Just Transition
From September 2025
The just transition constitutes a major social issue and a challenge for foundations and the sector. How to design and implement a “just transition philanthropy”?
The 6th IPCC report, published in March 2023, highlights the devastating effects of climate change for the planet and the humans who live on it. It also emphasizes the anthropic nature of these disturbances: it is our societies, and their way of functioning, which produced them and participated in causing this damage. They must evolve to help build a more resilient society to tackle the climate crisis. According to the IPCC, it is not just a matter of thinking about the well-being of the earth (“planetary health”) but it is also a matter of human well-being (“human well-being”) by taking into account climate justice, social justice, inclusion and a just transition. The implementation of this just transition poses numerous challenges since low-income populations suffer what can be called “global ecological injustice”, which relates to several dimensions. Indeed, populations with low income:
- are the most likely to be impacted by climate change and the loss of biodiversity and have fewer resources to deal with a disruption to which they have contributed less than other social groups;
- are more exposed to the social risks of the transition itself, due to the structure of their budget, which emits more carbon per euro spent, which leads the transition to be socially regressive if not included in a social involving contract.
Philanthropy can have an impact on each of these dimensions (exhibition, broadcast, design and implementation of the transition, democratic participation). Considering its role as an actor in the general interest, it is appropriate to ask what role philanthropy can play in the just transition. How to move from a conception of the environment as a cause to support (climate or environmental philanthropy) to a perspective of a just transition? Research, advocacy, aggregation of disseminated associative actions, interaction with public coordination bodies, education and awareness, divesting, impact investing, the range of actions is very broad. The challenge is nothing less than guiding society towards a joint and systemic consideration of planetary limits and fundamental human needs, while structuring a democratic, participatory and intersectional deliberation on the management of these resources and on how to meet these needs. Beyond the social issue, the transition constitutes a challenge for the philanthropic sector through the implementation of what the researcher Edouard Morena calls a “just transition philanthropy”[1], which not only contributes to transforming society but also changes its own practices. Based on these findings and analyses, the centrality of the question of a just transition for the future of our societies and the eminent role of philanthropy in its conception as in its implementation, the Geneva Centre for Philanthropy intends to structure a new axis of research on this issue, linking democracy, philanthropy and a just transition on a European scale.
Three areas of study will structure the project, starting from the organizational level of the sector and moving towards the framing of a "narrative" that allows the sector to play an effective advocacy role in articulating the two issues in the public debate:
- How can foundations align their practices and strategies, through their investments and their grantmaking, with the challenges of a just transition?
- How can foundations contribute to build a coherent field by bringing together scattered and sometimes dispersed NGO projects, playing a coordinating role on an issue that requires articulation of different scales (from local initiatives to decisions at the national, European, and global levels)?
- How can the sector, through its capacity for experimentation and independence, develop a strategy that links environmental transition and social justice in a political context where these two dimensions are called into question at the European level?
[1], Morena, E. (2021) Beyond 2% : From Climate Philanthropy to Climate Justice Philanthropy, Edge Alliance / UNRISD.
