How can we secure jobs in the shift towards sustainable production?

This book explores the theory and history behind just transitions, highlighting the social and political influences that have shaped the concept, and investigating the challenges it poses. Bridging theory with practice, it assesses critical transitions and advocates for inclusive approaches that manage employment impacts and engage communities in the move towards renewable energy. With a comprehensive coverage of the topic, the book offers both practical advice and theoretical insights, particularly focusing on navigating methodological challenges and understanding quantitative methodologies in the context of transitioning to a low-carbon economy. The book discusses the implications of energy decentralisation for a just transition and the importance of considering distributional justice and spatial injustices to ensure all benefit from the shift towards sustainable energy. Ultimately, it calls for innovative ways to actively involve communities to make sure that everyone's voices are heard in the move to renewable energy, and to manage the employment consequences of transitioning towards a cleaner economy. The Future of Just Transitions is a must-read for scholars, researchers and students of environmental law, energy law and policy, sustainable development, renewable energy technology and global and transnational law. Policymakers, strategists and stakeholders in renewable energy sectors, international agencies and NGOs will also benefit from the book's valuable policy recommendations.

With transitions to more sustainable ways of living already underway, this book examines how we understand the underlying dynamics of the transitions that are unfolding. Without this understanding, we enter the future in a state of informed bewilderment. Every day we are bombarded by reports about ecosystem breakdown, social conflict, economic stagnation and a crisis of identity. There is mounting evidence that deeper transitions are underway that suggest we may be entering another period of great transformation equal in significance to the agricultural revolution some 13,000 years ago or the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago. This book helps readers make sense of our global crisis and the dynamics of transition that could result in a shift from the industrial epoch that we live in now to a more sustainable and equitable age. The global renewable energy transition that is already underway holds the key to the wider just transition. However, the evolutionary potential of the present also manifests in the mushrooming of ecocultures, new urban visions, sustainability-oriented developmental states and new ways of learning and researching. Shedding light on the highly complex challenge of a sustainable and just transition, this book is essential reading for anyone concerned with establishing a more sustainable and equitable world. Ultimately, this is a book about hope but without easy answers.

This book explores the theory and history behind just transitions, highlighting the social and political influences that have shaped the concept, and investigating the challenges it poses. Bridging theory with practice, it assesses critical transitions and advocates for inclusive approaches that manage employment impacts and engage communities in the move towards renewable energy.

Combating climate change will increasingly impact on production industries and the workers they employ as production changes and consumption is targeted. Yet research has largely ignored labour and its responses. This book brings together sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, historians, economists, and representatives from international and local unions based in Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Taiwan, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the USA. Together they open up a new area of research: Environmental Labour Studies. The authors ask what kind of environmental policies are unions in different countries and sectors developing. How do they aim to reconcile the protection of jobs with the protection of the environment? What are the forms of cooperation developing between trade unions and environmental movements, especially the so-called Red-Green alliances? Under what conditions are unions striving to create climate change policies that transcend the economic system? Where are they trying to find solutions that they see as possible within the present socio-economic conditions? What are the theoretical and practical implications of trade unions' "Just Transition", and the problems and perspectives of "Green Jobs"? The authors also explore how food workers' rights would contribute to low carbon agriculture, the role workers' identities play in union climate change policies, and the difficulties of creating solidarity between unions across the global North and South. Trade Unions in the Green Economy opens the climate change debate to academics and trade unionists from a range of disciplines in the fields of labour studies, environmental politics, environmental management, and climate change policy. It will also be useful for environmental organisations, trade unions, business, and politicians.

Incorporating historical, sociological, and philosophical approaches, Changing the Atmosphere presents detailed empirical studies of climate science and its uptake into public policy.

Modelling Transitions shows what computational, formal and data-driven approaches can and could mean for sustainability transitions research, presenting the state-of-the-art and exploring what lies beyond. Featuring contributions from many well-known authors, this book presents the various benefits of modelling for transitions research. More than just taking stock, it also critically examines what modelling of transformative change means and could mean for transitions research and for other disciplines that study societal changes. This includes identifying a variety of approaches currently not part of the portfolios of transitions modellers. Far from only singing praise, critical methodological and philosophical introspection are key aspects of this important book. This book speaks to modellers and non-modellers alike who value the development of robust knowledge on transitions to sustainability, including colleagues in congenial fields. Be they students, researchers or practitioners, everyone interested in transitions should find this book relevant as reference, resource and guide.