Just transition: can 2025 bring renewed global focus?

This piece was originally published on the ODI Global website.

Negotiations on the ‘just transition’ ended without a decision text at COP29. But just transition principles are only growing in importance for countries. In 2025, governments could seize the chance for a renewed collective focus on transition risks for vulnerable groups, on the pathway to resilient, net-zero economies.

The phrase ‘just transition’ is sweeping the climate policy world and it attracted plenty of debate in Azerbaijan last month at COP29.

The plan was for countries to negotiate the next steps on the UAE Work Programme on Just Transition which they set in motion the previous year in Dubai.

The big idea was that COP29 would turn the Work Programme from a mere knowledge exchange into something more concrete over the course of 2025.

Unfortunately, things did not go to plan in Baku, and after two weeks of fraught negotiations and a lack of time to reconcile views, COP29 closed without agreement on the Work Programme’s goals and next steps. However, there is every chance to inject new focus and momentum next year – here’s how.

‘Just transition’: making order from disruption

The just transition is about managing the transition to a more climate-resilient, net-zero future in ways that benefit the most socially, economically and climate-vulnerable groups. The idea has been around for a while, as described in our CDKN-ODI Global review, but governments only set in motion a comprehensive work programme to deliberate just transitions one year ago at COP28.

‘Just transition’ principles recognise that the impacts of climate change and of climate action itself can generate new risks – demanding new industries, business models, and big changes in consumer behaviour. This is disruptive but the disruption can be managed; it needn’t be chaotic. Decision-makers can anticipate climate risks and their cascading impacts, identify which groups may be further disadvantaged, and forge policies to reduce transition risks and promote equitable benefits across society.

What’s more, just transitions can address historic injustices. This can include historic power relations between countries, such as providing climate finance to the most climate-vulnerable countries without saddling them with further debt. And just transitions can and should improve the wellbeing of people living in poverty, as well as those who have been disadvantaged on grounds of gender, age, indigeneity, race, and other identities.

The new GLOW report Empowering women in just transitions, which I wrote with colleagues across 17 countries, discusses gender as an entry point for just transitions. Women are more likely than men to work in part-time, economically insecure jobs. They are more likely to be excluded from new, green jobs. Key to closing the gap are policies and investments that recognise women and men’s different climate vulnerabilities and give them equitable chances to benefit from jobs and leadership. This includes making women’s existing work more secure and climate-smart; helping women access higher-paying activities in value chains, including traditionally male-dominated jobs; supporting women’s entrepreneurship for their already climate-smart activities; and supporting women to access completely new forms of climate-smart work.

What happened at COP29

A year ago in Dubai, advocates for social and economic justice were cheered by governments’ adoption of the UAE Work Programme on Just Transition.

Previous efforts to address transition risks in the UNFCCC had been heavily (although not exclusively) focused on how to compensate and retrain fossil fuel workers, such as coal workers, who lose their jobs during the green transition.

The new Work Programme holds the promise of a more holistic approach. It provides a chance to look at all social and socioeconomic groups and look beyond jobs to livelihoods and wellbeing. Developing countries hope the Work Programme will lead toward actionable steps to support countries to undertake their national just transitions.

One reason that COP29 talks on just transition failed was that negotiators simply ran out of time. Now the agenda item is postponed until the Bonn climate conference (SB62) in June 2025.

A related challenge was the sprawling scope of the just transition debate. As one COP29 negotiator remarked, “just transitions seems to be a basket in which everything and anything is thrown. How to make sense of it?”

How to add value and focus in 2025

Despite the missed opportunity in Baku, there is plenty of momentum to harness. According to UNDP, just transition principles were reflected in 38% of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and 56% of countries’ Long-Term Strategies. With 2025 as the year when countries are due to submit more ambitious NDCs to the UNFCCC, we can expect just transition principles to capture an even higher profile in country plans.

So, what next for collective action, and the potential for the UNFCCC as a global forum to foster mutual understanding and support? Governments can reignite a meaningful and productive discussion under the Just Transition Work Programme in 2025 by:

• Using management of transition risks and foresight analysis (critical analysis of future trends) as the clear intellectual framing for ‘just transitions’ which could distinguish it from and add value to other climate negotiation tracks. Specifically, the Work Programme could be the place where governments and stakeholders elevate understanding of the tools and processes for identifying and mitigating the social and economic risks of green transitions for different societal groups, now and in the longer term. The Work Programme could inject deeper awareness and understanding, by soliciting lessons from just transition programmes underway in dozens of countriesalready and from inviting deeper engagements and future-casting in partnership with the key UNFCCC constituencies which have high stakes and important diverse perspectives on just transitions, namely: the women and gender constituency, business and industry NGOs (BINGO), environmental NGOs (ENGO), farmers, Indigenous peoples organizations (IPO), local government and municipal authorities (LGMA), research and independent NGOs (RINGO), trade union NGOs and Youth NGOs (YOUNGO).
• Using management of transition risks to generate actionable steps for governments and UNFCCC bodies, in ways that intersect with and fill gaps in the UNFCCC’s other areas of work. Rather than letting the Just Transition Work Programme seem like a big bucket of everything, it could systematically look at how finance, technology, capacity building, and action for climate empowerment/education and communication (all key UNFCCC work streams already) could be used as organising principles or pillars for managing transition risk for the most vulnerable groups. This would bring greater clarity and organisation to the conversation. The basis for discussion and commitments to action could be: how can these elements be used singly and in combination to assess and manage transition risk on the pathway to low-carbon, climate-resilient societies?