Changement climatique: Qu’est-ce une transition juste? * Cambio climático: Qué es una transición justa? * Climate Change: What is a Just Transition?
The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has developed a short guide “to raise awareness among decision makers and the general public on the need for a ‘Just Transition’ in the context of climate change negotiations and policies.”
ITUC health, safety and environment specialist Anabella Rosemberg says the Just Transition flyer, which is available on the ITUC’s climate change website in English, French and Spanish, “is a tool for ensuring social justice in the necessary transformation towards climate-friendly and climate resilient societies.”
Just transition on the global agenda
Trade unions are keeping on the pressure to ensure “Just Transition” remains on the agenda for December’s UN climate change summit in Copenhagen.
Union representatives who will form part of the ITUC delegation at the Copenhagen meeting met this week with Michael Zammit Cutajar, who will chair the UN negotiations.
The union side “expressed their satisfaction for seeing in the current negotiating text one of the most important demands for labour: the call for a ‘Just Transition’ for workers in the process to achieve a climate-friendly and climate-resilient society,” reports ITUC.
The union side, ITUC added, “also informed the chair about other demands being delivered to governmental negotiators, such as the need for recognising the role of social protection, the vulnerability of precarious workers and public investment in the context of adaptation, and for promoting sustainable industrial policies, dialogue with social partners and skills development policies when discussing mitigation, among others.”
In a separate move, the UK government’s environment secretary, Ed Miliband, acknowledged the strategic value of Just Transition in his speech to the annual Congress of national union federation TUC in September.
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