4 Key Principles for a Just Transition

Carbon-intensive and coal (i.e., coal, peat or oil shale) regions continue to find themselves deeply engaged in socio-economic, socio-political, and socio-demographic transition processes which threaten to unravel the foundations of their communities. The purpose of this final policy brief, which synthesises science-based research from multiple CINTRAN outputs (and features direct links to all of them within this document), is to help guide decision-makers, experts and other relevant practitioners to get a firm handle on unravelling the complexities of the structural change transforming their own regions.

This policy brief presents a set of four “key principles” which can be used as general reference across transition processes and serve as an entry point into many of CINTRAN’s science-based findings. These principles are meant to give a hint of the depth to be found in resolving the roots of resistance, encouraging inclusive engagement, scaling up upskilling and guiding good governance to support the adaptive and transformative capacity of coal⁺ and carbon-intensive regions.

Though originally written in English, the hope is to increase the wider uptake of these principles. In order to benefit CINTRAN’s four target regions in particular, this final policy brief will also soon be available in five additional languages of those regions: Estonian/Eesti, German/Deutsch, Greek/ Ελληνικά, Polish/Polski and Russian/Русский.