Landscapes of (In)justice: Reflecting on Voices, Spaces, and Alliances for Just Transition

Abstract

Just transitions seek to ameliorate the social and economic impacts of the global energy transitions that are essential to building an equitable low-carbon economy in the coming decades. Diverse groups of citizens need to be engaged in the design and implementation of transition policies across all scales and sectors for them to succeed and be socially acceptable. But how? And what lessons can we take from emerging practice to guide future action? This paper identifies insights from these experiences and struggles as they might pertain to contemporary attempts to ensure transitions are more socially just by drawing on a broad body of work on: (i) just transitions, energy justice, and energy transitions; (ii) contentious resource politics and attempts to democratise them; and (iii) social movement struggles for justice in the settings on which our project focuses. We focus on issues of voice (representation), spaces (for participation), and alliances (for change), paying particular attention to the three countries at the centre of this work: Colombia, Mozambique, and Nigeria.