From Principle to Practice: Legal Discussion on Just Transition Standards for a Sustainable Future

By Anna Foulks, Legal Fellow

Photo credit: ILP

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In support of London Climate Action Week, the International Lawyers Project (ILP) emphasises its commitment to environmental justice, including just transition principles, in the face of climate action. Central to this effort is the concept of a “just transition”, a term increasingly used yet inconsistently defined.

Through legal empowerment and advisory work, ILP seeks to clarify the evolving standards that guide just transition, promote policy reforms, address just transition challenges and strengthen principles that help guide the development of green initiatives. Our work includes conducting legal research, delivering capacity building, and providing strategic litigation advice. In recent years, we have also hosted several training sessions to inform our partners of the values underpinning just transition and how these can be integrated into our partners’ policy and advocacy work.

Foundations of Just Transition

Just transition is a conceptual framework aimed at ensuring that the transition to a green economy and its subsequent benefits are shared across diverse sectors, keeping in mind the people most affected by the changes, who are often deeply marginalized. Just transition has many faces; it can be conceived as a labour-related concept, a framework for justice, a social transition of technological methodologies, or a governance strategy.

The concept first rose to prominence in the United States in the 1970s, theoretically linked to labour unions falling behind as they were impacted by shifting economic priorities. More recently, just transition was expressly mentioned in the Paris Agreement of 2015, emerging at the international level to encourage an equitable and efficient shift to green policy such that no actor, regardless of scale, is left behind in the global shift toward sustainability by virtue of its developmental status or material focus. Today, just transition principles are incorporated into an increasing variety of instrumental initiatives in the effort to meet the obligations imposed by the Paris Agreement.

Honing an Understanding of Just Transition Standards 

Under our Environmental and Sustainable Development Programme, ILP consistently works to enhance the capacity and knowledge of our partners to tackle the challenges they face associated with just transition. Our staff keep an active pulse on emerging developments and regularly advise on helpful methodologies for understanding how just transition standards are being discussed and shaped in relevant fora.

Given that there is no universally accepted definition for just transition, the lack of any accordingly codified standards presents a challenge for robust implementation and accountability. Nonetheless, the International Labor Organization has provided some guiding principles, which include that there be a strong social consensus, respect and promotion of workers’ rights, gender equality, and coherent policies that enable an environment for various types of enterprises. These policies should aim to create decent jobs, anticipate impact on employment, offer sustainable social protection for job losses, and uphold the rights to organise and bargain collectively.

In the context of the Paris Agreement, just transition principles are also quite broad, with key aspects being fairness and inclusivity, promoting decent work and social protection, addressing disparities, and engagement in sustainable economic development and international cooperation. For example, the 2023 Report released by the UN Committee for Development Policy states that a globally just transition requires countries to meet their climate commitments and ensure that in doing so, they do not push poorer countries further behind than they already are by creating barriers to trade or excluding them from the opportunities associated with the expansion of new markets. Just transition also requires policy space for developing countries to develop their productive capacities, new intellectual property frameworks for the development of clean technologies, expansion of systems for the payment of ecosystem services, and proportionally scaled international cooperation to ensure financing for building infrastructure and resilience.

Another evolving standard is emerging through the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) structure, which is commonly used to assess a company’s environmental and social performance. The environmental element analyses issues related to resource management, and the social element examines relationships with various communities, regarding issues such as labour and inclusion practices. Governance focuses on leadership elements such as financial rights and ethical considerations in business, including transparency and fair reporting. This framework aligns with the nascence of just transition to address labour union concerns and ensuring collaborated transition to green practices, and may prove useful as a standard for evaluating presence of just transition in the policy space. Due diligence laws, such as the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), have also been increasingly recognised as a method to promote just transition initiatives. Due diligence laws require large and influential companies to be actively aware of their human rights and environmental impact, particularly relevant being the adverse effects of climate transition plans. In this way, due diligence enforces another layer of accountability so that vulnerable demographics are protected during just transition.

As demonstrated by these examples, various stakeholders such as companies and international organisations have developed their own frameworks to interpret just transition in a way that works best for them. As these standards develop, tensions can emerge around whose standards take precedence as well as how to ensure their proper implementation in a way that protects marginalised communities. Through our partner-led approach, we provide advice and support to ensure a just transition in the absence of clearer, enforceable norms.

Rooting Just Transition in Practice

ILP’s commitment to just transition is central to our mission to advocate for social justice and hold governments and corporations accountable for environmental harms. We help many of our partners around the globe pursue their goals in empowering marginalised communities, such as framing carbon markets within human rights discourse and supporting them with legal empowerment tools to enable them to assert their own rights. Furthermore, we assist in researching emerging legislation and ensuring that in climate transition, those who will be impacted – including civil society organisations and indigenous communities - understand the effects of proposed and new rules and regulations and can seek reform where needed. We provide strategic litigation support to indigenous communities facing encroachment from extractive industries, as they face rights violations and pressure from companies involved in transition mineral mining. We also assist in researching relevant legal precedents and diagnosing effective strategies for justice, analysing gaps in regulatory frameworks, and providing recommendations to ensure alignment and compliance with international legal standards.

Our volunteer lawyers also work closely with indigenous communities and their representative groups to ensure the presence of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in project development processes. FPIC is essential in ensuring that indigenous peoples’ voices are recognised and respected during the transition to green practices. In the coming months, ILP will continue its support of FPIC through providing trainings to our partners that develop the capacity of vulnerable communities to assert their rights and hold governments and companies accountable for environmental harms and human rights violations. In this way, ILP supports our partners in ensuring that the transition to the green economy does not involve irreversible damage to indigenous peoples’ resources.

Last November, ILP hosted a seminar entitled Legal Remedies and Tools to Address Just Transition Challenges with Landmark Chambers. This hybrid seminar explored different tools and remedies ranging from domestic to international legal mechanisms that can be utilised for climate action and to address challenges in the path to just transition. Later, in collaboration with Bantay Kita PH (Publish What You Pay Philippines), Manila Observatory, and Norton Rose Fulbright, ILP conducted a two-part civil society legal empowerment workshop on legal frameworks and grievance mechanisms to ensure accountability and transparency in transition mineral mining in the Philippines. We are actively engaged with our partners to continue building and conducting trainings to advance just transition principles and clarifying standards, as this work is continually relevant to good practices in environmental awareness.

Conclusion 

As we celebrate London Climate Action Week, ILP acknowledges the phenomenal work of our partners in the fight against climate change and towards greener economies. As the implementation and importance of just transition principles accelerate, it is critical to pursue more structured methodology and adoption. A clear understanding of available strategies and standards enhances both advocacy and reform efforts, paving the way for green policies that do not disproportionately harm vulnerable communities. It is intuitively clear that a coordinated transition towards sustainable initiatives is more efficient for all of society: if just transition principles are used effectively, climate solutions are more likely to be driven by local needs and therefore be more successful. Put simply, just transition is not a matter of how, but when — and better it be together and now, rather than later, in crisis.