The just transition concept has emerged, permeated climate negotiations, and influenced the mitigation and adaptation debates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The concept originated from the US labour movement and was codified by the International Labour Organization (ILO) 2015 \u2018Guidelines for a Just Transition.\u2019 Its inclusion in the Sixteenth Conference of the Parties (COP16) agreement in Cancun signalled its entry to the international climate policy arena.[1]<\/sup><\/a> The concept was more formally adopted five years later in the Paris Agreement preamble, which acknowledged the need to fairly transition workers in accordance with nationally defined development priorities.[2]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the ILO Guidelines\u2019 broad focus on social protection, skills development, and social dialogue, just transition narratives within the climate agenda have tended to narrowly focus on protecting jobs and leaving no one behind within decarbonising sectors of the economy \u2013 oil, coal, and gas.[3]<\/sup><\/a> The just transition concept, thus, has been largely concerned with mitigation and energy rather than adaptation. While wider understandings are emerging, such as just urban, just food system transitions, and just rural transitions, compared with the just energy transition concept, these are \u2018still evolving concepts, with different levels of engagement.\u2019[4]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Recent developments, such as the JTWP\u2019s creation at COP27 (see below) prompted the important process of deepening the just transition process. Despite this shift and the provisions of Paris Agreement Article 9.4, emphasising a balance between mitigation and adaptation finance, most climate finance to date has, nonetheless, been directed toward mitigation while further relegating adaptation (Figure 4).[5]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Figure<\/strong><\/a> 1<\/strong>. Developed countries\u2019 public finance commitments to developing countries by thematic area in 2019\u20132023<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Source: United Nations Environment Programme, 2025[6]<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For example, in 2023, mitigation financing reached USD 1.78 trillion, yet only USD 65 billion was allocated to adaptation, with most financing for both coming from the private sector or being debt-based.[7]<\/sup><\/a> Additionally, the predominant focus on energy in just transitions led to the establishment of Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) at COP26 in Glasgow. These focused on financing energy rather than \u2018whole-of-society\u2019 transitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n JETPs may mobilise finance for energy transitions that would not otherwise exist, yet they have major limitations. The majority of JETP finance is loan-based, with grants comprising only a small share of total funding \u2013 5% for South Africa, 3% for Indonesia, and 4% for Vietnam. Also, only a marginal share of JETP financing is explicitly directed to justice-related projects, raising concerns that the partnerships\u2019 justice components lack substance.[8]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Mitigation clearly captures most funding, yet there is growing recognition that adaptation must be a key component of any just transition.[9]<\/sup><\/a> As with the energy transition, adaptation measures can have unequal and unjust outcomes because adaptation is not a neutral process; political and normative choices shape whose risks are prioritised, whose livelihoods are protected, and whose futures are safeguarded.[10]<\/sup><\/a> It is also inherently broad and complex, spanning many development and social sectors. This raises a critical question: How does adaptation fit within the dominant just transition agenda and narrative?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Adaptation is increasingly recognised and linked to the just transition framework in international climate governance. For example, the JTWP, established at COP27 in Sharm-el-Sheikh (Egypt) decision 1\/CMA.4, aligns with the Paris Agreement goals, covering mitigation, adaptation, and finance pathways. The decision emphasises the importance of energy, socioeconomic, workforce, and other dimensions, based on nationally determined priorities, in facilitating just and equitable transitions.[11]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Subsequent JTWP decisions, such as 3\/CMA.5 and 2\/CMA.7, have further recognised that just transition pathways are relevant to, and contribute to, more equitable outcomes for adaptation. They also require \u2018whole-of-society\u2019 and \u2018whole-of-economy\u2019 approaches.[12]<\/sup><\/a> Despite evident progress, negotiations under the JTWP have been deeply contested, reflecting long-standing tensions between Global North and Global South actors over the pathways\u2019 scope and meaning. Researchers highlight how Global South efforts to advance a holistic, \u2018whole systems\u2019 approach encompassing adaptation, equity, means of implementation, and broader justice dimensions (i.e. recognitional, procedural, distributive, and restorative) have been repeatedly watered down.<\/a>[13]<\/sup><\/a> Instead, the Group of Twenty (G20) countries have pushed through reductionist framings centred on labour and energy transitions, with only more recent COP outcomes securing greater recognition of broader justice elements.[14]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Recent studies have started to address the intersection of sustainability transitions and the wider global political economy, but further examination is needed to understand how diverging adaptation priorities and livelihood considerations influence policy outcomes.[15]<\/sup><\/a> Additionally, despite the rise of the just transition paradigm in global discourse and international climate governance, researchers argue that most research remains heavily skewed toward the industrialised economies of the developed world and often sidelines the distinct transition challenges of the Global South, especially Africa.[16]<\/sup><\/a> Africa, therefore, needs a different understanding of just transitions, which considers the continent\u2019s structural realities, including its dependence on extractive industries, economic fragility, high levels of inequality, limited fiscal space, and vulnerability to climate impacts.[17]<\/sup><\/a> Just transitions on the continent also should carefully consider Africa\u2019s high levels of unemployment and the highly informal (precarious) nature of most of the labour force. [18]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n For adaptation, labour and \u2018workers\u2019 extend beyond the fossil fuel employment sectors typically associated with the just transition discourse. Both climate impacts and adaptation responses directly shape the livelihoods and labour conditions of smallholder farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk, informal urban workers and food traders, frontline healthcare and emergency response personnel, and women undertaking disproportionate and unpaid adaptation and care labour.[19]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Emerging research recognises these groups not only as climate-vulnerable populations but also as central actors performing adaptation labour itself, including through unpaid, informal, voluntary, and socially reproductive forms of work.[20]<\/sup><\/a> However, adaptation as \u2018work\u2019 or labour is rarely recognised in scholarship or climate policy.[21]<\/a> Johnson and others defined adaptation labour as \u2018everyday productive and socially reproductive strategies to bear the actual or expected impacts of climate change, including human actions to build or repair environments, infrastructures, or production systems.\u2019[22]<\/sup><\/a> This includes activities such as forest management, mangrove planting, agricultural production and food distribution, flood works, community planning and training exercises, and household relocation, and their adoption.[23]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Beyond labour- and energy-centred approaches, emerging scholarship advances a more holistic, \u2018whole-systems\u2019 framing of just transition that recognises multiple, interconnected dimensions of justice, the non-linearity of transitions, and the intersection of political, economic, technological, and cultural drivers.[24]<\/a> This approach adopts an explicitly transformational agenda that aligns with the Global South\u2019s calls within the UNFCCC for a whole-of-society approach to the JTWP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Expanding just transition research to more fully incorporate and investigate adaptation-related priorities, livelihoods, and labour realities in the Global South is, therefore, essential for crafting climate strategies that are equitable, context-sensitive, and attuned to structural vulnerabilities. A just transition lens on adaptation would critically shape how investments flow and labour capacities are supported across key adaptation sectors, including climate proofing infrastructure, agriculture and food systems, healthcare, water systems, urban and settlements planning, and disaster response. A JTfA, thus, should be viewed as complementary to, not competing with, mitigation-focused transitions, requiring attention to how the benefits and burdens of unavoidable climate impacts and adaptation action are distributed in socially just and politically legitimate ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Evidence also shows that adaptation interventions lacking justice and equity considerations can deepen existing inequalities or create new ones, resulting in maladaptation.[25]<\/sup><\/a> Moreover, considering the scant funding allocated to justice-related projects in current JETP financing, it is critical to explore how equity and justice intersect with adaptation to ensure these nuances are embedded in future just transition narratives, research, policy processes, and finance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Adaptation research is often critiqued for invoking justice and equity without analytical clarity. Therefore, we adopt the following working definitions as starting points in this report.[26]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The 2022 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report indicates three justice dimensions as pivotal to enabling effective and successful adaptation, which we examine and use throughout this report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We integrate restorative justice (restoring dignity and agency) as a fourth dimension to showcase how adaptation policy and planning can be used to correct existing and historical injustices.[30]<\/sup><\/a> These four dimensions are all necessary for understanding a just transition as a holistic, whole-systems approach.[31]<\/sup><\/a> We use these dimensions as a starting point from which to elaborate on justice\u2019s implications for climate adaptation. Understandings of justice as they apply to adaptation are, however, extended and reinterpreted by African Indigenous versions of justice, including environmental justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recognitional justice emphasises acknowledging and addressing the unequal power structures that shape climate impacts.[32]<\/sup><\/a> It underscores the need to acknowledge diverse vulnerabilities across race, gender, socio-economic status, disability, and age. It is a prerequisite for procedural and distributive justice, because failing to acknowledge historical and social inequalities risks perpetuating exclusion, marginalisation, and vulnerability in adaptation processes.[33]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cognitive justice is a key component of recognitional justice. It ensures that all knowledge systems are recognised and included in decision making. It aims to broaden what counts as valuable knowledge to challenge the current paradigm that sees the majority of people in the developing world \u2018degraded to the status of consumers of knowledge generated in other contexts, and denied their rights as creators of knowledge.\u2019[34]<\/sup><\/a> Fair knowledge production and questioning whose knowledge is valued are key features of cognitive justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cognitive justice is not just a matter of fairness, however, as \u2018it is also a pragmatic necessity for achieving truly sustainable and equitable futures.\u2019[35]<\/sup><\/a> For example, climate change impacts are increasingly exposing the limits of relying on single knowledge systems to understand and respond to complex socio-ecological changes with implications for adaptation responses. As climate impacts deepen, Western scientific knowledge and modelling, despite its advances, still contains uncertainties and \u2018known unknowns,\u2019 such as when tipping points will be reached and what their impact will be, especially at the local level. These uncertainties show why adaptation should draw on diverse forms of knowledge (i.e. epistemic generosity), including ILK, to complement scientific understandings of climate risk and adaptation.[36]<\/sup><\/a> Thus, the justice element is imperative because it implies that pre-existing biases toward Western epistemologies (linked to colonial legacies, economic power, and cultural biases) must be dismantled.[37]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n More recent justice research has expanded questions of justice beyond a narrow focus on human societies to include non-human beings, ecosystems, future generations, and broader spatial and historical relationships within moral and political communities.[38]<\/sup><\/a> For example, for the Indigenous hunter-gatherer Ogiek people of northern Kenya, the Mau Forest is a socio-ecological and spiritual system in which human wellbeing, cultural identity, and ecological integrity are fundamentally interconnected. The Ogiek\u2019s customary governance systems, spiritual practices, and ecological knowledge are grounded in reciprocal relationships with the forest, emphasising collective stewardship, sustainability, and interdependence of human and non-human life.[39]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n These expanded perspectives challenge Western legal and philosophical traditions that treat nature primarily as property or a resource, and they show the relevance of Indigenous worldviews that understand humans, ecosystems, and spiritual life as deeply interconnected. In this sense, recognitional justice is not only about acknowledging social difference; it is also about recognising how historic injustices shape current opportunities and vulnerabilities (overlapping with restorative justice), while valuing plural ontologies, knowledge systems, and responsibilities to future generations, distant communities, and the natural world.[40]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Procedural justice examines the fairness of climate adaptation decision-making processes. Some researchers have stressed that inclusive, transparent, and accountable governance is essential for ensuring that adaptation policies equitably represent affected communities.[41]<\/sup><\/a> This approach requires considering who has access to decision-making, whose perspectives are included, and whose needs are prioritised. Rawls\u2019 framework of justice, which integrates procedural and distributive justice, provides a foundation for structuring fair adaptation policies.[42]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Along similar lines, the IPCC, the leading climate change science authority, has been criticised for organisational and functional biases that directly undermine procedural justice.[43]<\/sup><\/a> These biases include a \u2018geographical bias favouring experts from the Global North, a gender bias favouring men, a disciplinary bias favouring natural sciences over humanities and social sciences, and an epistemological bias that prioritises Western science over Indigenous approaches to science and Indigenous science.\u2019[44]<\/sup><\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n More recent studies have also shown growth in the content on, and references to, Indigenous Peoples and colonialism between the IPCC Fifth and Sixth Assessment Reports, suggesting progress in overcoming biases. However, the latter still shows inconsistencies in meaningfully including Indigenous perspectives, voices, and experiences, and a reductionist approach, which reinforces \u2018harmful stereotypes of Indigenous Peoples and Indigenous Knowledge Systems.\u2019[45]<\/sup><\/a> Thus, biases still influence or restrict who can access decision-making platforms and whose perspectives are genuinely integrated and prioritised in global climate assessments. This, in turn, limits the fairness and inclusivity essential to just governance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Distributive justice concerns fair allocation of climate adaptation\u2019s benefits and burdens across society.[46]<\/sup><\/a> Equity, a central tenet of distributive justice, mandates that resources, opportunities, and protection from climate risks be distributed impartially, irrespective of individuals\u2019 identities or backgrounds. However, adaptation benefits and costs often vary markedly between the local and national scales.[47]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Concrete distributive justice failures are evident in food systems, where inequities manifest in unequal access to food, resulting in food insecurity, environmental harms associated with food production, and exploitative labour conditions affecting agricultural workers.[48]<\/sup><\/a> A distributive justice lens shows that these patterns reflect the tendency of food system burdens and benefits concentrating unequally across populations and geographies.[49]<\/sup><\/a> However, not all uneven distributions amount to injustice.[50]<\/sup><\/a> Natural disparities \u2013 such as soil fertility or access to water \u2013 are not, in themselves, justice issues unless historical legacies or human decisions exacerbate or unfairly institutionalise their effects. For example, agricultural policy that disproportionately channels investment toward already advantaged regions can politicise environmental conditions and lead to unjust outcomes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another key concept, especially relevant in emergency situations, is the principle of remedial responsibility. This concept posits that those with the capacity to assist should do so, irrespective of their contribution to the crisis.[51]<\/sup><\/a> The concept resonates with one interpretation of the Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC) principle outlined in the UNFCCC international treaty framework commonly advanced by developing countries. Under this interpretation, developed countries (Annex I) bear greater obligation to support mitigation and adaptation efforts in developing countries (Annex II) because of both their historical contribution to climate change and greater economic and technological capabilities.[52]<\/sup><\/a> However, since the Copenhagen Accord and the Paris Agreement\u2019s reformulation of CBDR-RC \u2018in light of national circumstances,\u2019 alternative interpretations, mostly advanced by developed countries, have increasingly emphasised present capabilities and evolving national circumstances. Ongoing contention over how historical responsibilities should be allocated has resulted.[53]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n A distributive justice perspective provides a moral and legal framework that supports differentiated obligations and developed countries\u2019 provision of finance, technology, and capacity-building support to developing countries. It reflects disparities in historical responsibility, capabilities, and vulnerability, and is consistent with Articles 9, 10, and 11 of the Paris Agreement.[54]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Restorative justice remains comparatively underdeveloped within climate adaptation discourse. The concept began in criminal justice, focusing on repairing harm and restoring dignity and relationships, rather than applying punishment and retribution.[55]<\/sup><\/a> For adaptation, this approach requires acknowledging how historical injustices, colonialism, and unequal contributions to climate change have shaped present patterns of vulnerability and adaptive capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two core positions emerge in the literature. First, reparations are viewed as a form of moral repair that requires acknowledging historical harm, accepting responsibility, and rebuilding trust between those most responsible for climate change and those most affected by it (Box 1).[56]<\/sup><\/a> Notions of fairness or justice cannot be \u2018abstracted from history.\u2019[57]<\/sup><\/a> From this perspective, adaptation responses that fail to confront what has historically driven vulnerability, risk reproducing injustice, even where technical or financial support is provided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, caution against reducing reparations to abstract moral gestures or symbolic recognition is equally important. Fanon rejected the notion of \u2018moral reparations\u2019 as hollow, arguing instead for tangible \u2018material and technical aid\u2019 as rightful redress for the economic, environmental, and human exploitation of colonialism. To make a new world of justice for all \u2018demands that we distribute the costs of making the just world toward those corporations, governments, and people that have inherited the moral liabilities of the worldmaking that preceded us.\u2019[58]<\/sup><\/a> Thus, restorative justice requires tangible measures to address unequal vulnerabilities and capacities, not only acknowledgement of historical harm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Within adaptation discourse, restorative justice is increasingly understood as both a process of historical redress and a means of addressing contemporary climate inequalities. Adaptation researchers have focussed on vital measures to repair climate-related injustices.[59]<\/sup><\/a> Robinson and Carlson argued that restorative justice in climate contexts requires confronting the lived experiences of dispossession \u2013 loss of land, culture, identity, and future \u2013 and repairing the moral relationships that centuries of colonial and post-colonial exploitation have fractured.[60]<\/sup><\/a> Building on this perspective, Juhola and others identified several adaptation-specific dimensions of restorative justice: compensating for unequal climate impacts, remedying maladaptation that reinforces existing vulnerabilities and inequalities or creates new ones, and redistributing adaptation finance and resources to address access.[61]<\/sup><\/a> In African contexts, restorative justice for adaptation could include securing land tenure for communities dispossessed through colonialism or \u2018land grabs\u2019 (see chapter 6), compensating communities, and adaptation labourers disproportionately affected by climate impacts (see section 5.2), and directing adaptation finance, technology, and capacity building toward historically marginalised groups (see chapters 7 and 8).[62]<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n5.2. Expanding just transition research and narratives to a whole-of-society approach<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
5.3. Justice dimensions<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
5.3.1. Recognitional justice<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
5.3.2. Procedural justice<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
5.3.3. Distributive justice<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
5.3.4. Restorative justice<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n