 Hello, Sharon. Thank you. Thank you for being here today, an introduction. So Sharon borough is a global advocate for human rights climate action and just transition. And you also are the former general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation. Thank you again for being here today. You, of course, you've become an influential advocate in your past role as general secretary of ITUC for more than 10 years. Tell us about the role that labor can play and should play in the energy transition. I was thinking I had a mic. So labor recognized more than two decades ago that this would be the biggest systemic shift we would face in our lifetime. A shift that began with fossil fuels, but actually an economic transition that reaches across all sectors. So while it wasn't ever easy to convince people that we needed to be ahead of this, there was a general acceptance of a mandate or a mantra that we established very early on that the science is clear and that there will be no jobs on a dead planet. So it was on that basis that labor fought for just transition, which we finally realized in the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015. But having said that, labor is a microcosm of our society and the fear and insecurities of workers and their fear for themselves, their families, their communities. The fact that they will be left behind is very real. It's palpable. So what we need is to actually change the way in which we work across the transition, and that means inclusion. It means consultation. It means designing the outcomes that make sure that there are jobs that communities feel secure and that we protect the planet. How do we make sure that communities feel secure? Are you aware of any trade unions that have demonstrated leadership and kind of the energy transition and any interesting examples that come to mind perhaps? So pick a country, I would say. If you start indeed with the country that kicked off the first commission around exiting from coal, it was an agreement with President Trudeau and the former environment minister, Catherine McKenna. Over-sora commission that labor, the employers and government, initiated to talk to people to understand what it would take to make that transition fear. It was followed very closely by Germany with their first coal transition, and then you saw broader institutional settings. So Scotland, Nick Robbins sits on the Just Transition Authority for Scotland, and they've now become a permanent institution indeed with their own ministry. In Australia we've just set up after, you know, I think almost 15 years of advocacy. It was certainly before I left Australia as the labour leader there to go to the RTC that we had put on the table a need for a net zero authority or transition authority. It's now established and the legislation is about to go through. That institutionalises dialogues. You know, people ask about jobs. There are jobs in the transition, but we need to make sure the processes are there to actually include planning across the most vulnerable workplaces and their communities. You mentioned the word fear because for many people it's their livelihoods. Change can be daunting. Are you aware of perhaps opposite examples of labour unions resisting change and what can we learn from that experience in order to, you know, in the future be able to respond to that? I think anybody will resist change if they're not included. If the planning is not transparent, if there's not co-creation. We used to talk in the ITC about being at the table to design the plans to climate and employment proof our futures, our workplaces. Those processes are evident in a number of countries, but there's still sadly absent birdies here who is the climate official for the ITC. And he will tell you that while we might have won Just Transition in 2015, it's taken till indeed last year, 2023 to get a work plan, a formal work plan within the UNFCCC processes. But equally, companies that don't actually include workers from the beginning don't negotiate or consult and negotiate when necessary with workers in their communities. Systemic says there's a figure of about $100 billion already of risk to climate finance and that can only grow if people are not included and don't give a social licence. Plus, we see often these areas of development and it has fantastic opportunities for place-based development. If you think that there are 27, for every 20 jobs in renewable energy, there are five to seven in manufacturing. If they're good jobs, there's 30 to 35 in the broader community. But if all those jobs are indeed somewhere else and you're not looking at locational planning for communities, then you will get resistance and fear. And now I can point to many examples around the world where people are still very fearful. But I can also point to great examples, you know, walking the coal mining areas in Spain where you have a fantastic environmental, well, now she's deputy president, Teresa Rivera. But she was committed to Just Transition way back even before it was a, you know, talked about at length in the UNFCCC processes. She's put in place not just an authority, but prior to that, after consultation with unions and communities, you know, the means to actually help those communities transition. Now, when you actually, initially when you walk through those communities, yeah, there was anger, there was fear, there was resistance, because that's normal. But when they understand that they can have a stake, that they'll be supported in securing a future, then people tend to be rational and get on with the job. But if you ignore people, then of course that's a different story. A social license is essential to economic success as well as project development and job success. And that means inclusion of people from the beginning. I know you're going to talk about Indigenous people with, you know, a further speaker, but can I say that the attitude shift where you have Indigenous landowners, for example, is very slow. So there's still this sense that it's a bit like the old mining adage, we've got a right to prospect. Well, these are Indigenous lands. And if you see these landowners as equity partners, not as stakeholders, not as simply people who, you know, are going to be oppositional, then there are projects around the world that community unions are supporting Indigenous owners for renewable energy development. And they're magnificent, because everybody is indeed on the path, is supporting the development. You mentioned for every five jobs in the renewable sector, more jobs will be created in manufacturing. There's this negative perception, though, that the energy transition will lead to a loss of jobs and that jobs will go from one place to the other. And how, I mean, how real is that concern? Is it a myth? And in your opinion, what is the energy marketplace, job marketplace going to look like in the future, resulting from the transition that we're going through? So it all depends on the design. We know that there are jobs in the energy transition. Locational issues are of course significant. So when there is no wind or solar in a place where there was a coal-fired power station or a coal mine, then you have to look at community renewal. But we also know that there are jobs in not just energy, but as if you think of energy as a foundation, upstream and downstream processing, there's massive jobs and opportunities for place-based development that we haven't seen. So you think about where you mine iron ore. If you could actually mine it with renewable energy, perhaps with green hydrogen, where it's at high intensity heat, certainly you could clean up the iron. But you could also build clean steel factories and use, again, green hydrogen like Sweden did with the Swedish company, SSAB, the unions and the government. They've proven you can do these things. We've got to clean up steel, aluminium, cement. We have to build circular economy capacity for all of our material use. We have to look at where there are jobs in transport and logistics that are associated with this. And that's a massive transition in itself as we move to clean transport and mobility generally. And then there are associated jobs, not just in finance, but in areas of services, because you can't operate any of these projects without finance, legal, administrative services, and all of those build jobs in communities. If you look more broadly at the ecosystem, then you also need skills. We have a huge deficit that's actually frightening in terms of the skilled labour to do the jobs that it requires us to provide in terms of transition. So if, in fact, we don't look to trade teachers, for example, where there are more jobs and how you actually increase numbers of trade teachers, then we're not going to fill those positions. And of course we need community services. So the resilience of the care economy, health, education, childcare, aged care, these are indeed jobs. So while these jobs are all not new jobs, we have got the capacity to protect and grow jobs if we in fact look at an integrated approach to planning, co-development, transparency, and indeed investment in place-based issues of community building. No way do you have to think maybe kind of creatively outside the box in the sense that the job that's been lost in one sector of the economy energy is not going to be replaced necessarily by another job in renewables and clean energy. I mean, do you have to think creatively about how you will replace those lost jobs? So you won't always replace jobs one for one. But again, workforces aren't static. If you think about jobs in coal mining, for example, then the majority of coal miners are in fact somewhere towards retirement age. And so if you provided secure pensions and a bridge to secure pensions for early retirees. If you look at how you actually retrain, reskill, and move people into other roles. If you have community renewal planning, if you have the finance that includes just transition, then this actually is part and parcel of our economic development. You know, our economy is having stood still. Telecommunications industry is not what it was when I was a child and people plugged cables into holes to find the right party line. It's now a massive industry and it's now underpinning and growing into digitalization into our everyday lives, our utilities, our cars. So I find it frustrating when people talk about the notion of one for one. If you have planning across communities, across sectors, and indeed if you build in and price in the cost of just transition processes into projects, then workers win and communities win. You are from Australia. And you've mentioned coal mining several times now, Australia being the big exporter of coal. How is the country preparing for the progressive phase down of coal? First of all, we have one of the most responsible coal mining leaders. When I was president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Tony Ma, who's the head of the coal miners union, was actually the chair of my environment committee. So there is no disillusion amongst coal miners. What they want is secure jobs for themselves, their children, and their grandchildren. They want their communities to grow. Australia's issue with coal is not so much anymore. It's rapidly declining in terms of the energy source for Australia. It's out the export market. So as demand ceases in other countries, then the inevitable decline of the coal sector is there. It needs to be rapid. It needs to be planned for, but the net zero authority in part, while it has a whole of economy approach, it is indeed set up to look at what just transition means for those workers and their communities. Looking at the energy labor market. Do you see any major income, gender, socioeconomic gaps? And why does it matter in the context of the energy transition? So on gender, it's a pretty shocking picture. If you start with skilled trades, then less than 10% of any apprenticeship cohort is indeed occupied by women. If you look at engineers, then we do better with engineer graduates in numbers. But if you look at the employment, then pretty much that 10% into the energy market is a high bar. Into the energy employment market is a high bar. This is exclusionary. And our workplace cultures have not shifted. So a lot of the cultures are cultures that are not welcoming to women. Not just women, I might say, but we haven't equipped our workplaces to deal with workers with disability or to deal with mental health. And indeed even racism still continues to exist despite the fact that we are really dependent on migrant workers for skilled labor deficits. So have we got the equality story right? No. Do we need to shift markedly the workplace cultures? Yes. There are good initiatives in my country and around the world. I've just finished a job for our Victorian government on reform of its apprenticeship system and what needs to happen. So you can find the solutions, but we really do have to say if we need to double the number of electricians, quadruple the number of, you know, green economy engineers, et cetera, then you can't do that if we're not inclusive of everybody and encouraging these career pathways from our schooling system, which is sadly also still indeficent. You are the current commissioner for the global commission on climate governance, which aims to fill any crucial gaps in our response to the climate emergency. What are some of the kind of main gaps that you have identified and how do you fix that? So we have a planetary emergency, and yet we don't have a global governance structure to deal with it. If you think that the planetary boundaries are the story of what natural resources our planet actually holds and the destruction to those planetary boundaries. We've already transgressed six of the nine planetary boundaries. So more than 56% of GDP of our business activity is actually dependent on nature and associated planetary boundaries. We don't account for it. We account for GDP. We don't account for the planetary boundaries, and yet these are integrated systems. So if we're going to have indeed success in protecting our planet, then everybody understands the role of sovereignty and national security. But there are some things that go beyond that. You know, even if you look at oxygen, for example, not many people will rattle off statistics like one in six oxygen molecules comes from the Amazon and we all share that. Not many people will tell you that our pharmaceutical industry which protects our health and indeed protects us from pandemics is a strong biodiversity. Not many people will look at the value of nature that actually underpins companies, business practices. So we have to change the way we think. We should start with the UN declaring a planetary emergency. We would then urge that the UN Secretary General is very committed to the common agenda summit following of course that this year's future summit, then or summit of the future. Then, you know, in that common agenda summit, he's already put the social contract at the heart of our common agenda for a shared future or common security. It has to be an echo social contract because you can't, you know, manage a planet. You can't govern a planet that has planetary commons on which we all depend if we don't return to what it is that we're guaranteeing people in terms of inclusiveness in terms of equality, in terms of security. But you also need to understand and we understand well that indeed we all depend on nature, on those planetary boundaries. So we have work to do to change the way we account for our common security, but that means our common wealth because just looking at GDP is actually denying the reality of the damage we're doing to our own future. That's the planet which is the only home we have. We have time for one final question, which is going to be a question that will come up again and again for each guest. So if you had a magic wand and could change anything for a better world, more sustainable planet, what would it be? So I'm going to say two quick things. For people, it has to be an echo social contract. If we don't start consulting, including people, then the social fragmentation you're seeing today pick an issue. The farmers across Europe in the last few weeks, you know, the floods and the fires that are destroying people and insurance industry no longer ensuring mortgages for working families in California, in the US. Out of a cost beyond people's capacity in other countries, pick an issue. If we don't actually say the heart of dignity is indeed full employment with decent work, with rights, with a capacity to know that you've got a secure future. If we don't look at then the environmental dependency we have and how to integrate that into our global accounting systems, then we're not serious. So we have to put people and the planet at the heart of our economic planning. And for me that means really rethinking the echo social contract that it's the heart of our future. For climate action, the speed and scale we need, I would say the old controversial issue of a carbon price still looms large. You can't have the destruction of the polluting entities we have today who are have an unfair advantage, not just against the planet and our own future, but against the companies who are transitioning and pretend that we are managing a transition that will be sustainable. So a carbon price at the heart of the choices you then make a choice. Is it more affordable to actually transition to a to a secure sustainable future for people and planet? Or do you want to continue your destructive economic operations? Well then it will come at a cost that's increasingly unaffordable. I know we're not going to achieve a carbon price overnight, but it's a conceptual frame. We have to make the polluters pay those people who will not work with communities with workers with governments to make the transition. And I think I don't have to tell you that our fossil fuel companies, not all of them, but the bulk of them are still calling the shots when they should be using their technology. Their CAPEX, their skill workforce, their infrastructure to protect and grow jobs in renewable energy. Thank you so much Sharon Burrow, a round of applause for Sharon Burrow.