Beyond the Buzzwords: Centering Justice in Just Transitions

Commitment to Just Transitions

Justice, as I see it, is not about ticking boxes or making token acknowledgments. It’s about engaging deeply with lived realities, confronting colonial, hierarchical, and caste-ist structures, and addressing environmental injustices that persist today. It’s not about just-washing inequality with lofty promises; it’s about making justice tangible, felt, and actionable.

This is where the promise of transitions holds immense potential. At its core, it envisions a shift toward sustainability that empowers marginalized communities, redistributes power, and respects ecological boundaries. However, terms like ‘just transitions’ and even ‘transformations’ are sometimes used more as aspirational buzzwords than as commitments to meaningful change. Instead of addressing systemic issues, they can mask efforts that focus on optimization or implementation without challenging existing structures. To truly honor the promise of just transitions, justice must move from the margins to the heart of our efforts—not as a label, but as a commitment to rethinking and reshaping systems. The question is: how do we begin?

Why Justice Must Be Intersected with Sustainability

We have, as a global society, become obsessed with ‘greening’ everything—planting trees, rejuvenating rivers, and creating blue-green landscapes that look like picturesque postcards of temperate Europe. But what happens when these visions are superimposed onto places with entirely different ecological and cultural contexts? For instance, what does it mean to introduce water bodies in savanna grasslands in Africa or concrete jungles of urban India —ecosystems where green and blue are not the natural colors of the landscape?

Consider the example of restoring a water body in a region. Was there even a perennial water body to begin with? Or is this an artificial intervention, diverting resources at the expense of another ecosystem? Who benefits from this intervention? Who can afford to live near it? And whose water has been displaced to sustain it? These well-meaning green-blue projects can drive up property values, attract elite users, and displace local communities—humans and non-humans alike. Without critical reflection, we risk reproducing the very injustices we claim to be solving (Lele et al., 2018).

This isn’t just about landscapes—it’s about how sustainability itself is conceptualized. Too often, sustainability is framed through Western lenses, validated by English-language journals and Eurocentric policies, while dismissing the diversity of local knowledge and lived experiences. These approaches, while addressing environmental issues, often fail to account for the socio-political and cultural dynamics that underpin them. Unless justice becomes a foundational concern, our so-called ‘just transitions’ will remain incomplete, perpetuating the same imbalances they claim to address.

Acknowledging Injustice is the First Step

Envisioning just goals can seem overwhelming or ambiguous. Where do we begin? A simpler first step is to critically examine the injustices embedded in our current approaches. For instance, take water security. While securing water access might seem like an obvious goal, it often comes at the cost of displacing vulnerable communities. Similarly, promoting veganism may reduce certain environmental impacts, but importing avocados and almond milk by air simply shifts the carbon burden elsewhere. By acknowledging these contradictions, we begin to see how narrow, short-term goals can inadvertently exacerbate injustices.

In countries like India, where socio-political landscapes are complex, even naming these injustices can be fraught with challenges. Speaking out against inequities may threaten livelihoods, public image, or even lives, especially when tied to international funding or political agendas. Yet, these discussions are vital. Justice often requires trade-offs—between equity and efficiency, or fairness and profitability. These trade-offs need to be normalized and addressed openly if transitions are to be genuinely transformative.

Only after acknowledging these complexities can we begin to define and pursue appropriate justice goals. Importantly, justice cannot be reduced to a one-size-fits-all framework—it encompasses many intertwined objectives that must be understood and addressed in their specific contexts. 

Understanding the Nuances of Justice

Justice isn’t one-dimensional, and terms justice, fairness, and equity are often used as though they mean the same thing, but they reflect distinct concepts. To untangle these nuances, we can explore three key typologies of justice: distributional, procedural, and recognitional.

Equity is often associated with distributional justice, which is concerned with the fair sharing of risks and benefits, particularly for those who have been historically marginalized. Fairness, on the other hand, aligns with procedural justice, emphasizing the importance of inclusive processes—mechanisms that ensure all stakeholders have a meaningful voice in decisions that affect them (Neal et al., 2014).

But justice goes beyond equitable outcomes or inclusive processes. It is also about recognition—whose experiences, perspectives, and knowledge are deemed valid and whose are overlooked. This is the foundation of recognitional justice, which has become particularly relevant in the Global South, where histories of exclusion are deeply tied to whose knowledge and realities are valued.

Increasingly, these discussions intersect with restorative justice and epistemic justice, focusing on repairing past harms and addressing whose ways of knowing are included—or excluded—in shaping solutions. It invites us to ask uncomfortable but necessary questions: Whose lived realities inform our understanding of justice? Whose voices are silenced or sidelined? And how can these exclusions be addressed to truly deliver on the promise of just transitions?

The Perils of ‘Just-Washing’

Understanding these dimensions of justice—distributional, procedural, and recognitional—helps highlight why the concept of just transitions can sometimes fall short in practice. As the idea gains traction globally, there is a growing risk that it may be reduced to a rhetorical tool rather than a transformative process.

International funding mechanisms, such as the Green Climate Fund; Climate Investment Funds; Global Energy Alliance for People and Planet; UNDP Just Energy Transition Programme, or Adaptation Fund, often frame just transitions as a funding priority. While well-intentioned, these frameworks can sometimes result in one-size-fits-all approaches where justice is shaped more by donor priorities than by the lived realities of local communities.

For example, projects may highlight participation as a goal but struggle to engage marginalized groups in meaningful ways. Similarly, while efforts may address present-day inequities, they can inadvertently overlook historical injustices, reinforcing existing power hierarchies. This superficial application—often described as just-washing—risks masking deeper systemic issues under the guise of progress.

To truly honor the promise of just transitions, justice must go beyond surface-level solutions. It requires a deeper engagement with questions of exclusion, power dynamics, and historical legacies. Only by addressing these foundational challenges can just transitions achieve their full potential as a tool for equitable and transformative change.

Situating ‘Just’ Goals in Context

To avoid the pitfalls of just-washing, we must also rethink the language and approaches we use. Terms like transition and transformation can feel less attached to complex Global South geographies, failing to capture the depth of what is at stake. Perhaps we need language that acknowledges the scars of the past while envisioning a more equitable future. Approaches such as healing through care practices (Conradi, 2015; Sultana, 2022; Williams. 2017) or repair(Bhan, 2019; Broto et al., 2021; Cadieux et al., 2019; Durbach, 2016; Webber et al., 2022) may better capture the essence of what a just transition aspires to achieve, particularly in contexts marked by deep-seated inequalities and historical injustices. 

Change is rarely smooth or benign. It disrupts, unsettles, and often carries the weight of historical harms. For those disproportionately affected by systemic injustices, change can feel like yet another imposition unless it is grounded in empathy and context. Situating justice within lived realities means moving beyond abstract ideals to engage with the histories, struggles, and aspirations of those most affected.

True healing is transformative. It requires us to acknowledge pain, confront inequality, and prioritize justice—not as an afterthought but as the foundation for any transition. Only then can we create futures that rise stronger, together.