reservation’s aquifer to turn coal into slurry and pump it down a pipeline. Coal plants surrounding the reservation have polluted the air, clouding the view of the nearby Grand Canyon and other national parks. It is also a source of CO2, the primary contributor of human-caused climate change.

One group, the Black Mesa Water Coalition, is trying to create economic opportunities that will help to release the community from its reliance on coal. For instance, they have tried to revive the traditional Navajo wool market, developing partnerships with wool buyers and organising an annual Wool Buy.

It has also started a solar project, which aims to install a series of 20MW to 200MW solar installations on abandoned coal mining land, transforming the reservation’s old role as an energy provider.

The idea has gone global. In Ghana, for instance, the government has developed a programme to plant more trees, simultaneously improving the landscape, providing jobs, and offering a diversified source of livelihoods for farmers. Peasant farmers and the rural unemployed were involved in planting species such as teak, eucalyptus, cassia and mahogany, generating 12,595 full-time jobs.

Read the full article about just transitions by Sophie Yeo at Carbon Brief.

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Civil Society is a complex topic, and others found these selections from the Impact Giving archive from Giving Compass to be good resources.

  • This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
    Click here for more.
    Six Principles and Practices to Unlock Cross-sector Collaboration

    In Japan, manufacturing facilities use “green curtains”—living panels of climbing plants—to clean the air, provide vegetables for company cafeterias, and reduce energy use for cooling. A walk-to-school program in the United Kingdom fights a decline in childhood physical activity while reducing traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions from transportation. A food-gleaning program staffed by young volunteers and families facing food insecurity in Spain addresses food waste, hunger, and a desire for sustainability. Each of these is a real-life example of what I call “multisolving”—where people pool expertise, funding, and political will to solve multiple problems with a single investment of time and money. Multisolving projects—no matter their scale, sector, or stage of development—tend to commit to three principles: Everyone matters; everyone is needed. Multisolvers insist that the well-being of workers is central and so is the protection of the global climate. Tackling problems together requires that we join perspectives, experiences, knowledge, and expertise. We can succeed by addressing tough problems in an integrated fashion. Multisolvers dare to imagine that problems might be easier to solve together rather than one by one. Large solutions start small; growth results from learning and connecting. The projects we studied grew in impact, budget, and partnerships via idiosyncratic pathways that depended on relationships, chance connections, and moments of inspiration. Growing out of these three principles, we saw multisolvers employing similar practices, often cycling through them in rounds of iteration and growth that extend over periods of months or years. Welcoming. If you are embarking on a project that will require partners across sectors, you should expect that, years into your project, you will be working with people and sectors you may not have imagined initially. Learning and documenting. Multisolving projects invest in learning, and they act on what they learn, sometimes by changing direction. Storytelling. Telling a story of what is possible and what is already being achieved brings more partners and resources to multisolving efforts, especially when the stories incorporate data about diverse benefits of the project. Read the full article about cross-sectoral collaboration by Elizabeth Sawin at Stanford Social Innovation Review.


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