Just Transition Can Be The Solution

Is there a beneficial approach to stop climate change without neglecting people whose careers and livelihoods are included in these polluting industries?

Is there an effective way to control climate change and limit its consequences? When shall we start? Do we have time?

All these questions and many others are addressed with Just Transition. It’s about making fundamental changes to tackle pressing environmental problems like climate change, pollution, and biodiversity collapse. “Nations, societies and businesses must go through immediate transitions towards greener, sustainable and eco-friendly societies and economies.”

Just Transition means increasing the social and economic opportunities of climate actions. It also aims to reduce with wise management any risks and challenges with negotiation, consultation and many other effective strategies. Transparent exchange of information is being achieved between workers and representatives of governments about mutual-interest issues relating to social and economic policy.

Just transition and agriculture

A Just Transition may effectively incorporate a wide range of social, economic, and environmental goals to support the agriculture sector, like:

• Design a new food system based on sustainability rather than industrial agriculture:

All food systems are inseparably connected to ecosystems. When industrial agriculture is employed for the production and processing of food, a wide range of living beings are affected; humans, animals, and plants alike.

Just Transition has the ability and responsibility to protect the plants and animals. It could safeguard biodiversity and make life on this planet possible.

In industrial agriculture and animal farming, animals are treated as raw products, and profits are preferred over their well-being. Just Transition aims to reduce the intensive animal industry and limit the number of animals raised only for meat, dairy, and other food products.

• Keep farmers away from animal agriculture

Globally, farmed animals are responsible for more than 14% of greenhouse gas emissions. Hence, it’s very urgent to transition away from industrial animal production seeking to reduce its impacts on the climate change crisis.

Developed countries like the US consume high volumes of meat and other animal products every year. This would result in more deforestation, more greenhouse emissions, and more environmental threats. Just Transition aims to perform new plant-based agriculture offering more opportunities for farmers to reduce their reliance on industrial animal productions. It would be replaced with more profitable, sustainable, and eco-friendly approaches.

• Restructure the financial system of agriculture

Governments around the world provide the agricultural sector with almost 600 billion dollars every year. An international report has shown that only 1% of the total support given to global agriculture is harnessed to maintain the environment’s sustainability and integrity. At the same time, the rest majority contributes to deforestation activities, overuse of chemical synthesizers, and the cattle industry. In addition, most of these subsidies are not wisely used in order to maintain food security through cost-efficient policies and applying sustainable food production on smaller scales which reduces food costs overall.

RELATED TOPICS: Let’s Make Change Against Climate Change

Is Just transition possible?

Just Transition is not just possible but it’s a necessity to ensure prosperity and livability for future generations. In fact, we are running out of time to control the extent of anthropogenic behaviors that will happen in the near future, damaging food systems and biodiversity all over the world.

International labor organization (ILO) has estimated that, by 2030, more than 2% of the total working hours will be lost every year due to climate change. because workers won’t be able to work under the extremely hot temperature and even if they could, their performance will be at a slower pace. It’s also good to know that 40% of global employment relies directly on a healthy stable environment and will instantly be influenced by climate change.

Several global crises like Covid-19 for example created labor market troubles with a sharp fall in the level of employment decreased inequalities, and occupational safety and health risks for people and societies all over the world.

According to the significance and level of all these risks and challenges, it’s clear now that we don’t have either resources or time to solve these problems separately, employing Just Transitions to tackle them together is not an option, it’s a matter of urgency.

Just Transition and climate change

There are many approaches that Just Transition offers to overcome climate change. Many procedures would help us to green our economies:

• Just Transition supports green jobs creating alternative job opportunities. They have provided living wages, appropriate workplace safety protection, and health assurance. Furthermore, quality jobs will develop people’s lives and communities, increasing their awareness of the importance of this economic green transformation.
• Just Transition helps to clarify several facts to help countries understand the impact of basic climate actions. These procedures would lead them to detect the best solutions that are convenient with their context.
• Just Transition would help governments to minimize the fear, opposition, and general conflicts. In addition, this would abort all fuel-based activities that are warming the earth. In other words, deforestation and wasteful industries must be halted and replaced with green alternatives.
• Just Transition’s strategies can be embedded with short-term and long-term plans. It would help leaders to focus their efforts on sharp decarbonization, reinforcing efforts to combat climate change. 

You can now check the full list of Environmental Products
produced by Almardia Group

Common Questions

• What is meant by a just transition?

Increasing the social and economic efforts to motivate climate actions, while decreasing all possible conflicts and carefully controlling challenges.

• What are the three Rs of just transition?

Resist, Rethink, and Restructure, and they have a very promising slogan: no worker left behind.

• Why is transition in life difficult?

Because they oblige us to drop all harmful familiar behaviors and face the future with more feelings of responsibility.