Just Transition

During the Zoom seminar, we will learn how communities and organizations are using just transition strategies to fight elements in the extractive system that contribute to climate change. This will be an interactive session where all participants will have a chance to share their ideas and experiences. Remember to register!

JustTransition.mp4

Check out the recording of the virtual session where we explore more ideas around a Just Transition.

For privacy purposes, the video was post-edited.

what is the problem?

Climate change and environmental harm impact us wherever we live, work, study, and play. However, climate change impacts people differently. Frontline communities are disproportionately affected as a result of historic and persistent institutional racism and systemic inequities. In 20 years these inequities will deepen even more.

Experts predict that by the 2050s, temperatures will rise +5.8°F in the Pacific Northwest. This could mean drier summers, extreme storms, melting glaciers, and more extreme wildfires (NOAA).

But who will be more harmed if inequities are not addressed now?

Click here to learn more about addressing climate change through environmental and climate justice.

Despite increasing investments of millions of dollars to lower fossil fuel emissions, create greener technologies, and protect carbon sinks (aka, forested, oceans, and other natural areas that absorb carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases), the year 2023 was the hottest year on average for the planet and 2024 might be even warmer. If international governments are investing more in trying to address climate change and there are more scientific and technological advances in the area, why does it seem like those approaches are not working?

Climate change is not a mere carbon problem, it's a social injustice problem!

A Just Transition, as proposed by Front and Centered, Climate Justice Alliance, Movement Generation, and many other grassroots organizations starts by recognizing that the current climate crisis is a consequence of an extractive economy, justified by a racist, hetero-patriarchal, colonial mindset intrinsic in and perpetuated by capitalism and neoliberal policies. Our world functions on a system where colonial legacies of exclusion, domination, and exploitation are still prevalent. In this system, humans and nature are commodified (commercialized or treated as something that can be bought and sold), due to the enclosure of wealth and power. Understanding where we come from, where we stand, and where we want to go is crucial to envision a strategic plan for change.

This video, produced by UpWorthy, explains what this framework is about.

We all are part of this extractive economy. Are you interested in learning more about how?

The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute super entertaining video that exposes all the connections between our action, an extractive economy, and climate change. We highly recommend watching it before the workshop. This video was produced by Free Range Studios.

Many paths

When we talk about a just transition, we are referring to a set of ideas and practices. A truthful just transition is placed-based and people+nature-oriented (instead of profit-oriented). Therefore, a just transition is also seen as a movement of movements, where local communities will need to agree on justice-oriented solutions that are relevant to them, but that end up having a global impact. There is not just one solution or formula, but a pluriverse of paths.

This video explains what a Sustainable Indigenous Economy looks like.

Guiding Principles

Some just transition ideas and strategies started being explored in the 1970s through the labor movement. The fight has expanded and taken different forms in different communities, but the vision is the same: Stop the bad and build the new through a deep democracy that allows communities to have control over the decisions that affect their daily lives.

Click here to access the just transition principles as proposed by the Climate Justice Alliance.

Exposing False solutions

False solutions seem to offer short-term solutions but do not address the root causes of the current climate crisis: Those actions that continue with extractive practices and the concentration of wealth+power (including technological and market-based schemes promoted by corporations and their political allies to give the appearance of meaningful climate action), that continue to poison, displace, or imprison communities, without addressing environmental health disparities and climate injustices.

In this video, produced by It Takes Roots, José Bravo, from the Just Transition Alliance, explains how some of these false solutions have been incorporated into COPs (Conference of the Parties), the main decision-making body of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

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