The current Conservative government are busy feeding Britain’s climate leadership into the shredder at the moment. As always, there’s more going on behind the scenes of government. While the politicians tilt at their net zero windmills, thousands of people are getting on with climate action as best they can in government departments, devolved government and local authorities.
There was a useful example of this yesterday as the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST) published a briefing on Just Transition. POST’s job is to write up non-partisan briefings on scientific topics. Like the Climate Change Committee, their work is well informed and scrupulously balanced, so their reports are great primers on important topics and they’re all publicly available.
“What is a just transition for environmental targets?” asks the latest report, and it looks at the background to the idea of just transitions and what it means in the UK.
The exact term ‘just transition’ originates with industrial unions in the US. They were highlighting the need to consult and work with affected industries as new pollution laws came in during the 1980s. It’s a supportive approach to new environmental laws, rather than seeking to block change in order to protect jobs. We should do the right thing by the environment, and do it in such as way that nobody gets left behind. The idea has evolved and merged with climate justice arguments, and today it has both local and global implications.
POST suggest that there are two main forms of justice that we ought to bear in mind: procedural and distributive.
Procedural justice is about how change happens. It’s about consultation and ownership of ideas, democratic process. Environmental change should not be imposed. It needs consent, and wide buy-in is more likely to be successful anyway. This is the advantage of citizen assemblies and other forms of participative democracy, the higher up the ladder of participation the better.
Distributive justice is about where the burden falls, about the balance of costs and benefits. Principles such as ‘the polluter pays’ are important here, and policies can fail when people are asked to pay to fix problems they didn’t cause.
We care about these things, which is why Prime Minister Rishi Sunak paid lip service to both in his mendacious speech on net zero recently – though without actually addressing either form of injustice in the policy announcements that followed.
Where his Conservative Party fails, others have acted. POST’s briefing points out that the devolved governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland already have just transition principles embedded in law. Scotland has a Just Transition Commission that scrutinises policy and ensures that the country’s climate plans are fair. Northern Ireland are setting up a similar commission at the moment, having created it in 2022. In Wales, just transition considerations are enshrined in the ground-breaking Wellbeing of Future Generations Act.
So far, most of the work around just transition in the UK has focused on energy and its impacts on labour. Around 30,000 people work in the oil and gas industry, most of them in Scotland. As this industry winds down – and it will for several reasons – it’s important to avoid mass unemployment. Taking both aspects of justice into consideration, we would want to consult workers in those industries (procedural), and ensure that they get the support as the changes come into effect (distributive).
Scotland is working on both of those things. When surveyed, over half of oil and gas workers in the North Sea say they would be interested in transitioning to working on offshore wind. The challenge for Scotland is to create the training opportunities to make that happen, funding them so that workers don’t have to pay for their own re-training, and developing recognised qualifications across the industries.
Another energy-related just transition question is housing. Britain’s homes are inefficient, and we won’t reach our climate targets without a huge national retrofitting scheme. Millions of homes need insulation and low-carbon heating. The Conservatives have correctly identified that people are worried about who will pay for this, but have decided to blame the targets rather than offer solutions. Both aspects of justice matter here too. People need to feel that they have been heard and their opinions have been considered (procedural). And we need to do those retrofits without laying the costs at the feet of those on lower incomes (distributive).
POST raise two other considerations for a just transition in the UK. One is climate adaptation. The harm from a warming climate will fall more on those on low incomes, and in low-lying coastal communities. Britain’s adaptation strategies need to reflect this inequality of impact. The second is the impact on consumers, as prices rise or certain goods and services are no longer available.
I can’t say I have any faith that government ministers will read the POST briefing, but I hope the opposition do, and catch up with where the devolved regional governments are already. Just transition principles aren’t simply a nice idea. It’s how climate action is done fairly, in ways that are effective and widely supported. It’s also how you avoid a backlash against climate policies.
Whether or not we want to use that exact term, a just transition is the only kind of low-carbon transition that everyone can get behind. And climate change needs everyone.
The Earthbound Report 