Africa's energy transition has immense potential for sustainable development. However, millions remain without electricity and risk being left behind. This side event will discuss how enhancing access to renewable energy is vital for a just energy transition. A truly just transition prioritizes inclusivity, ensuring marginalized communities benefit from clean energy, creating jobs, and improving livelihoods.

The 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly known as COP29, is the 29th United Nations Climate Change conference. COP29 takes place in Baku, Azerbaijan from 11 to 22 November, 2024.&nbsp; For the third year in a row, the ILO and the European Commission are hosting the Just Transition Pavilion, a convening space for events, meetings and knowledge sharing around just transition and climate action in cooperation with the UNFCCC, International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and International Organisation of Employers (IOE). Keeping the social dimension of climate change at the forefront of discussions is the focus of events being organized in the Just Transition Pavilion.&nbsp;Read more on <a href="https://www.ilo.org/ilo-cop29">ilo.org/cop29</a>

How can we create more green jobs for youth and accelerate the shift to a sustainable economy? Join us for an insightful session to explore the incentives needed to drive green job creation for young people, and strategies to prepare youth for these opportunities. Learn how a just transition offers a unique opportunity to address climate and environmental change while boosting economic growth and labour markets. Partners of the Green Jobs for Youth Pact will share their commitments and showcase tools and approaches to deliver and measure impact. Special performance from Poetry for Planet.

Baku

Creating a sustainable future with and for young people

ILO at COP29: events from the Just Transition Pavilion

This event explores pathways to a truly just transition that centers on human rights and the self-determination of people as a fundamental form of reparations for communities historically marginalized by climate injustice. By focusing on equity, justice, and the redistribution of power, we aim to create the transformative shift necessary to uplift those often left behind, ensuring they lead in shaping a better now and an equitable future.

Just Transition as Reparations: Upholding human rights and self-determination of people

TVET plays a crucial role as a bridge between education and employment, offering practical training and educational opportunities to equip individuals with the skills needed for the job market and sustainable livelihoods, while also preserving natural ecosystems. TVET also plays a vital role in developing climate-resilient livelihoods and minimizing gender-based disparities in training and employment opportunities.

Institutional pathways for a gender-transformative, skill-based green transition

Heterogeneous climate change impacts has led to the uneven progress towards SDGs. This event responds to demand from governments and labour unions, lack of protections for workers, and concerns over potential mishandling of just transition strategies. An international panel of experts will discuss the implications of policies and investments that support a just transition to a low carbon economy, ensuring that workers and communities are not left behind in the shift to a more sustainable future.

Climate change, just transition, and labour force implications

This event will provide critical rights-based analyses to explore the intersection of peace, energy and a just transition. The connections between fossil fuels, war, and pollution have been well documented. As policymakers, climate/energy advocates, and workers seek a just transition away from fossil fuels, we have an opportunity to imagine a future where we all enjoy safe, renewable and plentiful energy that has been generated peacefully through consent, consultation and honoring human rights.

Centering care and peace to confront a militarized energy transition

This consultation will foster an exchange of views among stakeholders on just transition and human rights. It will explore for instance how just transition measures affect and can ensure the rights and/or inclusion of relevant groups, actors, communities and Indigenous Peoples. Participants will identify recommendations and specific transformations that may enable a human rights-based just transition, including to inform the upcoming Secretary-General’s report on the topic.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Consultation on just transition and human rights

Enhancing Energy Access for a Just Transition in Africa

This female-led panel will examine how skills and social dialogue are key for a fair transition of workers to green jobs, emphasizing experiences from the EU, Global South, including the perspectives of industry and workers. Featuring experts from the ILO, NDC Partnership, EU, and NGOs, the session aims to highlight these practices and integrate them into the Just Transition Work Programme and upcoming NDC updates.

Scaling up green Jobs: women, skills and social dialogue in a decarbonized future

This event will reflect on country example and showcase the coordinated efforts of UN agencies to embed just transition principles in climate action, particularly in the development and implementation of NDC 3.0. It will provide a platform to share best practices, discuss the challenges, and highlight how integrated approaches can contribute to climate and development objectives.&nbsp;

Integrating Just Transition into NDC 3.0-learning from country experiences and UN/partner support

The ILO-Nigerian Office is supporting the Nigeria Labour Congress on a research themed "NLC Position Paper on NDCs - Potential on Achieving Just Transition and Environmentally Sustainable Economies and Societies in Nigeria". The American Solidarity Centre is also supporting the NLC to present perspectives and results obtained during the research work at a Side Event at COP 29.&nbsp;

NDCs and Just Transition - Research Perspectives by Nigerian Workers

COP29 represents a pivotal moment in addressing the escalating global challenges of climate change, environmental degradation, and widening social inequalities. It will focus on enhancing countries’ ambitions, with a particular focus on increasing finance for climate actions.&nbsp; For the third year, the European Commission and ILO organize together the Just Transition Pavilion at COP to facilitate discussions with countries, experts and stakeholders on fair transition issues, including social dialogue, education and skills needs, gender, youth, and just transition pathways that prioritize the most vulnerable. It will highlight the experience and lessons learnt by different national and international level actors. This year’s opening event of the Just Transition Pavilion features high level speakers including ministers, workers’ and employers’ representatives and non-state actors that have advanced the work towards a just transition for all.

Opening event of the Just Transition Pavilion 

This panel will explore the role of the finance sector in promoting fair and inclusive climate action. It will examine a range of approaches, including strategies to direct capital toward the needs of a just transition; systems for anticipating and responding to risks and opportunities that the transition creates for the institution, its clients, and stakeholders; and inclusive transition planning practices that strengthen the long-term viability of just climate transition efforts.&nbsp;

Mobilizing financial sector support for a just transition

Heat has always been a risk to workers, but climate change is exacerbating the threat to worker safety, health, and well-being worldwide. A safe and healthy working environment is a fundamental principle and right at work, but many are excluded from protections or cannot negotiate for safer conditions. &nbsp;A worker-centered just transition includes advancing domestic action and global cooperation to protect the more than 2.4 billion workers worldwide exposed to heat stress.

Heat Stress: Protecting Workers and Increasing Resilience

At COP29, the international community has decided to end fossil fuels and expand renewable energies. Ajust energy transition is crucial for the decarbonization, and this is precisely where questions of green Extractivism come into play. In this model, global injustices have been manifested over the years - fossil energies represent this model. There is an opportunity to learn from past mistakes and to design a mining industry that enables the tripling of renewable energies in a just, sustainable, and needs-based manner.

Just Transition for All: What if Green Extractivism is challenging the Just Transition?

Through innovative research and engagement methods, stakeholders, including workers, civil society and policymakers, help implement a just transition in the Global South, where coal regions face complex socio-economic challenges in light of the transition to clean energy. Bringing together a diverse set of speakers, the event illustrates practical examples such as regional consultation forums, conducting ethnographic research, or applying tools like simulation games to support JT implementation.

Innovative Research and Engagement Strategies for a Just Transition in the Global South

The European Union (EU) is pushing forward its climate policies included in the European Green Deal (EGD), such as the Emissions Trading System (ETS), the ETS 2, and the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), leading the charge to cut emissions and combat carbon leakage. Yet, these initiatives pose challenges: the ETS and the ETS 2 may result in uneven socio-economic impacts among and within Member States, and the CBAM brings up fairness concerns in global climate policies. Indeed, the EGD could lead to job losses in high-carbon industries, disproportionately impacting vulnerable workers, communities and regions reliant on these sectors for employment. Without a properly designed redistribution mechanism, carbon taxes will also disproportionately impact low-income households as they spend a higher percentage of their income on energy. Similarly, when it comes to transport, low-income households will find it difficult to cover higher transport costs, pushing people into further poverty and social exclusion if fairness considerations are not embedded in support policies.Key policy discussions are needed on the social impacts of ETS/ETS2. These include the scope and funding of the Social Climate Fund, the Just Transition Mechanism and the Just Transition Fund, the lack of binding legislation on a just transition, and the need for additional policy and funding instruments to address existing gaps.At the same time, &nbsp;the implementation of CBAM must safeguard a fair transition for global south countries affected by the EU's carbon pricing. It must tackle economic inequalities and ease the burden on these countries, while encouraging global climate action and keeping EU industries competitive. Indeed, to ensure a concrete Just Transition across Europe and the world, advanced economies must address these issues.Starting from these considerations, the panel will try to answer the following questions: how can we lessen the potential unequal effects of climate policies within the EU? And how can we enhance European climate policies and international cooperation to reduce inequalities?

EU climate policies and justice: socio-economic impacts and pathways to equity

Addressing the complex relationship between forced displacement, the need for human mobility, and climate change will be critical for ensuring a just transition and enhanced ambition for the 2025 NDCs. Employers’ and workers’ organizations are key partners who can help attain coherence, ensure protection of rights, and accelerate progress in this area. The event will highlight the necessary role of social partners in this process and provide insights on ways forward towards NDC revision.&nbsp;

Social dialogue for fair outcomes on human mobility and a just transition

Interconnected justice highlights how climate policies in one region affect justice outcomes elsewhere. This event will explore how non-state actors, such as corporates and financial institutions, can drive transboundary just transitions by aligning finance, investment, and trade policies with interconnected justice principles. It will emphasize the need for localized and global cooperation to tackle cross-border challenges, with a focus on vulnerable communities in the global South

Interconnected Justice in the Just Transition: Unlocking the role of non-state actors

The event will discuss how skill development, in particular through vocational trainings, plays an essential role in the transition to a net-zero or low-emission economy, and how it can contribute to it in a just manner. The event will also see sharing of initiatives for skill development that are being implemented with a view to encouraging countries to include skill development as a way to achieve just transition

Skill development as a catalyst for a just transition

We urgently need to shift from our current take-make-waste mentality to a circular economy. However, the circular transition often focuses only on environmental impact, leaving out critical social elements. This interactive panel will focus on building inclusive, circular models that reduce waste, while ensuring a just transition for all. Panelists from waste management organizations, implementing agencies and social business will share challenges, experiences and recommendations on the topic.&nbsp;

Ensuring a just transition in circular economy and waste management

This side event will explore the findings and lessons from the IEA Global Commission: Designing for Fairness's first phase of deliberations on ensuring people-centred transitions, specifically in the employment sector. It will provide a platform for governments, trade union leaders and youth representatives, to discuss how to engage workers and other key stakeholders in workforce policy planning and to ensure decent and socially inclusive jobs are realised in the clean energy economy.

Realising decent jobs and social inclusion in the clean energy workforce

NDCs represent each country's plan for climate action. These plans are critical components of national climate frameworks, with the next round of NDCs due in 2025.&nbsp; Incorporating just transition elements based on national contexts and priorities that are coherent and include an enabling environment for enterprises, skills development, as well as industrial policies in countries’ NDCs is a must and therefore a key step to support equitable emission reduction strategies and adaptation measures.

NDCs 3.0: labour market policies, skills development and employer priorities

In dialogue &amp; collaboration with workers’ &amp; other movements &amp; policymakers, churches &amp; faith actors can play a significant part in promoting Just Transitions. The side-event will lift new initiatives showcasing the role of faith actors &amp; partnerships between faith &amp; other key stakeholders, to ensure that “no one is left behind.”

Dialogue and Partnerships for Just Transitions: Faith, Labour, and Policy 

Agri-food systems are key levers towards climate change, while at the same time being among the largest emitters of greenhouse gasses and being affected by climate change. While the need to transform agri-food systems to achieve climate adaptation and mitigation is recognised, the meaning and application of just transition principles remains underexplored. Inherent in the just transition logic, the transition to low-carbon solutions in the agri-food sector should not place the burden solely on farmers and food chain workers, nor undermine the opportunities of future generations.

A global perspective towards fostering a just transition in the agri-food sector: bridging generations for sustainable change

How to make just energy transition partnerships (JETP) truly inclusive, socially just and sustainable? This side event explores how Just Energy Transition Partnerships (JETPs) can be more inclusive, socially just, and sustainable. JETPs launched by the G7 to help Global South countries with growing emissions to decarbonize, have started in South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam and Senegal. The session discusses how to enhance the participation of all stakeholders, i.e. in ensuring a Just Transition for workers and communities, while addressing economic, financial and institutional requirements.

Fixing just energy transition partnerships

Join us to explore why developing green skills is crucial for a just transition. Skills development prepares workers for jobs in emerging green industries and trains those transitioning from jobs which are no longer viable. The “Global Initiative on Skills for a Green and Just Economy” supports countries in aligning skills initiatives with climate agendas and investing in future human capital.

Accelerating green skills for a new economy

This session will explore the critical links between a Socially-Just Transition and Loss &amp; Damage from the perspective of local and regional governments. As frontline actors in addressing climate impacts, LRGs are key in ensuring vulnerable communities are supported through fair transitions. The discussion continues the 2015 ILO paper on Just Transitions, highlighting the importance of social justice, decent jobs, and inclusive policies to address climate-induced loss and damage locally.

Towards a socially-local Just Transition to address Loss and Damage

Climate change is increasingly eroding livelihoods and creating insecurity. Temporary labour migration programs have been suggested as part of a just transition and as a climate adaptation response – for migrant workers, households, communities &amp; countries of origin – and a source of needed labor in CODs. Panellists from three climate-vulnerable COOs in Africa, S Asia and Latin America will share experiences faced by those aiming to use migration as an adaptation tool, from a rights/justice perspective.&nbsp;

Labour migration from climate-vulnerable areas: Adaptation? Just Transition? Exploitation?

Every climate story is a story about power—who manages resources and who is affected– and how journalists examine these dynamics. This session explores the intersection of climate change, water, agriculture, and vulnerable communities, highlighting how investigative reporting and audience engagement can inspire actions and improve policies. Pulitzer Center-supported journalists will share their stories, investigating the impact of development projects on communities and ecosystems and how intentional audience engagement can address these power imbalances and spark change. Through partnerships among journalists, content creators, and local communities, the Pulitzer Center ensures that these stories not only reach key audiences but also translate into tangible impact.&nbsp;

Unpacking power: The role of investigative climate reporting and audience engagement

This event will dive into the role of social protection in reducing vulnerability, increasing resilience and adaptive capacity. It will present the latest global data on social protection coverage, including in the countries most vulnerable to climate change. This will set the scene for a discussion among parties, experts, and observers around the usefulness and gaps of existing indicators on social protection for measuring progress towards the Global Goal on Adaptation.

For a just transition in adaptation: The role of social protection in the Global Goal on Adaptation

In this event, representatives of indigenous peoples from Latin America and the Caribbean will share their perspectives on key aspects of the just transition. Their voices will shed light on the role indigenous communities have played in areas such as biodiversity conservation, the promotion of green jobs, and the equitable energy transition, highlighting their essential contributions and unique challenge.

Strengthening the voice of indigenous peoples in just transitions of Latin America and the Caribbean

The construction sector is often overlooked in the global just transition discourse. Despite it contributing 37% of global emissions, decarbonisation efforts have been slow, partly due to long-standing labour shortages driven by poor working conditions and anti-migrant narratives. Using ILO, OACD and EU data, this session will discuss positive and negative examples of green initiatives like off-site construction, focusing on geographical job distribution, re-skilling, and working conditions.

From hard hats to great jobs: Construction’s path to a greener and fairer future

Keeping justice at the heart of Just Transition requires the international community to support all peoples and countries in the journey towards a fossil-free, fairer, safer, cleaner and more peaceful future. This involves social dialogue with trade unions and stakeholder engagement with all affected groups. The different rights-based constituencies and civil society organisations will discuss what can be won for Just Transition at COP30 to deliver for real people in the real world. &nbsp;

 Winning big for Just Transition at COP30 - a multistakeholder conversation

A cross-regional South-South Policy Dialogue on energy, sustainable finance, and enterprises for inclusive policy-making processes and enhancing NDC ambition.The policy dialogue will be held between 20-21 November 2024 at the Just Transition Pavilion during the COP29. It is an ILO led event in joint collaboration and support from the <a href="https://www.un-page.org/">UN-PAGE programme</a> (that bring five agencies: ILO, UNEP, UNDP, UNIDO and UNITAR).&nbsp;It aims to foster policy discussions among Central Asian, South Caucasian, and Asia Pacific countries (PAGE and non-PAGE countries) on promoting green jobs, sustainable enterprises, and circular approaches for a just transition. It seeks to include workers’ and employers’ voices in NDC formulation, explore just energy transition scenarios, and recommend sustainable financing policies. The dialogue also aims to share experiences and address capacity gaps. Additionally, it promotes peer learning on integrating just transition and sustainable enterprises considerations into NDCs and South-South Collaboration.

From vision to practice for a just transition for all - Part 1

From vision to practice for a just transition for all - Part 2

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Conversation about the Maritime Labour convention, a unique, modern and innovation ILO instrument. Key maritime actors share insights onn the success stories around the MLC and its positive impact on seafarers and shipping. They describe the pivotal role of social dialogue in shaping maritime labour standards and highlight some of the challenges lying ahead as well as measures taken or envisaged to navigate them.

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Navigating the Maritime Labour Convention: Past, Present, and Future

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60 years of <a href="https://normlex.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:12100:0::NO::P12100_INSTRUMENT_ID:312267">Convention 122</a>: still relevant today, and can it support fair and inclusive changes?

60 years of Convention 122 on Employment Policy: Supporting structural transformation and just transitions

Just transition to environmental sustainability and social dialogue

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Accelerating decent jobs and universal social protection for just transitions. This conversation aims to promote the value-added by the Global Accelerator in supporting countries to overcome persistent poverty and inequality, and facilitating just climate,digital and demographic transitions through integrated policy approaches, increased financing and investments and enhanced multilateral cooperation. It also explains how this initiative develops capacities, enhances coherence and builds evidence for sustainable impact at scale.