Second seminar: Justice in transitions

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Just transition is gaining increasing scholarly interest due to the need to consider social justice in climate policies and systemic transitions. Rather than seeing transition plainly as a socio-technical process with fixed climate goals, we should devote more attention to the social inequalities and tensions that emerge and need to be tackled on the way towards more sustainable societies. 

To date, much of just transition research has concentrated on issues arising from energy transitions. There is further need to deepen our understanding of how justice issues manifest themselves across various systems. How do inequalities emerging from energy, mobility or food system transitions differ from one another? Where and how do they intersect? How can different analytical lenses to justice assist us in asking the right questions across the various sustainability transitions? 

Come and join the webinar with Professor David Schlosberg, Senior Research Fellow Mari Martiskainen, Research Professor Minna Kaljonen and Research Professor Paula Kivimaa to discuss the contribution of various approaches to justice to the understanding of inequalities and tensions caused by sustainability transitions.

Speakers

David Schlosberg is Director of the Sydney Environment Institute and Professor of Environmental Politics at the University of Sydney. He is a global leader in the study of environmental politics, environmental justice, and environmental movements. Professor Schlosberg’s more applied work includes public perceptions of adaptation and resilience, the health and social impacts of climate change, and community-based responses to food insecurity and shock climate events. His books include Defining Environmental Justice (Oxford, 2007) and, most recently, Sustainable Materialism: Environmental Movements and the Politics of Everyday Life (Oxford 2019). His talk will examine a range of motivations of environmental movements dedicated to systems transformations and focus particularly on the range of concerns about social justice raised in those movements.

Mari Martiskainen is a Senior Research Fellow at Sussex Energy Group (SEG), based at Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex, UK. She is also the Theme lead for Equity and Justice at UK-wide Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS), where she leads a large 3-year project on the interlinkages between energy poverty and transport poverty. Mari’s talk will focus on the justice implications of low-carbon transitions and the need to consider those who may be vulnerable in such transitions.  

Minna Kaljonen acts as a Research Professor of sustainability transformations at the Finnish Environment Institute. She leads currently a large inter- and transdisciplinary project on just food system transition. In her talk, she will discuss how transition towards more sustainable and healthy food systems widens and multiplies the understanding of justice in sustainability transitions. 

Paula Kivimaa is Research Professor in Climate and Society in the Finnish Environment Institute, Associate at Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex, and a member of the Finnish Climate Panel. Her research focuses on sustainability transitions to zero-carbon energy and mobility systems, in particular from the perspective of how public policy (climate, energy, transport, innovation) contributes to such transitions. She has published 45 journal articles and contributed to reports, policy briefs and responses addressed to UK, Finnish and EU policymakers, including a report “Sustainability transitions: policy and practice” feeding into the State of the European Environment Report, published by the EEA.

Webinar materials 

• You can watch the webinar recording here (YouTube)
• Presentation materials:
  • David Schlosberg
  • Mari Martiskainen
  • Minna Kaljonen

More information 

If there are any questions, don't hesitate to contact: 

• Anna Ott, Researcher, Finnish Environment Institute SYKE, firstname.lastname@syke.fi, Tel. +358 295 252 202

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The webinar is part of webinar series organised to promote reflective and critical discussion on methodologies and new research questions raised by sustainability transformations. This webinar was organized in collaboration with the Just food -project. 

The seminar series was organized as a collective effort between Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) at the University of Bern (Switzerland) and Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex (United Kingdom). The CDE engagement in the seminars was supported by the Mercator Foundation Switzerland, while the SYKE engagement was funded by SYKE seed money.