Join us on "About Sustainability," a podcast by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES). In this episode, we explore what the just transition means, tracing its roots back to labour movements of the 1970s and its evolution into international debates and sustainable frameworks. Our guests share innovative case studies that showcase how just transition principles are being implemented locally across the world, with a special focus on Asia. The conversation also explores the ongoing challenges and successes in implementing these principles in various contexts.

Speakers

Dr. So-Young LEE is a Research Manager at the Integrated Sustainability Center at IGES. Her work focuses on governance in sustainability transitions and climate social co-benefits for the underprivileged.

Dwayne Appleby is a Programme Manager in the Sustainable Consumption and Production team at IGES. His work focuses on issues of sustainable consumption and production at the local, national, regional, and global levels.

References & Further Reading:

1. Lee, So-Young. “Net-Zero Transitions for All? Considering Applications in Asia”. (2023).
2. Ashish Kothari, Ariel Salleh, Arturo Escobar, Federico Demaria, and Alberto Acosta. Pluriverse: A Post-Development Dictionary (2019), which explores diverse local sustainability practices.
3. Michael Sandel's course on Justice at Harvard, a freely available course on Youtube which investigates the philosophical underpinnings of justice
4. Garrido, Leonardo and Kate Hughes. “Policy Options for Just Transitions in Asia.” (2023). A report identifying impacts associated with low carbon development in Asia, and policies for just transitions.
5. Wang and Lo. “Just transition: A conceptual review” (2021). A review summarising the pre-pandemic positions on the Just Transition.
6. Newell and Mulvaney. "The Political Economy of the 'Just Transition'" (2013). Discusses political trade-offs in policy design for just transitions.
7. Henry, Brazilian, and Markuson “Just transitions: Histories and futures in a post-COVID world” (2020). This paper delves into the significance of "the pace of change, and the extent to which communities have a say in what comes next", as well as outlining how "the socio-economic aspects of the energy transition remain both emergent and essential to an equitable transition".

"About Sustainability..." is a podcast brought to you by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), an environmental policy think-tank based in Hayama, Japan. IGES experts are concerned with environmental and sustainability challenges. Everything shared on the podcast will be off-the-cuff discussion, and any viewpoints expressed are those held by the speaker at the time of recording. They are not necessarily official IGES positions.

In this episode Alice Yamabe and Andre Mader speak with two IGES colleagues, Fernando Ortiz Moya and Yasuo Takahashi, about the phenomenon of depopulation. Fernando has been studying shrinking cities, and Yasuo has been doing research on urban to rural migration, so we have two quite different angles on this subject.

To many it may seem counterintuitive to worry about depopulation in a world in which the human populations continues to grow. But population growth rates have been slowing for decades, and have become negative in a growing list of countries. Interestingly, at least in Japan, this has not necessarily been good for people or the environment. On the other hand, perhaps we need to accept and adapt to this reality.

"About Sustainability..." is a podcast brought to you by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), an environmental policy think-tank based in Hayama, Japan. IGES experts are concerned with environmental and sustainability challenges. Everything shared on the podcast will be off-the-cuff discussion, and any viewpoints expressed are those held by the speaker at the time of recording. They are not necessarily official IGES positions.

In this episode of About Sustainability, we talked to Heinz Schandl, who joined us from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), which is an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research. He is an expert on natural resource use, and international resource flows. Among other things, Heinz explained about resource efficiency, the socioeconomic drivers of resource use, and about the possibilities of decoupling economic development and human well-being from resource use.

He also explained how resource use is measured through what we call the material footprint, and why it is important to capture the international dimension of that footprint.

We also learned about progress in indicators and data availability so that the international linkages between resource extraction and final consumption can be tracked and managed.

All these items are important for measuring progress across several SDGs including SDG 8 on decent work and economic growth, and SDG 12 on sustainable consumption and production.

"About Sustainability..." is a podcast brought to you by the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES), an environmental policy think-tank based in Hayama, Japan. IGES experts are concerned with environmental and sustainability challenges. Everything shared on the podcast will be off-the-cuff discussion, and any viewpoints expressed are those held by the speaker at the time of recording. They are not necessarily official IGES positions.