 Good morning, everyone, and good afternoon and good evening, depending on where you are coming into this seminar from. My name is Tegan Blaine, and I am the director for the program on Climate, Environment, and Conflict at the US Institute of Peace. Allow me to start today by thanking our panelists, organizers, and every one of our viewers for joining us today online. The US Institute of Peace is a national, nonpartisan, independent institution founded by Congress and dedicated to the proposition that a world without violent conflict is possible, practical, and essential for the US and global security. Today's seminar is part of USIP's program on Climate, Environment, and Conflict, which was launched in 2021. The program on Climate, Environment, and Conflict focuses on three main somatic areas, migration and displacement related to climate and environmental change, transboundary water issues in a changing climate, and a just transition to sustainable economies. Now, I'd like to set the stage for today's discussion. Our world is grappling with accelerating climate change, expanding biodiversity loss, and growing pollution. Meanwhile, the challenge to divest from fossil fuels and successfully transition our energy and production systems is testing the political will of governments, businesses, workers, and populations like never before. We look forward to exploring together the topic of today's seminar, how to prevent risks of social unrest as our world transitions to more sustainable use of fuels and more sustainable economies, and what we can do to promote equitable and just transitions for all. Today's conversation follows a virtual seminar that we hosted earlier this year on the conflict risks and oil dependent nations from what experts call traumatic decarbonization. With that background complete, I'd like to introduce our four guest speakers. Dr. Mustafa Kamal Gay is the director of the priority action program for just transitions towards environmentally sustainable economies and societies at the International Labor Organization. Based in Geneva, Mustafa has held several positions in the United Nations system. Prior to joining the UN, he spent 12 years working across Asia with the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies in Japan. Mustafa holds a PhD from Nagoya University and currently serves on several boards and steering committees at the OECD and the UNFCCC, among others. Dr. Elizabeth Rupert Bulmer is a lead economist in the jobs group at the World Bank. As part of the social protection and jobs global practice, she leads engagements on the informality agenda, gender gaps and labor outcomes, and environmentally and socially sustainable job transitions. Elizabeth has extensive operational and research experience in fragile states across South and East Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa. She also holds a PhD in economics from the University of Maryland. Liva Stottenberger is joining us, not from Paris today, but elsewhere. Liva is an advisor to the director and policy analyst at the OECD Center for Well-Being, Inclusion, Sustainability and Equal Opportunity. She has over 10 years of experience in public policy. Her expertise covers multidimensional measurements and policy agendas, notably the SDGs and several OECD frameworks for well-being, as well as for policy action on inclusive growth. She was a contributing author of the 2021 OECD Inequality's Environment Nexus Report. Before joining the current center, Liva was an advisor to the OECD's secretary general. She holds a master's in international political economy from the London School of Economics. Finally, and certainly not least, we are pleased to welcome Sonya Mystery. Sonya is the climate and labor justice globally at the Solidarity Center, where she most recently served as senior program officer in the center's Asia department. Sonya has supported worker rights and union building programs throughout South Asia, including Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Before her work in this region, she supported programs in sub-Saharan Africa as well. Prior to joining the Solidarity Center, Sonya was a service employee's international union organizer. She holds a master's in international affairs from SIPA at Columbia University. To all of you, we're thrilled to have such a diverse group here for today's exchange. So the first part of our discussion today will focus on the challenges that we see in implementing sustainable transition programs. Sonya, if I may begin with you to kick us off, I'm wondering if you could share a bit about why we often see workers resisting to move away from polluting industries around the world. Thanks so much for having me, Tegan. I'm so glad to be part of this really important conversation. And I really appreciate the chance to unpack this narrative that workers and their unions are resisting progress or opposing climate action. It's not that workers are resisting economic change. What they're resisting are the economic forces, pushing them into precarity, denying them voice and undermining their rights. In most cases, climate action has simply not been tied to the rights and welfare of workers. And as a result, have often had the unintended consequences of leaving workers behind, which creates vulnerability and erodes resilience. Many of the sectors or industries targeted for transition such as energy or transportation are also ones where workers are well organized and have struggled over many years to turn often dangerous jobs into family sustaining ones. In many of the countries where the Solidarity Center works, there are already high levels of unemployment and a significant percentage of workers are employed in the informal economy outside of formal labor protections. Most workers lack access to basic social safety nets. So transitioning out of sectors like coal without ensuring access to high quality jobs for impacted workers and ideally union jobs will push people into highly precarious conditions and erode the collective power that they've achieved in environments that already see high levels of power imbalance. The other point that I'd like to emphasize is this distinction between consultation and negotiation. There's been a strong push to ensure that impacted communities are consulted in the development of climate policies and actions. However, consultations are voluntary processes and they have minimal accountability. Ultimately, it's the private sector and governments, the power holders who make the final decision. Trade unions on the other hand are legally protected organizations of workers with the ability to negotiate binding and enforceable agreements. This usually looks like collective bargaining agreements but unions can also engage effectively in tripartite structures or in other social dialogue mechanisms where transitions can be negotiated to ensure that the needs, rights and welfare of workers are protected. I'd just like to give an example from Columbia to help illustrate how some of these issues are actually playing out. So Columbia is one of the top coal producers globally and at least 40% of the country's exports are fossil fuels. And yet the country is making significant energy transition efforts. Coal has contributed significantly to the GDP, especially of coal producing communities where we have to remember that livelihoods were displaced just to take over land to mine coal in the first place. So for an energy transition to be just in Columbia, the needs of more than 100,000 workers have to be accounted for through negotiation with those workers. In December of 2020, the largest labor federation in Columbia along with its mining and energy sector affiliates released a joint declaration calling for the country to meet its commitments under the Paris Agreement while also ensuring that worker rights are protected. They recognize the need for an energy transition, but they maintain that it must be through negotiation with the unions. There should be a clear plan to advance access to decent work for impacted workers and communities. So fast forward, there have been multiple mind closures in Columbia and workers have been laid off in mass. So of course they resisted these terminations, but this is the only part of the story that gets told again and again and not just in Columbia, that workers are resisting the transition to a cleaner greener economy or that they're resisting climate action. And they just like to wrap up with a poignant quote from a coal sector union leader who really says it better than I can. He says, they should have listened to us as a trade union. At the time, we proposed moving in accordance with the Paris Agreement signed by Columbia. We called for ways to prepare ourselves for the process of energy transformation. If we had been able to begin a better reconversion process for the workforce, the workers would now be headed in new directions with new opportunities. We would not be a region in crisis without hope and without possibilities. And this is what workers are actually resisting. They're resisting transitions that only serve multinationals, the wealthy and the powerful and not the people who are the most impacted. Back over to you, Tagan. Thank you, Sonia. I really appreciate that introduction. I think there are a couple of key points that you're bringing up here. Number one, it's not the transition by itself that's the issue. It's really the process through which it's done and how much preparation and support that communities are given to enable that transition. And then number two, the point that you're making about the difference between consultation and negotiation is such an important one for me because the consultative process still leaves the power in the decision-makers' hands, whereas negotiation really implies a shared sense of power around those decisions. So those are some really key points to begin today's discussion. Leva, could we turn to you now? I know that you've worked quite a bit in the range of challenges that workers face. And I'm wondering if you could say a bit about all of those issues and opportunities to better support workers in economic transitions. Thank you, Tegan. And also, hello to everyone wherever you're joining us from and thank you so much for the opportunity to contribute to this discussion. Indeed, distributional impacts of the just transition and including on workers and their families has been a focus on our recent work at the OECD Center for Well-Being Inclusion Sustainability and Equal Opportunities. For example, the study that you already mentioned when introducing me, the study on the inequalities environment nexus towards the people-centered green transition was work where we looked at the cost of climate inaction as well as action and exploring the impacts on workers and while there is consensus that the aggregate effects on the employment are expected to be limited, they however will be very concentrated in certain geographies and workers and families will need support in the transition there. Let me just maybe qualify that in our study we looked primarily at the OECD countries so there might be quite large differences with what's happening elsewhere. But in the OECD, the workers displaced by the green transition will tend to be older working heavy and resource intensive industries and maybe of a lower skill level, although this really depends on the geography that you're looking at because for example, in the EU, when the European Commission assessed packages to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% in 2030 compared to 1990, they came to the conclusion that actually the higher skilled workers will be more negatively affected. I also want to mention that there is a gender dimension to this discussion because most of the losing industries tend to be dominated by males, however in the STEM and renewable energy fields where many of the opportunities are located, we see that women's participation still tends to be low and currently women hold about one-third of technical and management positions in these industries. Turning to maybe the opportunities that will arise, of course, workers as everyone else will benefit from improved health from a green transition and avoiding the most disastrous effects of climate action. And we also see that youth with higher digital competencies will gain, which is a very welcome development as youth are one of the groups that were particularly hard hit by the COVID crisis and also the ongoing cost of living crisis. But maybe if I take a step back and think about the broader challenges to implement sustainable transition programs, I could just mention three aspects that we also see in our research. The first is that we still often see that distributional and social impacts are considered as an afterthought or as an add-on in climate action and in climate packages, whereas our research shows that it needs to go hand in hand and this approach would achieve a dual objective. First, it would help the people who are vulnerable to energy poverty, as well as the workers, their communities, their families, and the SMEs and the regions that need dedicated support. And second, it helps broaden the popular support that are needed for ambitious reforms. In the OECD, for example, we see that trust and government is at a very alarming level of, you know, on average 44%. So you need popular support to be able to implement just transition. And what might help here is looking at the other aspects that are going to improve with the green transition. And one of the things that we are looking at in the Weiss Center this year is on population mental health because as the climate continues, warming, climate anxiety has increased and also extreme temperatures lead to increased rates and suicide. So maybe stressing other benefits in addition to avoiding the most catastrophic impacts of climate change can help in raising support. Just very briefly, the second point I wanted to make in the overall reasons why climate change packages fail is that the just transition consideration sometimes stop at the labor market whereas they need to consider other relevant policies. For instance, to get workers to new jobs which may be located elsewhere, they need rescaling, upscaling, but also adequate housing policy and the continuation of receiving social support and health and education for their children with added complexities, of course, if we look across borders. And the final point that I wanted to make was indeed echoing what Sonya already discussed very eloquently and at length is that we really need to amplify the voices of workers. And I think I have exhausted the time that you have allocated but just wanted to mention briefly example from Germany which phased out coal already starting in 2007. And there workers were included in the decision-making and this helped avoid large employment losses although there was a penalty in what they were able to negotiate in receiving. They received lower earnings but avoided employment losses. So it's a glass half full but at least there is some water in it. And thank you. I'll stop there for my initial remarks and hopefully we can return to some of them. Thank you, Tegan. Thank you so much, Liva. I'm also finding an incredible value in what you're saying and just a couple of points that I'd like to highlight from what you said. Number one, I really appreciated kind of the rundown of how different groups may or may not benefit from the transition. But you also highlighted mental health which I think is a really rare point in this conversation and one that probably deserves quite a bit more thought and emphasis in these conversations not only along the lines of the stresses caused by climate change and the value inherent in feeling as though you're making a difference but also the issues related to rising heat and the association with increased violence probably the stress from thinking about geographic moves in order to follow new labor markets and so on. And then just being able to articulate that this isn't just about a labor transition but it's about a transition of communities and what does this mean for issues like housing, education, health services, all of those things are really critical points, I think, in figuring out how we support workers. Liva, you also mentioned briefly the role of trust in government during these transitions and that sets the stage well for where I'd like to turn next which is the question of what are the roles for government and the private sector in this equation and at least for a few early remarks on that I'd like to turn to you, Elizabeth. I was wondering if you could discuss how the risks of labor transition breakdowns can be exacerbated by wider economic policy and in addition, what is the difference when energy generation is controlled by the government versus the private sector? Thank you very much and thanks for inviting me to be part of this panel and weigh in and listen to the complementary perspectives of the different speakers. So I'm glad you asked about taking this sort of step back about the broader economic policy and it's not only the negative, what can governments do about the negative transition so it's a lot that governments need to do to facilitate a positive productive transition to what? I mean, that's the question, right? What are workers, what is the economy transitioning to and it needs to be this more innovative, green or sustainable space? So there's a lot that governments need to do, part of that though is facilitating laying the groundwork, making sure that the policy framework and the programs and the incentive structures and the institutions are supportive of not only is the private sector to be innovating and creating these alternative jobs but also making sure that the social protection systems and safety nets are in place during a transition that hopefully is a short-term transition to this more vibrant economy. In terms of the positive role of government, there's sort of direct investment and investment policy directions and clearly governments are the ones that are making these climate commitments in the first place to meet the Paris targets and CO2 reductions. And within that framework they're setting then the large investment directions, let's say, in terms of decarbonization, renewable energy, whether they're investing directly themselves or facilitating that investment. They need to be investing upfront in terms of research and development, sort of stimulating innovation, whether that's at the large industry level or at the more smaller producer level and a lot of the focus has been on the energy transition but we know that other sectors are great. Agriculture is one of them. And then the client countries of the World Bank, these are low-income countries. Agriculture still is a very large activity in those economies and transports have been contributed as well. So, and some of the other speakers have already alluded to this, make me sure that the broader framework of policies that go across sectors are complementary and conducive and incentivizing the shift is quite important. I might shift a little bit to the coal transition, just transition discussion where the World Bank has been engaged. I'm on, as many of you know, the World Bank does a lot of project work but we also do a lot of analytical and advisory work and that's the side that I work on. And part of the, and everyone, and some of the speakers have mentioned this already, moving into this space, we all look to the past to see what worked in the past or what didn't work in the past. And a lot of the lessons and a lot of the directions that Liva has mentioned and Sonia is informed by those negative lessons, right? And those lessons really came from a couple of different sources but the focus on closing and we'll stick with, we'll keep with coal mines but you can broaden this to fossil fuel as well. When the coal mines were closed, a lot of these coal communities are remotely located and they're dependent on coal and because, you know, coal is an extractive activity, it tends to distort the labor market. The labor markets are then not very diversified. So when you close a mine, where can the workers go? And this is why we need the transition to what is just creating these alternatives. There's a local versus national tension here as well and some of the other speakers have alluded to it and part of our work, I wanna say two things. So one is we're very much looking at the measurement side. So who are the workers and communities that are affected? So it's the coal workers in the case of coal but it's also workers in the coal value chain, the SME in the coal value chain but it's also workers who are in the local, the small media enterprises, the micro enterprises, the those that are providing the goods and services to coal miners and their families. So informed by this sort of negative experience and or negative experience from the past but also the over-concentration or lack of diversification in these local economies, the World Bank approach now is much broader and it's using this sort of three pillars, institutional and governance that's sort of laying the framework for making decisions and bringing multiple stakeholders in. There's the people in communities. So that's the labor market, local, national but also the communities, right? And then the land repurposing which is sort of remediation, repurposing, crowding in positive activities and reducing pollution, methane emissions, things like that. I think I wanna make a comment that was raised by some of the other speakers of, so in addition to the directly affected workers, a lot of our work then measures how many who are, what are the characteristics of the indirectly affected workers and then what are the policies that can help this labor transition? And indeed it needs to be social protection policies, it needs to be active labor market policies like retraining and things like that. One of the real challenges that comes from these coal dependent communities is there aren't a lot of other jobs to move to and it depends on the country and obviously that we have a whole range of countries from sort of advanced economies and also low income economies and high degrees of informality. So one of the challenges is finding out who those indirectly affected workers are because many of them are informal. And this goes to Sonia's point, how do we consult them in a meaningful way when they don't have voice? They're not members of unions. So a big part of our focus, the World Bank approach has been much broader stakeholder mapping. So who are the various different stakeholders and then consultation? But it's a challenge having this meaningful consultation or negotiation when you have a framework where they don't have a voice. So that's a real challenge for all of us to think about how to give these indirectly affected workers, communities, families a voice. And just to maybe share a final point is to some of our project engagement or say project design makes specific upstream analysis and advice and policy framework work. So laying the foundations for, well before the mine is closed or whatever the big transition is. And then I was gonna say something else. I went straight out of my head, darn. Oh, in terms of then having specific mechanisms and allocating specific resources to invest in the community in a way that the community wants the investment. So that might be social infrastructure. That might be some other kind of local infrastructure but giving the communities a voice of how, what they want, what their priorities are. And in that way, it's trying to bring them into the conversation, create buy into the transition process but also sort of stimulate this kind of, ideally a very dynamic economy where workers and their families have lots of options. I'll stop there, thanks. Thank you so much, Elizabeth. Number one, I really appreciated your reminder to all of us that a sustainable economic transition in the context of climate change is not just about energy, it's also about agriculture. And we probably ought to be having discussions about what this means for agricultural workers as well. But I also appreciated you talking through the World Bank way of thinking about the role of government in making decisions and then the importance of community but also the importance of thinking about how to repurpose the land that has been used for certain enterprises. And the recognition that there are so many secondary workers who are really dependent upon energy production but are not necessarily directly workers in the energy sphere but are often working in the informal economy who don't necessarily have established ways to provide input into decision-making, especially government decision-making, that is also a really critical issue to remember. How do we develop decision-making processes that are often led by government that really engage all the members of the community and not just the workers who have access to groups that will help advocate for their interests and participate in negotiations? Just a note to everybody. Soon we will be moving to questions and I'm already seeing a couple of questions coming in. Please feel free to start. If you have questions, start sending them our direction and we'll get to those in about five minutes. But first, before we do audience questions, I'd like to turn to our last speaker. Mustafa, you have such rich experience in the international policy realm, both through the ILO currently but also you've worked in international climate change, negotiations and discussions as well. I'm really curious what that space contributes and what you think international policy development can really achieve in terms of helping support peaceful energy transitions. Thank you very much, Tegan. Obviously, as you said, international policy development has an important role. First of all, because the questions that governments and member states and society in general are trying to address are of global nature. They require global policy responses and those frameworks are critical. They cannot be addressed through action by single nations. Now, having said that, I see three possible ways through which international policy development has a critical role. One is first to set the narrative right. To understand very well what is the nature and scale of changes that could happen in the economies and societies in the context of the ecological transition. And I think Elizabeth, Liva and Kuwis have spoken about that role of research and understanding. And I think what is clear now from most studies, those by the ILO and others, is that globally speaking, we can be on a positive narrative. Ambitious decarbonization can lead to more and better job. It can increase social equity. It can advance social justice. But this has to be conditional to the right policy frameworks. So first that narrative, I think when set right, it's going to help us a lot. And I want to say that here in the International Labor Organization, when I came to the ILO 10 years ago from UNED, I was surprised to see that the constituents at the forefront of the environmental sustainability agenda were the threat unions. I was thinking that unions would be worried about losing jobs in the green transition. And they want to stop it and not fast track it, but not that. That was the opposite. And gradually I realized that the threat unions understand that this is a direction of travel, but it has to be done in a way when like Sonya said, listening to those that are going to be impacted and they had solutions at the table. So therefore that narrative, I think is critical. The second is about the policy development. Obviously we are not on a climate and an environmental agenda. I think everyone understand that the process of decarbonization is a deep economic and social transformation. That's what is required. And we cannot achieve that simply by sitting in climate negotiations with representatives of ministers of environment and climate. Increasingly countries are having representatives in the climate negotiations coming from economic planning, development ministries of finance, industry and labor. So that policy framework that is current is going to be critical. And another element of that policy framework is that the focus has been on ambition. And ambition has focused in my view on the numbers, 1.5 degree, 2.5 degree, but we're saying that ambition is not just about numbers. Ambition is about people. It is people able to transform the way they work, having the right skills and capabilities to transform the way society operates, enterprises that are able to innovate and have different business models. So that human dimension has not been given, in my view, the attention that it requires. So therefore I think bringing it back with the climate agenda and the climate ambition is going to be critical. And when it comes to that policy, the same colleagues have spoken about policy content, but policy process matters as much as content. And this is where social dialogues take hold and engagement is going to be critical. Unfortunately, we have reviewed the International Tritonian Confederation as reviewed the nationally determined contributions. And they found that only one out of nine out of 10 NDCs involve effective social dialogue. So there is a deficit of social dialogue in the climate process, climate making process. We have studied collective bargaining agreements at the enterprise level. And we find that 23% only of the collective agreements we examine address environmental sustainability issues. So therefore there's a deficit of engagement and dialogue both at the national level, but also within enterprises. And then finally, I think international cooperation. So we must recognize that all countries face the same challenges, but they do not have the same capacity to respond. So this is why international cooperation, solidarity is going to be critical. And these are important element of the UNFCC, but that also brings the important agenda of the just transition. So there needs to be policies recognizing that we have opportunity for social and economic gains, but there is going to be unavoidable damage. Some will lose jobs, income, some enterprises will face difficulties. So there is an important role for social protection, but also government support, especially for small and micro enterprises and those workers in the informal economy. So I think to end the international policy framework has to be comprehensive and clear and recognizing that we are not dealing with an environmental agenda. We are addressing a matter of economic and social transformation that the gains and losses are sometimes geographically concentrated. They don't happen at the same time and policy makers must address those disconnections in terms of location and time. And finally have the means for action for all countries and making sure that international cooperation and sharing of experiences can make the collective action possible for all countries, whatever their levels of developments are. Thank you so much, Mustafa. I really appreciate your insights here. It was really wonderful to hear you pick up on a point that Sanya made at the beginning of this discussion about unions actually very much being on board with this transition and just want it to be well planned for and thoughtful, but they are ready to be in the forefront of thinking about creative solutions. But I think your point about how, at least within the climate change negotiations, we've focused so much on targets and we've lost the centering of populations, of humans in this equation is so important. I was already aware that a lot of the nationally determined contributions under the UNFCCC don't bring up issues related to social dialogue and how we effectively engage communities in this kind of transition, but the numbers that you bring up are quite stark. And thinking about how we as a global community do that better is just so important when we're dealing with this kind of absolute transformational change across economic and social systems. So thank you very much for your insights. We're beginning to get a few questions from the audience and I'd like to start with one about efforts to open new green jobs facilities close to areas where coal plants are closing. I'm wondering, Elizabeth, whether this is something that you'd be willing to talk about first, about the repurposing of land that was traditionally used for coal, is it possible, are there good examples of that being transitioned to new green jobs facilities? What are the things is that land being transitioned to that provides jobs for communities? Thank you very much. It's a great question. I'd be happy to share a few comments. So as I mentioned, one, so a lot of the repurposing, if it's a coal mine closure or a coal power plant, we need alternative sources of energy, right? So that's sort of the obvious repurposing would be for renewable energy. And in sort of World Bank engagement, we've been trying to promote that generally, but if we're doing land use repurposing assessment, we have a new tool that looks at the physical attributes of the mining lands to see what they would be conducive to. So some of those are renewable energy, but sometimes it's not, you know, in Bosnia, not a lot of sun. So yes, you could do some renewable energy there, that would be solar PV, some places wind might be a better option, but it might not be in the coal communities themselves. So one of the real challenges is generating local jobs and the renewable energy activity tends to be less labor intensive than coal mines. So even if you repurpose the land entirely, it would not create as many jobs as probably the displaced miners and non coal sector workers. So it's a real challenge, attracting new private investment. They're sort of repurposing for tourism. There's a famous example in Germany where they converted that area to a, and it was near a large city. So it became a tourism amenity that can work in some settings as well. I think the key is the economic diversification because there's no silver bullet. And precisely because many of these coal regions are not very close to urban centers, a green jobs center, which sounds nice in theory, is mostly not very practical because it sounds like a large scale thing. And if these mines have 800 workers, 2,000 workers, just setting up a new business to absorb them is simply not feasible, especially you have to attract that private investment. And then private investment might say, well, I don't really want to be in this remote community. I much rather be in this suburban area that has better urban links. So it is a challenge. The other way to be that governments should be and can be thinking about it and we're thinking about it as whether there are sort of mobility incentives, mobility grants to help workers move to where they're more dynamic areas of green job or sustainable job creation. And one of the interesting things that's coming out of our research in Poland, we're going to do a similar thing in Bosnia as well, is looking at workers' skill profiles to sort of understand how that fits with the broader demand in the labor market, brought nationally as well as locally, but then also workers' preferences. And a very strong finding coming out of Poland is that people don't want to move. So this is a real challenge. And I mean, I understand that. I don't want to, I own my house. It would be difficult to move. My husband has a job. My kids are in this school. It's very hard to pick up sticks and move. So finding that balance of creating local opportunities that some people will say, great, that's good enough. This is fantastic. I get to stay here. That meets my needs. Whereas other people who might be younger, maybe they're in their 20s, they say, oh, actually I'm going to look for my green dynamic digital opportunity elsewhere. So it's a challenge. It's something that we all need to sort of get our heads around stimulating. Thanks. Thank you, Elizabeth. That's really, really useful. We have another question that's come in about specific groups that are at more at risk of being left behind than others. And Liva, I know that you initially made some comments about that and I'm going to return to you in a moment. But first, Mustafa, you had referenced how certain geographies may get left or more at risk than others. And I'm wondering from a bigger picture, do you see certain types of countries, for example, being left behind more easily in this transition that we really need to pay more attention to? And then I'll turn to Liva to ask you as well to give us a little bit more insight into specific groups being left behind. Well, I would say that the countries that depend more and so heavily on fossil fuels would be most challenged than others because as colleagues have said, when there is a coal mine or a coal plant somewhere, it is not just one single isolated business. Often they drive a whole ecosystem of that community with upstream and downstream. So therefore, closing down a coal mine or coal power plant is impacting a whole ecosystem of a community. Now, how do you help with that economic transformation and diversification is where the challenge is. And so many of the countries that are going to be needed to decarbonize are also countries that have less capacity in Africa, in Nigeria. The many countries where already development challenges are there at the center, but those are the ones that are needed to make a bigger step forward in the decarbonization. So I think those communities where the whole economy is so heavily dependent on fossil fuels, where there are many informal workers require particular attention. And I think the just energy transition partnerships that are being promoted by the UN and a range of partners is going to be important because that could target countries that are needed for high ambitions, but where the social and social economic consequences are critical and where again, as we mentioned earlier, international collaboration and solidarity is going to be indispensable. Great point. I really appreciate that, especially bringing in some of these development issues that are related to economies that are highly dependent on fossil fuels. Levi, is there anything more that you'd like to say about at the community level and the types of groups that are more at risk of being left behind than others? Thank you, Tegan. Excellent question. And I think I want to mention a few groups that are going to be affected by the green transition, but looking beyond the workers. And I think what we are already seeing in the OECD countries in the context of the ongoing crisis of living costs is that many vulnerable households are more prone to energy poverty than we saw before the COVID crisis and before Russia's war in Ukraine. And I think that we will see similar effects from the transition to renewable energy sources where we could see that energy prices are likely to go up with impacts not only on energy prices per se, but also, of course, ripple effects across consumption baskets. And we are currently finalizing a project where we're looking at the living costs and we see that different households are affected differently. For example, those households that pay more for energy are going to feel the impacts in a more serious way. And these tend to be either low income households or households that are more in a rural setting and also in the green transition where some of the policy action is going to be towards more efficient energy use in housing, for example, through insulation or such. This is going to increase the value of houses and apartments. But it's probably going to get more expensive for those who rent. So we're looking at various impacts beyond the labor market and energy poverty and the risks of such are in the forefront of that. Thank you. Thanks so much, Levi. I think that really adds to what you had said before. Sonya, I think we have a question for you and it ties into something that I had wanted to ask anyway, which was about tripartite negotiations. But the question is as follows. Are there examples of trade or labor unions that have succeeded in using their collective power to gain a seat at the table to really be involved in negotiating what these transitions look like? Yep, that's a great question especially because it's so important to have good examples to point to to find out where is it working well. I'll say that in South Africa, there are tripartite mechanisms where the trade unions are very, very engaged. And I'll not say that it always works perfectly, but they do have a really good example of this. The unions are also engaged in the PCC, the Presidential Climate Commission, which really is a multi-stakeholder platform to engage in really thinking through what sort of climate policy and climate action is needed and how it's going to roll out in South Africa. But there are multiples kinds of social dialogue mechanisms that do exist in the country, which to Mustafa's point about these just energy transition partnerships, South Africa was the first place where this was rolled out. And because of these social dialogue mechanisms, labor had a proper seat at the table. And again, there are still challenges with access to timely and accurate information and always being able to be fully engaged. But at least those mechanisms exist and labor has a proper seat at the table. Where these kinds of jet peas are rolling out in other countries that don't have social dialogue mechanisms, then automatically you're starting several steps back where labor has to first get that access to information, get a seat at the table, and now we're talking about a much further distance that we have to go to actually be able to engage in those kinds of tripartite discussions and negotiations. So I think South Africa is really a great example of this. Thank you so much, Sonia. I had really wanted to slip in a question about private sector finance and the responsibilities of private sector companies in this space. However, we only have about 10 minutes left and I wanted to give each of you a chance to make a couple of closing comments. And so if any of you have any thoughts about the roles of the private sector, please feel free to slip that in in your closing remarks. But in terms of the last question for all of you, I just wanted to invite all of you to offer a couple of closing comments on what we've learned in this space. What is one thing we should do less of and one thing we should do more? Who would like to start? I'll go. Thank you. So the void. So thank you very much. This has been a really interesting panel. Couple final points. So one of the things that it's doing more of is crowding in this stakeholder space, just recognizing and trying to figure out what the different stakeholders are. It's a difficult exercise and when we do a stakeholder mapping, but even there, how do you get the, you've identified the group, but how do you get the voice? How do you get the person to participate and speak and represent those interests? So that's one sort of call to focus. The other point I might make is that I think there's, private sector obviously needs to be the engine and it might need help to be the engine. Hopefully that's just through policies and not direct subsidy, but there are incentives. So that's a complicated space, but it all needs to be part of it. And one thing that's coming out very much out of the cops and within the World Bank is how much can the World Bank or other development institutions finance directly? It's a small share. So we have to mobilize private finance, otherwise we're not going to achieve the objectives. But I just want to make me one point about the sort of attitude, shifting to the low or focusing on the low income country context, there are stimulating programs that the governments can roll out in terms of directly supporting adaptation activities. And I'm thinking of things like reforestation or payment for environmental services that can target a vulnerable area, a vulnerable community or vulnerable workers, the workers who are in the marginal, informal jobs in a particular setting, target these kinds of programs to them, which is has both a climate, it's meeting a climate objective, it's increasing adaptation and mitigating if you're increasing your carbon capture, for example, but at the same time providing a decent sustainable income that then has that all those positive spillover economic development effects. And that's in my view, and I'm not speaking for the World Bank at this point, but in my view that is, it's an expenditure of the government that has a very high return because it will reduce social costs and social spending ultimately. So I see that as an important space for all countries to be getting into in the early stage without maybe, while they're thinking about how to tackle the gigantic energy transition, start doing these smaller scale adaptation activities. Thanks. Thanks so much, Elizabeth. Liva, Mustafa, Sanya, any last concluding comments, one or two minutes each? Sure, I'm happy to go. And I think, Tegan, that you won't find any of this surprising for me, but what we need to do less of is push climate action without meaningfully engaging workers and their organizations. It's not a success to train 100 people for jobs and renewables when you've also pushed 1,000 people to the brink of destitution. So we need to do less of that, making the people who contributed the least to the climate crisis be the ones who are paying the highest price for climate solutions. So what we should be doing more of is negotiating with workers and their unions, which requires planning and it will probably feel very challenging for decision makers and power holders who aren't actually used to doing this, but the end result will be so much better and not only for workers, but also their families and entire communities. A well-planned negotiated transition actually builds resilience and promotes much greater well-being to, again, to Mustafa's point about moving beyond the numbers. This would actually build much greater well-being, which would magnify the impact of climate policies. Thank you so much, Sonia. Lifa, you had your, you were off mute for a moment. Should I invite you next and then leave the final word to Mustafa? Thank you, Tegan. I do not have a response to what we should do less, but I think one of the things that I want to return to is the multidimensional impact that the just transition will have and maybe one way that I would go about it is think through the various aspects it's going to affect. For example, take your pick in a multidimensional framework, be it the SDGs or be it the OECD well-being framework or be it your national multidimensional development strategy and how are the various dimensions, be it income, housing, education, health, safety, social connections, how are each of these going to be affected by the green transition? And then see if your priorities are still there or whether they need to be reexamined. So I would just say more of a comprehensive multidimensional lens to the green transition so that it's fair for different population groups who are feeling asymmetrical effects going through it. So thank you so much. Thank you, Lifa. And Mustafa, any final insights you'd like to share? Well, thank you, Tegan. First of all, I really wanted to appreciate this opportunity. It was very insightful and lots of learning from colleagues. So I would say what I think needs to be given, less focus, not because it's not important, but as Sonya said, this focus and obsession, if you like, on ambition, 1.5, we're losing. I think refocusing the action on people, we have to make sure that enterprises, communities, people are able to transform themselves. That is what is going to lead us to ambition with numbers. And to do that with a comprehensive approach where the social policies, the industrial policies that are required are all part of the package. And to bring that at the local and context of countries. So we have a lot of opportunity and I'm happy that Elizabeth brought the adaptation, Angle as well. There's been a lot of focus on mitigation, but there's an important opportunity for adaptation. We've done just last year with UNEP and IUCN, an assessment of jobs who work in nature-based solutions. We find that today, 70 million people work in nature-based solutions and there's a potential for 20 million more jobs. So there's a lot of opportunity, but it has to come in a comprehensive approach to addressing the ecological transition, not only with climate and environmental policies alone, but with social, industrial, economic policies and bring that in the context of individual countries and communities. So I think this is a positive narrative, as we said, but it is just conditional to the right policies being in place with the policies and the processes involving all those that are impacted. Thank you, Mustafa, a great way to conclude this seminar. I am really struck by the fact that during this entire hour, we did not talk much about ambition and we did not talk about technologies. We talked about communities and the impact on human beings and how what we're facing is a huge transformational, economic and social change that really means very different lives for many, many people in the communities in which they live. I wanna thank all of you for your time and insightful contributions to this conversation. I hope that it was a productive exchange of views, both for all of you as speakers, but also for our viewers and people who contributed questions today. Overall, USIP is committed to creating spaces to discuss how we strive for peaceful and just transitions to more sustainable economies. Today was a wonderful opportunity to bring together our policy and practitioner communities for an evidence-based dialogue on just transitions. Many, many thanks to the four of you who served as speakers in discussions today. I appreciate what every single one of you brought to this conversation. And already, I think we've uncovered quite a few topics that might be worthy of seminars and their own rights and further conversation to dig into some of the details of some of what was discussed today. Thank you very much to all of our viewers and to the people in the background making this seminar happen, but most of all, thank you to all four of you as speakers and contributors today. Have a wonderful day, everybody.