In the context of international climate negotiations, the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) was established to guide how countries advance socially just transitions. It aims to define principles, approaches, and tools to ensure that the shift away from fossil fuels does not deepen existing inequalities. Within this process, discussions are underway around the creation of a Just Transition Mechanism (JTM), a potential instrument to channel finance, technical support, and governance for implementation.
However, as ESCR-Net members emphasize, what is at stake is not only the design of a technical mechanism but also the very meaning of what constitutes a just transition and who gets to define it. A just and equitable transition requires confronting the root causes of the climate crisis: an economic model built on fossil fuels, endless extraction, and systemic inequalities that continue to violate human rights – particularly across the Global South.
This submission emphasizes that the climate crisis is not accidental but the result of a global system that concentrates wealth and power while dispossessing communities of their territories, labour, and resources.
A just and equitable transition, therefore, must redistribute power, ensure that those most responsible for the crisis bear the greatest burden, and place decision-making in the hands of communities that have long resisted and proposed alternatives.
This means centering workers, smallholder farmers, Indigenous Peoples, women, youth, and other historically oppressed groups as leaders of transition processes.
Grounding climate action in human rights and justice
The submission calls for the JTM to be firmly rooted in international human rights law and key principles such as:
- Common but differentiated responsibilities and polluter pays, ensuring reparative justice from the Global North
- Intergenerational equity and ecological integrity, recognizing the interconnectedness of all life
- Non-retrogression and progressive realization of rights, rejecting false solutions that worsen inequalities
Crucially, the mechanism must support a rapid and equitable phase-out of fossil fuels, while prioritizing community-led solutions and safeguarding the right to development for the Global South.
Addressing the structural conditions shaping climate action
Climate action does not happen in a vacuum. In many countries, it unfolds amid overlapping crises: poverty, food insecurity, debt, militarism, and deep historical inequalities reinforced by global trade and financial systems.
To be effective, the JTM must address these structural realities by:
- Supporting transitions across key sectors such as energy, agriculture, transport, and mining;
- Ensuring labour rights and social protection;
- Recognizing and redistributing unpaid and un/der/paid care work, largely carried by women;
- Advancing equitable access to land, territories, and natural resources, including through agroecology and redistributive policies;
It must also confront unjust global trade dynamics and prevent the expansion of extractivism under the guise of renewable energy, particularly in the rush for critical minerals.
Participation, power, and accountability
A legitimate transition must be democratic. The submission stresses that frontline communities must have real decision-making power, not token consultation.
This includes:
- Institutionalized participation in governance structures
- Respect for self-determination and Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC)
- Dedicated, non-conditional funding to enable community participation
- Strong safeguards against corporate capture and conflicts of interest
Accountability is equally critical. Communities must have access to independent grievance mechanisms and effective remedies when harms occur.
Financing justice, not extraction
The submission calls for adequate, predictable, grant-based public finance, provided as part of Global North obligations to address climate debt and historical harm.
Key priorities include:
- Multi-year public funding commitments
- Redirecting subsidies away from fossil fuels and militarisation
- Financing reskilling, public services, and livelihood transitions
- Supporting community-led initiatives such as agroecology
Importantly, financing must be new and additional, and directly accessible to communities. It must also address systemic barriers such as unsustainable debt and restrictive intellectual property regimes that limit access to technology.
Red lines: what the mechanism must not become
The submission is equally clear about what must be avoided. The JTM must not:
- Rebrand extractivism through false solutions like carbon markets or large-scale energy projects that dispossess communities
- Delay or weaken the fossil fuel phase-out
- Impose conditionalities that restrict Global South policy space
- Enable militarisation or repression of communities defending their territories
- Legitimize displacement, cultural erasure, or corporate impunity
- Entrench debt and corporate control over climate governance
A pathway toward collective power
At its core, the submission reclaims the meaning of a just transition. It is a political process that must dismantle systems of exploitation while building democratic, rights-based, and community-led alternatives.
A Just Transition Mechanism that fails to do so risks deepening the very injustices it claims to address. But if grounded in human rights, equity, and collective power, it can become a vehicle for addressing the climate crisis and driving systemic change.
