Just Transitions

This chapter details how the just transition scholarship has yet to substantively engage with normative justice scholarship, particularly in identifying what the notion of a transition or transitions should be. Instead, issues central to the tradition have centred on workers’ rights, in addition to issues related to energy production and distribution at local scales. Despite this, McCauley notes the potential presented by the lack of engagement with justice theorising. The under-theorisation of distributive and procedural forms of justice would usefully frame discourse, he notes. For instance, distributive and procedural forms of justice could help frame how workers are affected by shifting geographies of carbon and decarbonised development projects. Here, McCauley argues that the notion of vulnerability should become more central to transitions research, particularly as it relates to recognition and responsibility through the transition away from fossil fuel-intensive developments, thus placing workers and families as subjects of injustice. McCauley thus points us to the ways in which the just transition scholarship remains open for engagement with justice theorising.