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On the first day of this year’s COP24, nearly 50 heads of state – including British prime minister Theresa May – signed a declaration proposed by the Polish government and ambitiously named the “Solidarity and Just Transition Silesia Declaration”. The paper didn’t make waves in the media, yet it addresses a key issue in the fight against climate change: ensuring that the transition towards a low-carbon economy comes with jobs and an decent quality of life.

Ironically, the story that hogged the limelight in the press was the gilets jaunes protests in France – whose root cause is linked to the very same issue. The carbon tax on diesel fuel announced by the French government as part of low-carbon strategy didn’t go down well with the middle class rural population, who can’t jump on a metro to go to work – but who also can’t afford to see their salary whittled down by an extra tax.


That the COP happened at the same time as the gilets jaunes demonstrations flared up in Paris forces a fundamental question: how can environmental policies designed to save us from climate disaster be made acceptable to workers who struggle to make ends meet?

Camilla Born, senior policy advisor at climate change think tank E3G, was at the COP24 in Katowice this month. Although not enough “official” attention was given to the topic of fair transition, she says, it was a recurrent topic of informal discussion among experts in between talks.

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“There was much more talk about it than I have ever seen before, because the role of the COP is shifting,” she says. “In the past, delegates talked of climate change as a hypothetical future that we were trying to avoid. But now, we have to actually deliver the living reality of decarbonising – and we have to think about how to materially deliver this reality.”

Except, decarbonisation doesn’t come without consequences for the average member of the public – and those impacted by those consequences can easily feel like they are being sacrificed on the altar of environmentalism. As early as 2015, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) identified that climate policy would lead to substantial changes for carbon-intensive industries, such as transportation or agriculture.


Certain jobs are likely to disappear or be relocated, and workers might find themselves lacking the skills required by a low-carbon economy. Wind turbine engineer may be one of the fastest-growing jobs in the US at the moment, but the expertise it requires is far from being within everyone’s reach.

To make sure that the green revolution is fair to all workers, the ILO suggested four principles for a fair transition to sustainability: social dialogue, social protection, respect for workers’ rights, and employment.

Building on those pillars, David Wei, director for climate at sustainable consultancy group Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), has written a guide for businesses to implement low-carbon models while reducing disruption for their workers. Wei’s handbook includes advice and case studies that are more hands-on than the ILO’s guidelines, such as increasing transparency or implementing re-skilling programmes. And it also highlights the importance of working hand-in-hand with governments. Political decision-making, it insists, is crucial to orchestrate a fair transition.

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As an example of good behaviour, Wei points to Canada, where this year unions set upa Just Transition Task Force after the government announced plans to phase out the use of coal-fired electricity by 2030. The organisation bridges between policy-makers and the workforce, meeting with the communities affected by the plans, and then reporting to the federal government on how to create opportunities for them. A further $35 million (£27.55m) budget was allocated to support training and re-skilling, with the end-goal of making for a smoother shift of the workforce away from coal.


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For Wei, this “inclusive economy agenda” should be the focus of governments and businesses alike for the years to come. “We have to look at the threats and risks that decarbonisation poses to the people,” he says. “You can’t ignore the social impact of a transition. If you don’t tackle the human dimension of climate change policy, you will never generate the political will necessary to meet the two-degree target [agreed upon in the 2015 Paris Agreement].”

Businesses and policy-makers will also need to communicate effectively if they want to win over those that will be impacted first-hand by the new rules of the game – especially if those rules imply sacrifices such as paying higher taxes .

Rachel New, a researcher in psychology at the University of Oxford, explains that trust is instrumental to ensure that populations embrace new policies. “People prefer to experience autonomy rather than have policies imposed upon them,” she says, “especially by authorities that they may already not trust. So if local community groups came up with the same policies for reducing emissions as, say, the French government have, the people involved in the decision-making would be more likely to support them.”

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If governments fail to earn the trust of their citizens in implementing climate change policies, they will reinforce the common trope that environmentalism is a privilege of the better off. “There is a degree of scapegoating going on,” says Born. “Climate change policy will be picked up by far-right movements and other groups as the cause of unemployment or higher costs of life.” Those are “legitimate concerns”, she continues, but they are the result of broader socio-economic systems – not climate change.

As the gilets jaunes protests have shown, things can escalate in a matter of weeks. In this case, concerns with climate policy are no longer at the top of the protesters’ agenda; the demonstrations have morphed into a challenge to President Macron’s economic and social policies, reflecting a general feeling of discontent across the country.

But for Wei, the movement still offers a glimpse of the backlash a transition to a low-carbon society is likely to trigger.“The gilets jaunes’ political landscape is the one that climate action will take place in,” he says. “In a world dominated by populist politics, it highlights how much thought has to be given to ensuring a fair transition.”

And politicians are indeed discussing the issue – although still not enough, according to experts like Borne. Halfway through the COP24, for example, an event was held to discuss a guide written up by climate consultants Darragh Conway and George Marshall to communicate on carbon pricing.

The paper includes advice for policy-makers on teaming up with the media and making use of social media to better communicate the value of higher taxes on carbon to the general public. “A communications strategy is not an add-on,” it says: a carbon pricing policy has to explain to the public how it will ultimately benefit workers. By highlighting, for example, statistics released by the ILO showing that the green economy could create 24 million jobs by 2024. Or by using Twitter to reach journalists, but also to let the public join the political conversation.

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For Camilla Born, it all comes down to humanising the issue. “Experts are good. But we need more people, so that the climate change conversation doesn’t happen in a bubble,” she says. “We need politics to make sure that citizens are part of this epic transition – because that is what it is.” And an urgent one as well. Fair transition, it seems, is on its way to being at the top of the COP25’s to-do list.

Updated 18.01.2019, 09.45 GMT: This article has been amended to correct the budget of the Just Transition Task Force in Canada.

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