Just Transition and Impact Assessment: A Framework for Human and Ecological Wellbeing

This volume reframes narratives on just transition and explores how impact assessment modes can be deployed for just transition ends. Traditionally, just transition focuses on local jobs and workers, and its application in the context of climate change retains this focus. From its recognition in the Paris Agreement to its incorporation into domestic transition laws and policies, the just transition is essentially understood as jobs transition. In this book, Adebayo Majekolagbe shows that the traditional focus of the just transition narrative on jobs, its emphasis on distributive and procedural justice, and the failure to embed just transition into planning and decision- making have led to unjust outcomes for social and ecological systems, both locally and globally. Using Amartya Sen’s capability approach to justice, Majekolagbe proposes key characteristics of just transition, establishing that human and ecological wellbeing should be the primary objectives. Finally, the book demonstrates how impact assessment can be a useful tool for mainstreaming justice into transition planning, given its recognition in laws worldwide as a regulatory tool for planning and decision- making. Innovative and impactful, this book will be of great interest to students, scholars, and practitioners of climate change law and policy, just transition, and impact assessment.