A Comparative Political Economy of Just Transition: Trade Unions, NGOs and Pathways to Climate Justice

This project takes up the question of 'Just Transition' (JT), which directly
relates to the CEL Pathway's concern with the 'grand challenges' of
poverty, social exclusion, climate change and environmental degradation.
JT has emerged as a key concept in the labour and climate movements. It
stresses the need to secure de-carbonisation in a way that minimises harm
to workers and communities in affected sectors. The project begins from a
simple but important observation: that 'just transition', while ubiquitious in
climate debates, is actually understood very differently in different national
and institutional contexts, in line with CEL's focus on geographical diversity.
Drawing on the tradition of comparative political economy, the project will
explore how JT discourse has been mobilised across three different
national economies - the UK, Poland, and South Africa - and will chart
how different models of capitalism generate different incentives for labour
and climate movements. By combining in-depth scholarly argument with a
credible strategy for engaging relevant stakeholders, the project will deliver
the first attempt to chart diverse pathways towards JT, making a key
contribution to the Pathway's central thematic concerns.