Library | ESG issues
Just Transition
A just transition ensures that the shift to a low-carbon economy is fair, inclusive, and leaves no one behind. It prioritises workers, communities, and industries affected by the transition, ensuring they have access to new opportunities, reskilling programs, and social protections. Achieving a just transition is essential for securing public support, economic stability, and sustainable long-term growth.
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Principles of Indigenous Just Transition
The Principles of Indigenous Just Transition, developed by the Indigenous Environmental Network, provide 11 core guidelines for a regenerative economy. The tool helps investors and developers ensure that energy transitions respect Indigenous sovereignty and avoid extractive practices.
Rio Tinto: A just transition case study
This report examines Rio Tinto’s failure to secure a social licence to operate for the Jadar lithium mine in Serbia. It highlights how social risks associated with the energy transition can lead to project abandonment, financial losses, and reputational damage, ultimately impacting bondholders as lithium production becomes more material.
Shifting ground: Human rights, Chinese investment and the rush for transition minerals
This report analyses 326 allegations of human rights and environmental abuses linked to Chinese overseas transition mineral investments between 2023 and 2025. It identifies Indonesia as the primary hotspot and highlights critical risks in extraction and processing, while offering recommendations for governments and companies to ensure a just transition.
From green to clean to eco-social: How to put wellbeing back onto the EU’s sustainability agenda
This policy brief examines the shift in EU sustainability discourse from the European Green Deal to the Clean Industrial Deal. It argues for re-anchoring wellbeing in the agenda through the sustainable and inclusive wellbeing framework, suggesting eco-social conditionalities and alternative economic modelling to move beyond GDP-focused competitiveness.
Lifelong learning and skills for the future: Insights for Latin America and the Caribbean
This research brief explores lifelong learning and future skill requirements in Latin America and the Caribbean. It addresses structural challenges like high informality and rapid population ageing. Utilising big-data analytics and institutional surveys, the report provides recommendations for building inclusive, flexible learning systems aligned with technological and green transitions.
Role of distributed resources in energy transition: A multi-country perspective
This report evaluates distributed energy resources across Australia, India and Bangladesh. It examines rooftop solar and battery uptake, highlighting their role in reducing fossil fuel reliance and grid demand. The analysis provides country-specific recommendations to overcome regulatory barriers, improve financing access and ensure an equitable energy transition.
Enterprises, supply chains and the transition to formality: Linkages and innovation
This ILO research brief examines how multinational enterprises and supply chains drive the transition from informal to formal economies. By leveraging market incentives, technology transfers, and innovative procurement, MNEs can improve working conditions, social protection, and productivity for lower-tier MSMEs, supporting global decent work objectives.
Facing backlash and derailment risks: Building capacities for navigating transformations to sustainability and justice in turbulent times
This research article identifies three backlash archetypes that threaten to derail sustainability and justice transformations during critical transition phases. To navigate these risks, the authors propose developing three transformative capacities: harnessing hope and imagination, hospicing with dignity, and enabling radical collaboration while holding paradoxes.
Green trade, regional value chains and new partnerships for cooperation: Accelerating green industrialisation through partnerships with a focus on Africa
This briefing paper examines how green trade and regional value chains can accelerate African industrialisation. It outlines opportunities within the AfCFTA and the African Green Industrialisation Initiative, emphasising the need for de-risking instruments, institutional capacity building, and new partnership frameworks to align international capital with Africa’s sustainable development goals.
Energy transition index series
The Energy Transition Index is a benchmark series providing a structured, data-driven framework to assess national energy systems and track transition progress across 120 countries. It evaluates performance through security, equity, and sustainability lenses, alongside transition readiness factors, helping decision-makers identify gaps and understand the conditions required for resilience.
Stewarding a just transition: Frontiers of practice in listed equities
This report analyses just transition practices among 25 investment managers in listed equities. While policy recognition is high, active engagement remains a low priority concentrated in energy and mining. The research identifies barriers such as geopolitical headwinds and provides recommendations for investors, governments, and regulators to mainstream practice.
Toward a more human pace for data center development
This research examines the environmental and social impacts of rapid data centre expansion in the United States. It highlights how generative AI infrastructure disproportionately burdens marginalised communities through pollution, increased utility costs, and resource depletion. The authors call for a "more human pace" centred on environmental justice.
Just adaptation: An introduction for institutional investors
This report introduces institutional investors to 'just adaptation', highlighting the financial materiality of fair and equitable climate resilience. It outlines how incorporating social equity into adaptation strategies protects long-term returns, maintains social licence, and identifies priority actions for investors to support vulnerable communities while managing systemic climate risks.
Employment in the circular economy: Leveraging circularity to create decent work
This report provides a global baseline for circular economy employment, estimating that 121 to 142 million people work in the sector. Produced by Circle Economy, the ILO, and World Bank Group, it highlights the prevalence of informal work and the need for policies ensuring a just, inclusive transition.
Supporting just transitions through social protection: Key roles for philanthropy
This briefing paper explores how philanthropy can support just transitions to net zero through social protection. It examines the socio-economic risks of decarbonisation, identifies systemic coverage gaps, and highlights catalytic roles for philanthropic capital in capacity building, research, and policy alignment to ensure an inclusive transition.
The green central banking scorecard series
The Green Central Banking Scorecard is a benchmark series that ranks G20 central banks and financial regulators on their progress in integrating environmental considerations into their operations. It assesses institutions across research and advocacy, monetary policy, financial policy, and leading by example categories to encourage a just green transition.
