Just over the horizon looms the next big annual gathering of United Nations Climate Change Conference, better known as COP (for the “Conference of the Parties“); it will take place from November 6-18 2022 in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt). Just Transition is one of the buzz words at the gathering–the broad phrase touches on every aspect of climate change transition. So, what can we expect in terms of real progress on Just Transition for workers? Judging by, say, last year’s COP 26 summit in Glasgow, not much.

Around the edges of the main meetings, there will be a flurry of panels and discussions about Just Transition, mainly convened by unions. The heart of the problem, as we see it, is that the discussions are focused on what we call Reformist Just Transition frameworks, which carry fancy, deceptive slogans like “inclusive capitalism” but are, at best, modest interventions, falling far short of the financial investment needed to support millions of workers and their communities.

When it comes to the high bar Just Transition, or any Just Transition, there is at least a strong impulse to “run out the clock”.

Consider these facts:

• In Europe alone, Just Transition touches between 20-25 million workers in direct industries, stretching from mining and quarry exploration to manufacturing of goods such as chemicals, plastic, rubber, paper and machinery. This is a baseline estimate because the figure excludes closely related work in support industries such as transportation which will be dramatically reshaped by decarbonization.
• While Germany has allocated €40 billion for Just Transition for its Eastern coal mines, the entire European Union budget for Just Transition, by comparison, stands at €17 billion, virtually ensuring far poorer countries in Europe—such as mining-dependent Poland—will not have the resources to execute an effective Just Transition;
• In Brazil, the sixth most populous country in the world, there is no input from workers or unions in the climate change agenda, which is being shaped entirely by a neo-liberal, free-market conservative government.
• In India, home to 1.4 billion people and the largest coal mining company in the world, up to 20 million people are connected in some fashion to coal mining—yet the government has announced plans to substantially increase coal mining (to more than one billion metric tons per year) and has stiff-armed any dialogue with unions or other community representatives about Just Transition.
• In North America, the Canadian oil and gas sector support more than 400,000 direct and related supply chain jobs—one-third to one-half of which will be lost to automation by 2040. Climate change decarbonization will hasten the loss of jobs, with up to one-half of the jobs disappearing by 2030.
• In a wide belt of countries stretching from Europe across the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and the Middle East, civil war, endemic economic crisis and authoritarian governments render Just Transition moot because workers, and their unions, are simply trying to respond to a phalanx of urgent issues.

So, to confront the above, and far more, one has to entirely re-imagine the economy, not to mention commit far more money than is currently on the table.

We hope we are wrong.

We will be writing about this in upcoming issues of the newsletter (which you can receive by subscribing now!)