Chapter 17: Accelerating the Transition in the Context of Sustainable Development
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17.3 Assessment of the Results of Studies Where Decarbonisation Transitions are Framed Within the Context of Sustainable Development
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17.3.2 Short-term and Long-term Transitions
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17.3.2.3 Stranded Assets, Inequality and Just Transitions
Ambitious climate goals can increase the urgency of mitigation and accelerate the speed at which carbon neutrality is achieved. However, if the transition is done with speed, then this will leave diversification efforts stymied, particularly in developing countries that are highly dependent on fossil fuel revenue streams (UNEP/SEI 2020). Transition decisions and policies may also have far-reaching gendered implications, as the closure of mines is often linked to several ancillary business impacts where men are laid off and women may have to take on multiple jobs to compensate for the reduction in the household‘s income (Piggot et al. 2019; UNU-INRA 2020).
A just transition holds out the prospects for alternative high-quality jobs, public-health improvements and an opportunity to focus on well-being and prosperity, with spillover benefits to urban areas and economic systems. Nonetheless, countries that transition from fossil fuels experience different challenges, different levels of dependence and have different capacities to transition. There will be countries with lower capacity and higher dependence, and vice versa (UNEP/ SEI 2020).
Figure 17.1 | Trade-offs and synergies between sectoral mitigation options and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Please refer to page 1775 to see the referenced figure, which mentions SDG 5: Gender Equality.
17.4 Key Barriers and Enablers of the Transition: Synthesising Results
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17.4.5 Equity in a Just Transition
Renewable energy transitions in rural, impoverished locations can simultaneously reinforce and disrupt local power structures and inequalities. Policy interventions to help the most impoverished individuals in a community gain access to the new energy infrastructure are critical in ensuring that existing inequalities are not reinforced. Individuals who are empowered by energy development projects can influence the onward extension of sustainable energy to other communities (Ahlborg 2017). In Denmark in the 1970s, for example, grassroots windmill cooperatives opened a pathway to the creation of one of the world’s largest wind-energy markets. The unique dynamics of grassroots-led changes mean that new technologies and low-carbon initiatives develop strong foundations by being designed, tested and improved in the early stages with reference to the socio-political contexts in which they will grow later (Ornetzeder and Rohracher 2013).
Intersectional theory can shine a light on the hidden costs of resource extraction, as well as renewable-energy development (see, for instance, (Chatalova and Balmann 2017), which go beyond environmental or health risks to include the socio-cultural impacts on both communities adjacent to these sites and those who work in them (Daum 2018). Indeed, development decisions often do not properly integrate the burdens and risks placed on marginalised groups, such as indigenous peoples, while risk assessments tend to reinforce existing power imbalances by failing to differentiate between how benefits and risks might impact on certain groups (Healy et al. 2019; Kojola 2019). In some cases, such as the deployment of small-scale solar power in Tanzania by a non-profit organisation, an explicit gender lens on the impacts of energy poverty revealed the significant socio-economic benefits of improving access to renewable energy (Gray et al. 2019).
