ASSEMBLY 2025: Najma Mohamed, Putting People at the Heart of Place-sensitive Just Transitions

The interlinked crises of biodiversity and ecosystem loss, climate change and deepening poverty and inequality have created a window of opportunity for radical policy transformations to deliver both social justice and environmental sustainability. Just transition has gained prominence as a climate policy and investment framework that seeks to create a fair and sustainable future for all. From an initial focus on impacted workers in energy transitions, the just transition agenda is increasingly being adopted as a macro-economic and cross-sectoral framing that anchors social justice in climate policy, planning and investment processes. It is now part of the transition pathways of several countries, cities and regions. But just outcomes can only emerge out of an inclusive process. In the  transition from brown to green economies, ‘inclusion’ is not a nice-to-have: it should be core to just transitions.

A central element of just transition frameworks, procedural justice, is based on an underlying assumption that just outcomes can only emerge out of inclusive decision-making processes. It calls for meaningful and ongoing, rather than ad hoc public engagement in just transition governance, planning and finance. Diverse participatory processes are providing the mechanisms for meaningful, long-term engagement of people, giving communities and workers a stake and say in just transition policies and plans. Drawing on insights from case studies that place people at the frontline of just transitions, key principles to craft people and place-sensitive transition pathways, are outlined. These seek to design just transitions that foster inclusion, participation and agency, the essential foundations for just and sustainable place-based transitions. The key lessons and implications for just transitions in the UK will be highlighted.

Case Studies / Just Transition Stories:

• Mpumalanga province, the Centre of South Africa’s Just Transition
• Big Ocean Small States (BOSS) Craft a Green Jobs and a Just Transition Climate Action Plan for the Pacific
• Civil-Society Led Green Economic Transition Planning: Insights from Policy Dialogues in Seven Regions and Countries
• Citizen Assemblies and Net Zero Governance in the UK
• Peoples Plan for Nature, UK and The Children and Young People’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss, Ireland