Typologies of „Just Transition“. Towards Social-Ecological Transformation

Humanity is facing many, geographically, socially and hierarchically stratified (but interrelated) crises in the embedded spheres of the environment, society and economy. Climate crises and related environmental catastrophes are the direct result of industrial processes and the current industrial socio-metabolic regime – the set of flows of materials and energy a society needs to reproduce itself (Fischer-Kowalski and Haas, 2016; Fischer-Kowalski and Haberl, 1998). While industrial development has led to huge increases in human wellbeing in the Global North, it is now undermining processes of natural and social reproduction around the world. The latest IPCC (2019) report explains that global temperatures have already risen 0.8-1.2°C above pre-industrial levels due to human activity, making climate-related risks to human and animal health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, and security ever more likely, depending on the severity and speed of temperature changes and human (in)action on the causes of the crises (IPCC, 2019). To stay below 2 degrees warming will require the deep decarbonisation of the economy: net emissions of global greenhouse gases (GHG) will have approach zero between 2050 and 2075 consistent with IPCC findings. Incremental actions and partial decarbonisation projects (like moving from coal to gas) are not enough since all countries must reach close to zero GHG emissions by the second half of this century (Bataille et al., 2016). The needed societal transformation is as profound as the transition from the agrarian to the industrial socio-metabolic regime, and in a much shorter timespan (Haberl et al., 2011; Krausmann et al., 2009). It will also necessarily include deep social, economic and political changes challenging existing institutions, habits and norms – as well as the work process itself (Fischer-Kowalski and Haas, 2016; Hildingsson et al., 2019; Littig, 2018).