On the 21st of September, The JT cluster organized a workshop to share our ideas, to discuss our visions, and to contemplate the navigation of Just transition in practice and in legal research. The workshop was well attended with a total of 25 participants bringing insights from a wide array of legal subfields and interdisciplinary work with commercial law, employment law, litigation, policy, international law, and legal theory all represented alongside practitioners and university research staff. 

The day had the aim first and foremost to discuss the burgeoning development of just transitions as a pole of social, political, and legal interaction. What we hoped would come from this pilot workshop is collegial familiarity with the relevant research being carried out, bridges to impact pathways, discourse on whether ‘just transitions’ has a shared meaning, and future research avenues. The session was organized around four sessions consisting of two work sharing panels and two discussions. The first discussion addressed practice in litigation and policy, and the second on finding methodological and epistemic insight. The discussion was vibrant, through-provoking and the ideas that were circulated stirred up distinct viewpoints.  

  1. Javier Solana opened the first session for work-sharing with his focus on finance and social justice through possible routes to a just transition from a finance viewpoint. Aims of just transitions and social justice may be forwarded through strategic litigation in the field of finance using its existing regulatory framework and network analysis.
  2. Vera Pavlou spoke to us about the intertwinement of labour law and the idea of just transition, through which JT was initially developed. Her focus was that social sustainability finds itself oft paradoxically neglected in transition discourse and that markets are in tension with labour principles.

Süsi Stuehlinger addressed carbon markets and its implication for just transitions. Her suggestion was that framing the resistance to the market capture of the environment as a Polanyian countermovement may be a helpful for legal analysis. In particular, her focus is on the role of human rights as means of resisting commodification of nature through carbon trading. 

Following this session, a plenary discussion pointed out common themes between the presentations, namely that there is a current tension between markets and sustainability that variably manifests, that just transitions can be grafted onto existing legal tools and bases for litigation, and that a certain legal teleology arises but it where it is based and where it is going is still not clear. 

The next research session offered 3 examples of where legal frameworks and just transitions may interact. Prof.Iain MacNeil, Prof.Irene-Marie Esser, and Dr. Kasia Chalaczkiewicz-Ladna shared their focus on how sustainability principles have entered corporate (self) regulation of corporation through Sustainable development, ESG, and CSR. This shone the light that JT can impact through non-financial reporting  and the role of stakeholders in corporate decision-making.  

  1. Anna Chadwick focused on the intersection of JT and agriculture, using the approach of law and the political economy to ask how food systems can become sustainable and equitable. Drawing from the concept of 'food sovereignty’, she stressed the importance of local community stakeholders in the scheme for the sustainable future of food. 

Using the case study of the Hidroituango dam in Colombia, Dr. Giedre Jokubauskaite focused on how green development can result in grave unintended consequences even with the best intentions. While focus on risk has become a dominant discourse in greening of the economy, transforming law’s function towards managing risks for the developers and funders, the question is whether rights can provide legal tools for social movements to create alternative pathways towards a more just green economy. 

The third session’s discussion, led by Dr. Ivano Alogna and Ingrid Gubbay, was oriented to find common direction and lacunas that could be filled by academic work. Ivano focused on the paradigm shift, the lack of common referential framework, and the rhetoric-shift that characterise just transition. The focus then shifted to a litigation perspective, where Ingrid spoke on the ‘transitional justice’ (towards greener society) that litigation pursues. Many legal bases have been attempted, but duty of care cases have gathered the most steam. The discussion that followed swirled around the future of just transition, encompassing whether the existing framework would suffice or would a novel imaginary be needed to tackle it. 

The last session of the day led, By Prof. George Pavlakos and Dr. Charlie Peevers, focused on how to overcome methodological challenges, and perhaps find commonalities in approach. Some possible directions that were pointed are where a) working out what the law needs b) critique by finding the extra-legal factors that determine the legal content c) of how morality (in the sense of social and ecological justice) may guide JT. Further, we asked what does success of the JT initiative look like? Planetary stewardship, justice to leave no one inequitably burdened, or something else? The discussion showed the many inspirations present but also that a coalition approach may be best suited. 

For the next steps of the Just Transitions Cluster, we are beginning to organize 1-hour discussion and work sharing sessions. We are aiming to have these a few times during each semester. We are also planning another larger JT Event in April. If you would like to volunteer for a session, like further information, and/or to be added to our mailing list please email just.transition@glasgow.ac.uk 

First published: 19 October 2022

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