Decoding ‘just transition’ in India: The conceptual underpinnings

Planet Earth and humanity are experiencing turbulent times as climate change and induced socio-economic impacts are threatening ecology, society and the economy. The multi-thousand pages of voluminous work over the past few decades in the form of Assessment Reports by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) testify to this – the most recent of which was released on 20th March 2023.

Renowned systems thinker Peter Drucker, in this context, said, “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence. It is to act with yesterday’s logic.” There appears to be a consensus that the approach of ‘just transition’ encapsulates the new-age thinking required to address the myriad of challenges associated with climate change. 

In recent years, the term ‘just transition’ has become a buzzword in economic and political circles around the world.  In particular, it represents a feasible solution to global climate crises while also addressing the legacy issues of socio-economic injustice and inequality.

It is worthwhile to note that the concept of justice is not an aspiration that has emerged in India only with the advent of climate action. It finds mention in the Preamble of the Constitution where the emphasis is on achieving social, economic and political justice. Articles 38, 39 and 46 of the Directive Principles of State Policy also mention this concept. A number of developmental policies and schemes, emanating from this, aim at ensuring socio-economic and political justice. A dedicated Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (formerly the Ministry of Welfare, renamed in 1998) is also working in this sphere, along with ministries such as Labour and Employment, Skill Development and others.

Thus, there are existing visions, intents, policies, regulations and mechanisms that seek to institutionalise justice in developmental policy and practice, making it necessary to integrate the concept of just transition with such mechanisms rather than being treated as a new, stand-alone venture.

In the climate sphere, the approach of just transition aims at addressing injustices at three broad layers:

First, let us examine the global situation. Despite having contributed only a marginal amount to the global climate crises in terms of historical greenhouse gas emissions, developing countries suffer the worst impacts of climate change. In accordance with the principle of just transition, developed nations that have built their industrialised economies on the back of carbon-intensive technologies must provide fair compensation to the developing and least developed countries by financially assisting them in implementing their mitigation and adaptation strategies to climate change.

Second, the inter-province disparity within a nation resulting from local economies being heavily dependent on fossil fuels and skewed indicators of economic development calls for more assistance and attention to be given to the states which rely heavily on fossil-based economies as a source of revenue.

Third, the regional and sub-national imperatives of socio-economic justice require well-off segments of society to support socio-economically marginalised sections due to the fact that top 10 percent of the world’s population was responsible for 52 percent of emissions between 1990 and 2015.  

According to the recently released Synthesis Report of the sixth Assessment Report of IPCC, the clock on climate action is ticking and the global scientific community is making clarion calls to prevent irreversible and catastrophic impacts of climate change on the planet. Meanwhile, it is widely acknowledged that people should be kept at the centre of the transition to ensure adherence to justice and equity principles.

There is a need to break down the just transition approach and understand the key components it encompasses in order to be an effective solution for not only climate change but other wicked socio-economic problems of our time. Moreover, it is imperative that efforts are made to decode the concept so that ‘just transition’ does not turn out to be merely a climate action tool. Instead, it becomes a mechanism for achieving transformative changes that are too important to be side-tracked while progressing on climate action strategies.

Just transition, as a development planning and implementation strategy, has certain non-negotiable attributes.

• Just transition aims to transform the existing socio-economic system into a scenario where all forms of justice prevail. These include procedural justice (ensuring active participation of affected groups in planning, policy formulation and implementation phases); distributive justice (equitable and fair sharing of the costs and opportunities of any transition); recognitive justice (recognising that climate change and historical developmental policies have exacerbated inequality and have been unjust to marginal communities); and restorative justice (restoration of the historically marginalized communities to a more dignified future by compensating them for the harm and injustice they have endured in the past).
• One of the key pillars of this approach is social dialogue and participatory forms of governance throughout policy planning, formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation as well as any subsequent modifications. Consequently, people from all walks of life, especially those who are affected by the transition and are historically marginalised, must be actively involved in devising and implementing strategies for their well-being in the course of such transitions. In this context, it is important to emphasise that active participation should go beyond a checklist exercise that results in minimal participation of the affected communities.
• A just transition strategy, whether it entails retirement packages for workers, or reskilling and re-absorbing them from outgoing industries into new employment avenues in the economy, requires inter-ministerial and inter-departmental acceptance before it can be implemented via the existing executive and administrative channels of development. To accomplish this, efforts must be made to address potential friction from status-quoists that may arise in the implementation of new ideas and plans in the developmental sphere.
• While planning and implementing just transition strategies, the ideals of sovereignty (at the global level) and democracy and federalism (at the national and sub-national levels) should be respected and followed in letter and spirit. Nations should not be forced to accept a just transition agenda imposed on them from external countries or group of countries and should therefore, determine what a just transition would mean in their own national development context. Similarly, within a nation’s federal structure, sharing of powers and responsibilities between Union and provincial governments should be considered and no legislative, legal or regulatory overreach should be allowed. This is crucial to ensure that a decentralised and cooperative approach to just transition prevails, instead of a centralised, top-down approach.
• Finally, just transition should not become a sequential strategy in which ‘transition’ is taken for granted first and then elements of justice are retrofitted into the system in some way. There is no doubt that this can only be achieved by existing governance structures and systems being open-minded to this nascent idea and taking swift action to recognise challenges to existing ways of conducting themselves while embracing the newer, people-centric, decentralized and transformative approaches that just transition represents.

Thus, as advocated by global scientific community, faster and more ambitious climate action is needed. Nevertheless, it is equally important not to allow the notion of justice to be reduced to a co-benefit at best and ignored at worst.

This is the first of the five-part series of articles on ‘Decoding Just Transition in India’ received from Vasudha Foundation. The article has been originally published as a blog on their website. In the next part of this series of articles, the author examines the key methodological considerations and framework for planning and implementing a truly just transition in India.

The author is with Vasudha Foundation, a climate think-tank in India. Views are personal.