More Countries Are Factoring Fairness Into the Clean Energy Transition

Countries around the globe are proving that cutting greenhouse gas emissions doesn’t have to come at the expense of vulnerable communities, workers, Indigenous peoples or ecosystems. A new United Nations Environment Programme report released Tuesday highlights a range of international laws and policies that are putting the once-aspirational idea of a “just transition” into practice.

In climate and energy policy, a just transition aims to shift economies away from fossil fuels while ensuring that the costs and benefits are shared fairly. That means creating alternative livelihoods for workers and communities dependent on fossil fuels, involving affected people in decision-making and creating new economic opportunities. 

Although the term “just transition” often is swept into ideological debates about climate and energy policy, the underlying concept is simple. It’s like planning to replace an unsafe community bridge. Everyone agrees a new bridge is needed, but if people can’t afford the toll, or if the construction cuts off neighborhoods, the project may solve one logistical problem while creating several others. A just transition means designing the changes so the benefits outweigh the burdens, especially for the people most affected, by involving them in the process.

The report marks a shift from 10 years ago, when “just transition” was a broad principle embedded in the Paris Agreement. Drawing on legal and policy developments from around the world, the UNEP report emphasizes that integrating principles such as participation and transparency is key to accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy and making it more sustainable.

Fairness is not an optional add-on; it’s crucial for the long-term success of transition policies, said Patricia Kameri-Mbote, director of UNEP’s law division, who reviewed the report for the international agency.

“The design and implementation of transition processes will determine whether there is a transition at all,” Kameri-Mbote said. “Just transition is a test of governance, legitimacy, and the rule of law.”

After studying just transition approaches in different countries, the authors wrote: “There is no one-size-fits-all model for just transition. It must be context-specific and grounded in national realities.”

In Poland, where coal has long been central to the economy, the government negotiated a long-term agreement with mining unions before closing mines. The plan included a gradual phaseout with retraining, economic assistance for towns and support for families to give communities years, not months, to adjust to the changes.

Colombia is granting Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities a stake in renewable energy projects and the revenue they generate. Indonesia is helping former coal towns rebuild economies around tourism and local businesses. And Canada has backed financing that allows Indigenous communities to own stakes in clean-energy and infrastructure projects, rather than simply hosting them.

“Making just transition work in practice is complex, nuanced and context-specific,” Kameri-Mbote wrote via email. But the case studies analyzed in the report helped identify key elements of a resilient and just transition, including strong human rights and environmental laws, effective access to courts and “adequate and accountable financing,” she added.

A Fairer World

Ultimately, a just transition is about making the world fairer, said Rachel Cleetus, senior climate and energy policy director with the Union of Concerned Scientists. The report shows that what matters most is people’s everyday lives, affordable access to energy and protecting vulnerable populations from the devastating impacts of intensifying climate extremes. 

Cleetus said the report doesn’t directly address the fossil fuel industry’s near-stranglehold over climate and energy policy. Policies to promote just transitions must, at some point, also break that power, she said.

Nikki Reisch, climate and energy program director at the Center for International Environmental Law, said via email that the report’s focus on rule of law, rights and inclusion is critical, but added that “it’s also critical to name what we are transitioning away from – fossil fuels – and what justice looks like after centuries of harm.”

Last year’s International Court of Justice climate advisory opinion made clear that “States have a legal duty to prevent and remedy climate harm and protect human rights,” she said. “That’s not possible without leaving fossil fuels behind and holding polluters to account.”

Grounded in Law

The report traces the roots of the just transition concept to the U.S. labor movement in the 1970s as an emerging response to perceived threats of environmental regulation to jobs in certain industries. Unions began adopting transition resolutions, and in 1997, an international coalition of unions and environmental advocates founded the global Just Transition Alliance. 

The idea entered climate discussions in the late 1990s, “when international trade union federations started using the term to describe potential job losses associated with a rapid move away from fossil fuels, while acknowledging the labor risks posed by climate change itself,” according to the report.

As the United Nations climate talks eyed binding emissions targets under the Kyoto Protocol in the late 1990s, climate change was controversial in the international labor movement. British, German and Spanish unions supported binding greenhouse gas cuts, while many North American unions, including the United Mineworkers of America, lobbied against them.

At the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in 2025, the 198 countries in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change agreed to shift from planning to implementation.

They confirmed that transition pathways are nationally determined, must align with the goal of the Paris Agreement to limit global warming and should be implemented through each country’s climate plan.

The new report “rightly argues that justice must be built into both the process and the outcomes of the transition,” said Chukwumerije Okereke, professor of global governance and public policy at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom.

“People are talking about a ‘just transition’ because experience has shown that climate policies succeed only when they are perceived as fair,” he said. “If workers lose jobs, communities bear disproportionate costs, or developing countries are expected to decarbonize without the resources to do so, political resistance grows.”

For many developing countries, justice also means “preserving the policy space to pursue economic development while tackling climate change,” he said. The next phase of global debates about just transitions will extend beyond protecting workers to making sure countries maintain economic independence so they can design transition plans best suited to their own circumstances, he said.

The new report tries to formulate a definition of just transition that goes beyond the traditional labor-centric or sectoral approach “by leveraging an environmental rule of law framework,” Kameri-Mbote said.

The growing urgency of the energy transition bolsters the need for strong environmental laws and institutions because governments can be tempted to focus on cutting emissions while overlooking who bears the costs, who benefits and who gets a say, she said. The report shows that environmental rule of law provides guardrails that can help ensure a rapid transition is fair and sustainable.

Directly writing just transition principles into law is a key step, including rights-based approaches aimed at preventing violations. And, the report says, affected people must have real influence early in the planning process. They also need a reliable legal system to challenge bad decisions or when governments or companies don’t follow the rules.

Environmental rule of law is the machinery that turns just transition from a good intention into something enforceable and implementable, Kameri-Mbote said.