Just Transitions: Exploring the need for international rules based on local realities

As nations move ahead with efforts toward net-zero, protecting the human rights of workers and communities must be a central component of strategies to achieve truly  “just” transitions for all.

On Wednesday 5 to Friday 7 October 2022 at Wilton Park, IHRB will host a high-level dialogues to enable constructive exchange amongst key actor. The purpose is to further develop collective thinking and action around the necessary norms, standards, and safeguards for implementing just transitions strategies by governments, businesses, and local authorities to effectively navigate context-specific social, environmental, and economic complexity while ensuring consistency with international  human rights and labour standards. In particular, the agenda aims to: 

• enhance understanding of how the human rights framework can contribute to just transitions; 

• identify gaps in existing normative frameworks and recommendations for filling them; 

• strengthen links among key institutions and actors, particularly across a spectrum of policymakers, civil society, and frontline practitioners, and; 

• generate the emergence of expert networks to take forward actions and  proposals in specific areas. 

The Wilton Park/IHRB meeting will result in a public report with recommendations that can be shared at COP27, and which will provide the basis for greater alignment around the implementation of just transition strategies, in particular, towards greater clarity and quality-control for governments and businesses and their accountability to workers,  communities, and consumers.