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Countless sustainable and healthy solutions are being devised to tackle social challenges such as climate change, the loss of biodiversity and food insecurity. But does everyone benefit? Wageningen scientists are investigating what makes a transition fair and what you can do to ensure that.
These days, anyone who can afford it buys an electric car. That is one way of doing your bit for a more sustainable society that is less dependent on fossil fuels. “But the people who buy electric cars are not always aware of the consequences of such climate-friendly choices for others elsewhere in the world,” says Marijke Dijkshoorn, a senior researcher specialising in Transitions. The extraction of the raw materials for the batteries often involves the exploitation of workers in African mines. While the switch to electric cars benefits the environment, at present it also has downsides for some people.
Similar examples can be found closer to home too. Some changes may be very much for the better in the long run yet still make certain groups worse off in the short term. Senior Climate Adaptation researcher Ingrid Coninx describes a situation in Dutch cities: "Greenery improves the liveability of cities, in part because it helps combat the heat stress caused by climate change. But increasing the greenery around houses pushes up house prices, making them no longer affordable for people on low incomes. So what should policymakers do?"
In the ‘Just Transitions’ project (a collaboration between the various Knowledge Base programmes), Dijkshoorn, Coninx and their team are searching for ways to ensure transition solutions become more fair. That quest is badly needed, says Coninx. “After all, society faces big challenges in becoming more sustainable and healthier. We need to adapt to cope with the effects of climate change, which also means that our food system needs reforming.” Such transitions are not without their downsides, as is clear from the many examples analysed in the project.
The losers — or the people left on the sidelines — are frequently forgotten. “Society often fails to consider whether everyone benefits from a given transition,” says Coninx. “The government may take measures that make certain groups worse off rather than better. These are vulnerable groups such as the elderly, the sick, young people, migrants and the poor. Even being aware of that fact is a major step forward.”
‘Society often fails to consider whether everyone benefits from a given transition’
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A ‘just transition’ is one in which all segments of society and all communities are involved and have a voice. “Many researchers working on transitions are aware of this, but they don’t always know how best to tackle the issue,” says Dijkshoorn. “So far, you mainly see theoretical considerations of the concept in the academic literature and not much about how to approach it in practice.” That makes it difficult for policymakers to work on making the transitions equitable.
For this reason, Just Transitions is taking a pragmatic approach to the question of how change can be made fair and inclusive. Researchers in all the Knowledge Base programmes can take part in discussions or draw inspiration from real-life examples. Public authorities and practitioners, such as representatives of civil society organisations, are also involved in the project to ensure it delivers broadly applicable knowledge. Coninx and Dijkshoorn have brought together existing concepts and insights in a framework that offers pointers for equitable transitions in practice.
People do not necessarily mean the same thing when they talk about ‘just transitions’. Coninx and Dijkshoorn have chosen an approach that distinguishes four types of justice. They are (1) recognitional justice — recognising the values of the people involved; (2) distributive justice — being clear about how the costs and benefits are distributed;
(3) procedural justice — making sure everyone can take part and everyone’s voice is heard; and (4) restorative justice — compensating the harm suffered by people who lose out. These four types are interlinked and overlap to a certain extent. The idea is that they will help users to get an understanding of the situation and decide what to do. Dijkshoorn and Coninx explained this with four examples in their first brochure, Just Transitions: An introduction.
Then the team organised four dialogue sessions in which researchers, policymakers and practitioners could collect and share knowledge on how to make transitions fair and inclusive. That resulted not only in various inspiring examples from actual practice but also a lively debate about what ‘just’ means exactly and why it is so difficult to find a workable approach. “It is a complex issue,” admits Dijkshoorn. “What is more, the requirements for policy, research and practice are always context-dependent.”
Even so, the project is producing a lot of results that researchers will be able to use in their own projects on climate adaptation and food systems, and eventually on other topics too. Dijkshoorn: “What we are aiming for is a set of key questions you should be asking in any transition process, plus examples that help you envisage a possible plan of action.”
‘Birmingham facilitates initiatives started by the various communities’
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One of the inspiring examples is the Dutch ‘Knowledge Region on the Coast’ project. In it, students and primary school pupils get the opportunity to say how they would like their region to look in fifty years. The idea for the project comes from the NL2120 map, in which WUR researchers sketched a green and optimistic future for the Netherlands. Coninx: “Young people are often excluded from policy-making processes but in this example we’re talking about an area they’ll probably be living in. We want to listen to them and draw on ideas from them that aren’t affected by preconceived images.”
Dijkshoorn found an inspiring foreign example in Birmingham in the UK. Not all residents of this city of over a million people have easy access to food that is affordable, healthy and sustainable. “As many as one in three children live in poverty,” says Dijkshoorn. “People can hardly afford healthy food, and chronic diseases such as Type 2 diabetes are relatively common.” In addition to the divide between rich and poor, there are also cultural differences between the various ethnic groups.
A year ago, the city’s Food Team deliberately chose to adopt a systems approach to food. At first, the idea was to encourage healthy diets. “But the focus soon shifted to food systems, and diets that are sustainable and nutritious rather than just healthy,” says Dijkshoorn. It means that the city looks at everything related to food, including not only production and transport but also sociocultural aspects such as education, food culture and how and where the food is bought.
The city does not organise projects in its own right, nor does it lay down the law on what inhabitants should do. Instead, it facilitates initiatives started by the various ethnic communities. They came up for example with meals for the homeless using products supermarkets would otherwise have thrown away, a vegetable garden with a local market, a project to teach more people to ride bicycles and a campaign to deal with litter. The communities took action themselves. “They are building on their culture’s existing knowledge rather than starting something from scratch,” explains Dijkshoorn. People who play a key role in one or more projects are given the accolade Food Legend by the city council.
‘What matters is that you at least take into account what a certain change or measure implies for the various groups’
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Dijkshoorn went to Birmingham for the European Horizon2020 project Food Trails and listened to a wide range of practitioners. She learned about how the new strategy for food was drawn up, using an approach that took fairness into account in various ways. “An important finding was the process they used: it is a prime example of how to involve a range of stakeholders in a fair way. We can learn from that.”
Dijkshoorn and Coninx also found inspiring examples further afield. One such example was in India, where — like Birmingham — differences between groups play an important role in transitions. In the switch to sustainable energy, a solution that seemed at first glance to have no downsides turned out not to be an improvement for everyone. Researchers at the World Resources Institute identified the issues and came up with tangible solutions. These researchers presented their story as inspiration during one of the Just Transitions dialogue sessions.
The Indian real-life example is rooted in the country’s goal of switching to net-zero emissions by 2070. A key strategy for achieving this goal is to build large-scale renewable energy projects on sites that are considered unproductive, the so-called ‘wastelands’. However, these sites provide critical ecosystem services and are crucial for people’s livelihoods. The world’s largest solar fields are now being built on the wastelands. These solar parks are developed through a leasing.
“At first glance, these developments seem positive, with solar farms providing green energy while increasing the financial stability of landowners,” says Coninx. “However, the situation is less ‘just’ when you consider the social impact on the landless. There are many communities in India that depend entirely on that land for their livelihood, for example, herdsmen and villagers who work in agriculture. These social aspects were not taken into account in this transition and have major implications, in particular due to the large scale of the implementation.”
According to WRI India, there are three issues that need to be addressed in the low-carbon transition in India to make this transition more ‘just’: people depend on scarce resources like land and water; the social impact of the transition may differ between income groups, genders, castes and households with and without landholdings; and solutions should have both low carbon infrastructure and positive social impacts. Possible solutions should therefore not just be about improving working conditions but also about combinations with other forms of land use, for example grazing sheep. Solutions could also be in other parts of the country: if generating wind energy at sea is encouraged, less land will be needed for solar farms.
‘Each new example is a reminder that you can approach the concept of justice from various angles’
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Coninx and Dijkshoorn draw two key lessons from the Indian example that are relevant for everyone working on the climate transition. “The first is that transition processes must take into account the fact that well-intentioned solutions can still have negative trade-offs,” says Dijkshoorn. “For example, there is a misconception that renewable energy is benign so does not need the same level of scrutiny as other large infrastructural projects in terms of social and environmental impacts. The second lesson is that because it is appealing to apply the same model (such as large solar parks based on leasing) everywhere in a country, this means that the consequences of any negative externalities are significant. Therefore it is particularly important to make improvements in the model that ensure better social outcomes.” The example is described in detail in the second brochure Just Transtions in practice.
Despite the many positive examples from the Netherlands and elsewhere, Coninx doubts whether it will always be possible to get everyone on board in a transition. “It might not be achievable, but what matters is that you at least take into account what a certain change or measure implies for the various groups. That awareness and engaging in a dialogue with those groups signifies real progress. Even if not everyone can benefit from the process, you can factor in compensation for the losers in your assessment. That is another way of avoiding having some people left behind.”
In collecting know-how about equitable transitions, Dijkshoorn and Coninx like to draw inspiration from all the examples they have found and they share their findings with a broad audience. They will continue with this over the next while. “Each new real-life example is another reminder that you can approach the concept of justice in transitions from various angles. We need to keep on sharing practical experiences and learning from one another, as this will help make transitions fairer.”
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