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Just Transition Collaborative: #EDGETalk Framing the System Change Debate

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Did you miss the webinar or want to watch it again? Here you go! Check the #EDGETalk on Just Transition: Framing the System Change Debate.

Do you share a future vision of global equity and justice, guided by ecological principles, rooted in place, culture and community self-determination?
Do you work on concepts like Just Transition, Commons, Agroecology, Degrowth, Ecofeminism, or Buen Vivir? Do you wonder how they overlap and reinforce one another?

EDGE Funders Alliance is launching its Just Transition Collaborative, exploring frameworks for funders interested in supporting systemic alternatives to the crises we face. In December 2015, “just transition” achieved its most mainstream platform yet when signatories to the Paris Accord included it in the preamble. While some celebrated this mainstreaming, others bristled at the potential co-opting of a concept they feared would lose its essence when pulled from community roots, and reframed primarily as a development tool. And still others flipped through their notes and ran google searches to figure out what “just transition” actually meant, and where it came from. While philanthropy is still relatively new to the just transition concept, its origins can be traced to the North American trade union movement in the early 1990s. “Just transition” has since evolved in relatively distinct ways, in somewhat top-down fashion within the international and European trade union movements as a policy instrument to push for a more labour-centered approach to sustainable development and to mainstream environmental concerns within the trade union movement; in the US in a more bottom-up manner beyond the union movement, taken up by various grassroots and community groups to include principles of gender, racial and environmental justice. Related notions ranging from commoning and food sovereignty, to rights of nature and indigenous ways of knowing and being are contributing to the discussions as well. Through the Just Transition Collaborative over the coming months, EDGE will work to bridge borders, sectors, political orientations and vocabularies, exploring the potential complementarity of these and multiple other approaches, and sharing ways in which funders are engaging with each other, civil society and social movement leaders in the US, in Europe and around the world.

Tuesday, 27 June 2017, 9 am PST/ Noon EST/ 6 pm CET Webinar: Just Transition Collaborative – Framing The System Change Debate Speakers:

Michael_Leon_Guerrero copyMichael León Guerrero – Labor Network on Sustainability

Drew from their comprehensive report published with the Grassroots Policy Project to outline the origins of the just transition concept as it emerged in North America, trace its evolution towards a set of core organizing principles developed by grassroots organizations and allies in the US and in Canada, and briefly outline how the sector is engaging in just transition and related approaches to systems change moving forward;  

EdouardMorena copyDr. Edouard Morena – Lecturer at University of London Institute in Paris

Provided an overview of how this concept has emerged differently in Europe and internationally, discuss how such differences are illustrative of activist cultures and approaches to politics (especially, perhaps, in the extent to which movements view the state as a vital vehicle of social change in different parts of the world), and note that these various approaches are complementary, mutually reinforcing and necessary for systems change;  

marianne copyLaura copyMarianne Elliot and Laura Rapira – Action Station

They provided a concrete example of “just transition in practice,” describing the process and initial results of a nationwide program Te Ira Tangata: The People’s Agenda for Aotearoa, that asks – 200 years on from the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi with Māori chiefs in 1840 – what Aotearoa New Zealand would look like in 2040 if their society, economy and democracy were organized around core values of manaakitanga (generosity and compassion); kaitiakitanga (caring and nurturing); and whanaungatanga (community and belonging);

Sam copySamantha Harvey – Fellow on Just Transition at EDGE Funders Alliance

Moderated the call, and shared initial insights from her research into ways philanthropy is engaging in just transition and related concepts, moderate the conversation, and provide an overview of EDGE’s Just Transition Collaborative and explained about the Global Engagement Lab. Click here to learn more and apply for the program.

Brian