Log in to star items.
- Convenors:
-
Aysha Valery
(Institute of Development Studies)
Paula Alejandra Camargo (Institute of Development Studies)
Send message to Convenors
- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Climate justice, just transitions & environmental futures
- Location:
- L3.12
- Sessions:
- Thursday 9 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Dublin
Short Abstract
This panel interrogates the contested nature of the just transition, examining how dominant narratives obscure plural experiences, structural inequalities, and alternative trajectories. It invites critical engagement with the assumptions shaping policy and practice.
Description
The notion of a ‘just transition’ has gained traction across climate policy, development discourse, and sustainability frameworks. Yet, its dominant articulations often reflect technocratic, state-centric, and market-oriented logics that risk reproducing existing inequalities and marginalising alternative ways of knowing and being.
This panel examines the contested nature of the just transition, foregrounding the tensions between global narratives and local realities.
Attention is given to how prevailing frameworks obscure the lived experiences of communities at the periphery of formal governance and economic systems—such as Indigenous groups, artisanal miners, informal workers, and rural populations—whose perspectives frequently challenge linear, extractivist, or universalist models of transition. The panel engages with the political economy of transition processes, the epistemic hierarchies embedded within them, and the implications for livelihoods, autonomy, and environmental justice.
By exploring alternative imaginaries and locally grounded responses, the panel seeks to open space for pluralised understandings of justice and sustainability. It invites reflection on how transitions are negotiated, resisted, and redefined in practice, and on the power relations that shape whose futures are made possible—and whose are foreclosed.
Accepted papers
Session 1 Thursday 9 July, 2026, -Paper short abstract
The paper analyzes (1) persistent power structures (re)produced through multinational-led discourses in the Brazilian wind energy sector, and (2) local civil society engagement challenging these hierarchies at both the discursive and action-oriented levels.
Paper long abstract
This paper explores the dynamics between multinationals and civil society movements contesting green grabbing, illustrated by the case of Brazil. Green grabbing is not a new phenomenon in the country; however, the recent expansion of wind farms has exerted additional pressure on local communities, particularly in the Northeast. Between 2011 and 2021, the share of wind power in the country’s electricity generation capacity increased from 1.2% to 11.4%. While 89% of wind farms are officially claimed to be run by Brazilian companies, 68% are subsidiaries of mainly European corporations. Affected neighbouring communities are sparsely compensated. Instead, they face exclusion from deliberative processes, lawsuits involving multinationals, and environmental damage. Nonetheless, Brazilian civil society has repeatedly demonstrated its capacity to contest land grabbing by both national and multinational stakeholders.
The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it explores the ways in which Brazilian civil society successfully counters so-called “development projects” promoted by land-grabbing multinationals. Lessons are drawn from ProSAVANA, a contested intervention that was halted by Mozambican and Brazilian civil society. The paper investigates whether these lessons can be applied to the case of wind farms. Second, it seeks to dismantle the hegemonic discourse (re)produced by European wind energy multinationals in order to maintain established hierarchies. For this purpose, press releases and interviews are analysed.
Hence, the paper does not only dismantle existing power structures but also examines the capacity of civil society to mobilize resistance.
Paper short abstract
This paper analyzes how the ICJ Advisory Opinion on Climate Change (2025) strengthens legal obligations for just transition, using Botswana’s coal sector as a case study. It analyzes gaps between international law and national implementation and offers practical frameworks for practitioners.
Paper long abstract
The ICJ’s 2025 Advisory Opinion on climate change has been characterized as transforming political commitment to legally binding obligations. This paper examines whether, how, and with what implications this purported shift affects just transition implementation in coal-dependent developing countries, using Botswana as a case study.
Adopting a practitioner-scholar approach the paper leverages Botswana’s just transition policy process while maintaining analytical distance through institutional analysis. This methodology bridges international climate law with implementation studies, examining how the ICJ AO strengthens the UAE JTWP’s provisions on local communities and Indigenous Peoples, reframing them as enforceable legal obligations rather than aspirational goals.
Through analysis of Botswana’s draft NDP12 and NDC, alongside semi-structured engagement with policy actors, the paper identifies gaps between emerging international legal obligations and national policy frameworks. It demonstrates how abstract legal principles translate, or fail, into concrete protections for workers and mining-dependent communities.
The paper advances scholarship in four ways: theorizing the shift from political to legal obligations as institutional reconfiguration requiring active translation work, not automatic compliance; it provides empirical evidence from a coal-dependent African economy where most literature focuses on industrialized contexts; developing a multi-scalar implementation framework linking international legal obligations to national policy architecture; and identifying how legal clarity paradoxically creates new implementation challenges requiring institutional reform beyond financial resources.
By interrogating this distinction in climate governance, the paper contributes to debates on international law’s efficacy in producing domestic policy change, arguing that legal obligations create necessary but insufficient conditions for just transition implementation.
Paper short abstract
Formalisation of artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in the Congolese Copperbelt is often framed around harm reduction. Yet fieldwork across formal and informal sites in Lualaba reveals that burdensome compliance requirements erode miner livelihoods, paradoxically hindering formalisation efforts.
Paper long abstract
The Democratic Republic of the Congo contains vast high‑quality deposits of two key critical minerals—copper and cobalt—making Congolese extraction central to global just transition targets. Artisanal and small‑scale mining (ASM), which contributes an estimated 15–30% of national cobalt production, is nonetheless framed in global policy debates through narratives of risk: child labour, environmental degradation, informality, and insecurity, leading many to advocate for formalisation.
This paper interrogates that prescription. Drawing on life history interviews with 79 ASM miners across four sites in Lualaba Province, alongside focus group discussions and key informant interviews with government officials and civil society, we examine how formalisation is experienced on the ground. Findings reveal that complex administrative requirements, including cooperative membership and significant fee burdens erect barriers that drive miners toward informality rather than drawing them into regulated frameworks. Critically, these effects are gendered: formalisation regimes that appear nominally neutral prove structurally disadvantageous to women, compounding existing exclusions.
We argue that sustainable formalisation in the Congolese Copperbelt must reckon seriously with livelihoods. Policies that subordinate economic viability to regulatory compliance risk alienating the very miners they seek to incorporate — and in doing so, undermine the governance objectives that motivate them. As global demand for Congolese minerals intensifies under just transition agendas, the stakes of getting formalisation right could not be higher.
Paper short abstract
This thesis examines how community action groups in Australia's Hunter Valley utilise justice themes to pursue a just coal transition. It reveals advocacy tensions, institutional resistance and weak Indigenous recognition, contributing insights for globally just and participatory energy transitions.
Paper long abstract
This thesis critically examines how community action groups employ justice frameworks to advocate for a ‘just’ transition from coal in Australia's Hunter Valley. Drawing on a qualitative framework analysis of publicly accessible social media content and commissioned policy reports, the study investigates how two local community groups, Hunter Renewal and Lock the Gate Alliance, operationalise distributive, procedural, recognitional, and restorative justice in their advocacy.
Findings reveal distinct advocacy strategies, where Hunter Renewal prioritises distributive (economic) justice and community participation. Conversely, Lock the Gate employs a broader, accountability-driven approach, emphasising procedural transparency and ecological restoration. However, both groups inadequately integrate recognitional justice, especially concerning Indigenous cultural recognition, highlighting a critical gap informed by recognitional justice theories, as well as Indigenous environmental justice perspectives.
Moreover, despite shaping public discourse effectively, Hunter Renewal experiences procedural tokenism, limiting genuine community empowerment, while Lock the Gate encounters significant institutional resistance consistent with advocacy coalition frameworks.
This research concludes that effective advocacy for a truly just transition requires deeper integration of recognitional justice through explicit inclusion of Indigenous and marginalised community perspectives, genuine co-design processes beyond tokenistic consultation, and strategic coalition-building to counter institutional resistance. These insights provide crucial implications for policy, advocacy strategies, and future just transition efforts globally.