Transitioning to a low carbon economy represents one of the most significant and urgent challenges facing society today. There remains a pressing need to engage with the fairness of the social, economic and environmental impacts associated with the transition.
The transition will, of necessity, require the involvement and support of a diverse range of actors for whom both the outcome and the process of achieving a low carbon economy must be fair. The concept of justice takes a central place in the interactions among policymakers, businesses and civil society. In this report we consider how a justice approach could inform sustainability leaders in policy-making and business circles.
The rationale for a study on the implications of justice for the transition has grown out of Rewiring the Economy, which constitutes CISL’s ten-year plan to lay the foundations for a sustainable economy. Within this framework businesses are being encouraged to seek models of value creation that generate a fair social contribution within the natural boundaries of the planet.
In this context, the subject of this paper is to:
- review the various conceptions of justice
- explore how it has been taken up in key international policy and business circles
- present well-known ´thinking tools´ that may support decision-making towards more explicitly just transitions to a low carbon economy
- conclude with some worked examples of how such approaches might usefully inform policy and corporate sustainability strategies.
