Climate change and the loss of biodiversity are the two most serious threats of our time, which can lead to a socio-environmental collapse of our civilization and human societies. Avoiding catastrophic climate change, such as the one that would produce global warming of more than 2ºC, is the main challenge of our time.
This implies the decarbonization of the economy and therefore the cessation of greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, the cessation of the use of fossil fuels such as coal, oil or gas and a decrease in the use of natural and energy resources urgently and given the climate emergency and the speed of destruction of ecosystems.
The EU has adopted binding commitments to reduce its emissions by 55% by 2030 and its final energy consumption by 36%.
The member countries will have to make the corresponding commitments throughout the decade, which will be higher, equal or lower, considering the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and the capacities of each country.
The energy, ecological and economic transition that this implies is of such a magnitude that it requires a profound change for numerous economic activities and production centers, which must be abandoned, replaced or transformed in all sectors: energy, transport, urban planning, ila construction, industry and the agri-food sector.
Everyone is going to know a great reconversion. With impacts on employment and the economy of people.
This is a radical change in our ways of producing, working and consuming which, along with enormous benefits, could have adverse social effects that must be avoided.
In the case of employment, although the new activities will create more jobs than those that are lost – four times more according to the ILO – those that are created will not necessarily be created at the same time or in the same place as those that are destroyed, which could locally create losses of economic activity and employment.
Also adverse effects on income, which will generate unfair situations and enormous social resistance, if action is not taken to avoid them and, where appropriate, minimize and overcome them.
This transition is either a just transition or it will not be. Organizing this reconversion with social protection, with training and professional requalification and with new jobs, so that it is a fair transition, is a condition of change.
This is established by the Paris Agreement – that is, the current multilateral agreement of the international community to deal with climate change – which promotes a just employment transition with decent work and quality jobs for all. This can be done and done well.
In Spain, for example, which has a Strategy by law and even an Institute for a Just Transition, coal mines and thermal plants have been closed with a successful just transition process. With tripartite agreements with unions and business organizations. With the participation of workers, companies and local entities of the affected territories. With social protection and training for workers who may lose their jobs, but also and above all with new investments and economic activities in those territories.
These are the so-called Just Transition Agreements, in each territory, which are creating more jobs that are healthier, more inclusive, feminized and sustainable than those that have been lost with the closure of mines, thermal or nuclear plants.
A pioneering, innovative and exemplary experience in the European and international context. But the energy sector is not enough, in which it will be necessary to promote electrification and self-consumption and urgently generalize the installation of responsible renewable energies until they replace conventional ones.
The just transition will have to be extended to all companies and sectors throughout this decade, driven by a European recovery with green and inclusive criteria, contemplated in the Next Generation EU program launched for the economic and social recovery after the pandemic.
In all of them, just transition processes will have to be applied: expanding social protection, even with a basic income approach; with new tripartite sectoral agreements, that push and lead the change; establishing the right to training throughout the working life for the corresponding requalification; with new investments in new activities, such as renewable energies, efficiency and the decrease in energy consumption, sustainable urban planning and mobility, the circular economy and an ecological transformation of the food system.
The just transition is the basis of the new social contract, socially fair and environmentally sustainable, to generate great benefits in terms of health and well-being.
Also of prosperity and employment. This is the key that will make it possible to avoid a socio-environmental collapse, overcome resistance and the adverse social effects of change and responsibly weave the necessary global and intergenerational convergence between present generations and for future generations that ensures coexistence and well-being in peace with the planet.
