Climate (in)Justice in Action? A Commentary on COP28 and Emerging Accounting Mechanisms

ABSTRACT

With the concept of ‘just transition’ entering the mainstream of intergovernmental climate negotiations, social and environmental accounting scholars have a new and critical role in the global pursuit of climate justice. At its core, accounting mechanisms are being called upon to navigate a paradox inherent to the just transition: pursuing scalability through standardisation and simultaneously prioritising a tailored approach to national and sub-national contexts. While we venture potential conceptual approaches to grapple with this paradox, our priority for this article is to outline what we hope is a starting point for an agenda on accounting for climate justice. It, therefore, looks to provoke debate on an array of research questions and interventions, from the role of COPs (Conferences of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) in giving birth to new accounting mechanisms, to the need to engage with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to highlight the relevance of accounting research in operationalising climate justice. Irrespective of how our community responds, notions of climate justice are already being made manifest in the international accounting mechanisms that aim to guide a just transition. We therefore call for action from the social and environmental accounting community.

1. Introduction

A just transition means greening the economy in a way that is as fair and inclusive as possible to everyone concerned, creating decent work opportunities and leaving no one behind. (ILO 2021)

What constitutes a just transition, how sustainable development might be achieved, and the relative importance of transitioning justly are matters of considerable debate (Bouzarovski 2022; Grantham Research Institute 2024). In European-centric discourse, it is not uncommon for terms like the just transition or climate justice to be dismissed as simply the latest buzzwords in climate discourse, or to be framed negatively as obstacles to reducing or removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

By contrast, in our experience a more positive attitude may be observed in Southeast Asia, where the just transition is often invoked in debates as an essential enabler of climate action. Here, there is a greater perceived need for any climate action to simultaneously address social issues, with social development being a necessary precursor to climate action, even for an individual project. In other words, achieving justice through climate action needs to be recognised a fundamentally different approach to climate action without injustice.

It is in this context that this commentary examines the meanings of just transition and climate justice used at the recent UN Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework on Climate Change in Dubai in 2023 (COP28 hereafter). After the just transition became integral to global sustainability goals, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), attempts have also been made to embed it within COP outcomes.

COP28 saw the launch of various initiatives and work programmes under the umbrella phrase of ‘just transition’. How climate justice is represented in COP28 outcomes differs substantively from other definitions such as the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) definition of just transition used at the beginning of this article, suggesting there is an implied ‘working definition’ at play, which may result in a strengthening or dilution of the ‘just transition’ principle.

This commentary recognises that we are at a moment in history where climate justice is manifesting in United Nations’ accounting mechanisms, purportedly to support climate justice being enacted. Yet little is known about the alignment between a global sense of the just transition, the way it is operationalised and how it is accounted for. For example, if a just transition needs to be adapted to individual countries and contexts, why is there a need for an intergovernmental work programme to carve this out? This leads to further questions concerning the role of the United Nations and the climate COPs to put climate justice into action.

Our analysis suggests that the outcomes of COP28 are consistent with climate action, social justice and just transition operating in silos, and that individual nations may lack guidance and could benefit from learning from what works elsewhere. Following this, we argue that national programmes can be catalysed by a global cohesive movement and common narrative backing the just transition. Alternatively, there is the possibility that certain nations, which have benefited from historic climate injustices, need to be held accountable or compelled to contribute financially to restoring greater global and local climate justice.

2. COP28: Accounting for Climate Justice – Nothing New to See Here?

Today, what is referred to as climate justice can be traced back to having roots with the more well-established concept of Common but Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities (CBDR-RC). While the climate justice and CBDR-RC are far from interchangeable (see Johansson 2023), CBDR-RC remains a conceptual cornerstone for climate justice and can be viewed as:

A “shared” moral responsibility between different groups of countries to address global climate change, nevertheless the proportions of such responsibility are differentiated […] developed economies assume their respective responsibilities and emerging economies and other developing countries can set reduction targets in the light of their national circumstances. (Zhang and Zhang 2022)

It is important to note that CBRD-RC has had significant impacts on intergovernmental COP negotiations. A notable example is COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, which was widely regarded as a failure (Christoff 2010). The United Nations failed to deliver climate justice and arguably perpetuated the climate injustice imposed on the Global South. In 2009, China came to the negotiating table as a strong voice representing the Global South. They had a clear argument: The United Nations and the West have no right to restrict China's future emissions space. In other words, China argued that developing nations should have the sovereign right to chart their own pathway to economic development.

This came about, in part, because COP15 attempted to establish a legally binding treaty on climate change that would impose emissions reduction targets on individual nations. While there was a confluence of other controversies present at the 2009 talks (Bodansky 2010; Vidal and Milmo 2009), the perception that the West (beneficiaries of historic climate injustice) was imposing legally binding targets on developing nations (victims of historic climate injustice) was re-presented as an affront to national sovereignty. The COP15 talks collapsed and the resulting Copenhagen Accord amounted to a mere two and half pages (UNFCCC 2009) that sketched the contours of a new vision and era for international climate cooperation that respected national sovereignty. The residual traces of this change have been evident in all subsequent COP outcomes, in particular COP21, which led to the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

Central to climate justice as national sovereignty in the Paris Agreement is the accounting mechanism known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). NDCs are the net zero plans and greenhouse gas reduction targets that countries develop and submit to the United Nations. These are formulated by the countries themselves, with some degree of diplomatic, bilateral and multilateral engagement. However, once they are communicated to the United Nations, they become legally binding.¹ These plans have been collated in global stocktakes and pronouncements on the extent to which the cumulative impact of NDCs enable the achievement of global warming targets, informing voluntary revisions of individual nations’ NDCs at subsequent COPs.

COP27 set the scene for the just transition entering the UNFCCC agenda, with the first ever dedicated just transition pavilion (European Commission 2022; ILO 2022a). This pavilion served as a focal point for just transition discourses, hosting a series of workshops and events focused on the just transition and included a knowledge hub where experts shared their insights and experiences (ILO 2022b). COP28 built on that foundation, launching a work programme and accounting mechanisms to embed justice in climate action. The focal point was the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP), tasked with establishing the pathways to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. JTWP will organise global dialogues and annual high-level ministerial round tables, focussed on implementing a just transition based on national priorities and promoting international cooperation to catalyse the transition via funding and capacity building (European Commission 2024).

Climate justice has appeared with different faces and forms throughout the history of intergovernmental climate negotiations. In the context of COP28, we see how its most recent incarnation has spurred an array of new mechanisms its name: the just transition. COP28 reiterated that nations remain politically committed to the climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement. It crucially highlighted a new commitment that no one should be left behind as a consequence of climate action, as the theme of the first high-level ministerial roundtable (UNFCCC 2023a).

Of course, specific intersections between climate action and social justice have sparked their own initiatives, with UN Women gaining significant traction for their work on A Gender-Responsive Just Transition for People and Planet (UN Women 2023). Acknowledgments on the imperative of gender-responsive just transitions quickly emerged across COP28, supporting women’s empowerment and protecting their livelihoods during the transition to a low carbon economy by creating equal opportunities through education, finance and data protection (UNFCCC 2023b). Yet coverage of COP28 privileged one highly-anticipated, but potentially controversial, proposal: how to operationalise the loss and damage fund, proposed in 2022 by the European Union, to compensate for the damages of climate change experienced by vulnerable countries (Adeline Stuart-Watt 2022). News broke surprisingly early in conference proceedings, with those backing the loss and damage fund perhaps vying for position on the right side of history. Indeed, the loss and damage fund embeds the CBDR-RC concept that has been at the heart of climate negotiations for decades.

COP28 did propose new forms of accounting to guide a just transition. The subsequent sections will explore whether those accountings align with differing, higher-level definitions of the just transition.

In this article we can only aspire to a brief analysis of these mechanisms due to the proximity of COP28. The contemporary nature of this interrogation means that it is not yet possible to map the network of actors that have been connected to different notions of climate justice since the 1980s or even earlier. That is just one example of research that would be invaluable to understanding how different notions of justice (and accountings of social justice) have emerged and evolved, and created the conditions we experience today. What we do see, however, is the notion of climate justice being translated into accounting mechanisms, with accounting being called upon once again to operationalise the organising rationales (Miller and Napier 1993) of sustainable development. This ‘accounting turn’ of enabling and directing sustainable development action raises several related research questions. We hope that the accounting challenges surfaced in this article can stimulate discussion on our research priorities for studying climate justice in practice.

3. Why Accounting?

In our view, accounting is being called upon by COP28 to resolve a paradox inherent to the just transition. This paradox derives from the requirement of a scalable approach to the just transition so that it can have a global impact in our timeframe for action. But equally, we need that just transition to be tailored to local needs, local industries and local agendas in order to catalyse action. In other words, we need both a globally standardised approach for scalability and a tailored approach for effective local action.

Of course, many social and environmental accounting scholars are familiar with this type of paradox and may well point to concepts such as boundary objects (Briers and Chua 2001; Star 2010; Star and Griesemer 1989), mediating instruments (Miller, Kurunmäki, and O’Leary 2008; Miller and O’Leary 2007; Thomson, Grubnic, and Georgakopoulos 2014) or even metagovernance (Charnock and Hoskin 2020; Meuleman and Niestroy 2015). For now, we offer this theoretical observation as a hopefully compelling foundation for debates in various CSEAR forums and as a direction for future research. The key point for us is that while there is political momentum behind a global just transition, what is being proposed is the development of accounting mechanisms that connect global momentum, just transition ambitions and enable the redistribution of resources to local climate projects. It is these local projects that will drive the just transition and climate action. This is the bridging challenge that accounting is being asked to play in driving a just climate transition.

3.1 The Paradox of Scalable Tailoring

We start with the first part of the paradox, scalability, before looking at how climate justice is tailored to the local. The last ten years have seen a burgeoning of climate finance, as capital market regulators came to terms with climate risk and realised change was warranted. That initial climate risk narrative has evolved with the need to embed justice within international financing mechanisms as well as tackling climate change. In other words, if finance is envisaged as playing a key role in scaling up climate action globally, then it also follows that international finance is going to play a key role in how climate justice is operationalised via financed projects. On one hand, we need to conceptualise how climate justice may be interconnected with finance. On the other, we need frameworks that allow an interoperability between these global goals for climate action and the just transition.

Crucially, these frameworks must allow flexibility for multiple approaches to achieve that just transition. Without flexibility, the local actors who understand their own conditions of possibility will be unable to design financeable initiatives that are effective at driving climate justice in their jurisdiction. For example, IPCC Reports suggest that we need thousands of different solutions to embed climate justice in practice. Therefore, any financing and accounting frameworks need to be open to allowing and driving and encouraging and stimulating different approaches to climate justice at the local level. As we have already indicated, a global framework is required that provides a common, coherent direction and narrative about the just transition. At the same time, however, there is also a need for sufficient flexibility to enable a decentred mode of sensemaking and action, which the global framework directs towards a common and coherent direction.² Yet this brings us to how (or whether) accounting can tailor global notions of climate justice to local contexts and financeable imperatives for action.

Why is this important? In our view, this is not a purely idealistic point. Nor are we trying to shoehorn accounting, finance or climate justice into everything, living in fear of questioning the widely valorised and amorphous notion of climate justice. That mindset would risk hampering climate progress. Conversely, we see climate justice as about catalysing action and making sure it happens as swiftly as possible. This is especially the case in less affluent contexts where the social development agenda is firmly set at centre stage. Writing from Southeast Asia, a common theme we see at conferences, workshops and debates is that to catalyse climate action, it is better to avoid foregrounding climate change. Instead, by focussing on economic benefits, social progress, job creation and educational and healthcare improvements, the solutions are articulated in ways that resonate with governmental priorities more common in the Global South.

4. A Justified Emphasis on National Sovereignty?

A privileging of local and national sovereignty highlights that climate justice will mean different things in different jurisdictions. Since the Paris Agreement and subsequent COP Accords were crafted in a way that respects national sovereignty, this will in turn generate localised understandings of climate justice across jurisdictions. Consequently, while efforts are under way to create global frameworks for coordinating a just transition, there is a limit to the extent to which those frameworks can prescribe action. Indeed, that is specifically because those actions need to be determined at the national level, given the importance placed on national sovereignty. These actions may be influenced by external factors. They may also be influenced by diplomatic efforts, bilateral and multilateral agreements, political and power imbalances, and of course international financial frameworks and markets. However, decisions on how to pursue climate justice need to be devolved at least to the national level.

This potentially creates a problem that we are quite familiar with in accounting. Namely, that devolved targets, progress reports and monitoring are based on a different range of indicators and metrics than we use at the global level, which must be aggregated into a form that may be married with the possibility of sanctions and incentives, perverse or otherwise, that typically accompany these coordinating frameworks. Further research is therefore needed to assess the validity and potential biases in the implied commensuration (Kolk, Levy, and Pinkse 2008; MacKenzie 2009) or translation (Chahed 2014; Robson 1991) from those national level metrics used to govern and monitoring their just transition, converting them into a form compatible with the global coordinating frameworks.

Of course, this brings significant complexity to those global coordinating frameworks. Drawing on our own experience of observing discussions on climate action through the United Nations, nations often lack the capacity to navigate that complexity, whether this is undertaking measurements of climate injustice, assessing greenhouse emission reduction potential, or developing national carbon inventories. This capacity gap leaves a role for United Nations institutions to build capacity in those countries. In our view, the same problem is likely to happen with the just transition. Guidance will be needed, including information about expectations and how to lay foundations. There may even need to be United Nations teams to build that local capacity for driving a just transition, while remaining respectful of national sovereignty.

We want to be clear that drawing attention to the need for international respect of national sovereignty is not the same as claiming international support is irrelevant for national level just transition planning. Moreover, that is not how respect for national sovereignty manifests. Instead, a more dialogical inspired capacity building programme that respects all parties’ perception of oppression, limitations and transformative possibilities is needed to enable countries to engage with, tailor and co-produce international frameworks and accounting mechanisms, while charting their own course for climate justice.

5. What Does This Have to do With COP28, COP29 and any Other COPs?

To recap, we have argued for a more a coherent direction and common climate justice narrative at the global level, around which local just transition efforts to act on climate problems can coalesce. Further, financial and accounting mechanisms created to guide efforts in that direction must be flexible enough to enable decentred sensemaking, respecting national sovereignty and tailoring climate action to local agendas. An obvious question, therefore, is to ask whether such a common narrative has started to emerge at COP28 or even earlier. Yet, the UNFCCC did not issue a statement setting out a global and locally actionable definition for climate justice. However, COP28 did serve as a focal point for the world’s leaders and media to be lobbied by civil society groups trying to influence their definitional processes of how to pursue a just climate transition.

For example, in 2023 the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) released a publication called Just Transition Finance: Pathways for Banking and Insurance (ILO and UNEP FI 2023). This outlines a road map for the financial sector to embed ideas of a just transition promoting climate justice as a key part of how we transition towards low carbon, resource efficient and resilient economy. At the forefront of the UNEP FI and ILO report was an unsurprising emphasis on labour rights as a key component of the just transition. However, privileging any one definitional perspective has the potential to distort the enactment of climate justice projects. This and other potential definitional privileging in relation to climate action, just transition and climate justice, highlights the need for research into the different positions being mediated and hybrid agendas emerging under the just transition banner.

We therefore call for research that looks at how the idea of climate justice has evolved over the decades through, for example, CBDR-RC through to current conversations on just transition. We would also suggest that such research maps the stakeholders that have operated in this arena of climate justice (Burchell, Clubb, and Hopwood 1985; Thomson, Dey, and Russell 2015), how these stakeholders have interacted over time, and the corresponding evolution of definitions, accounting mechanisms, financial frameworks and political agendas. This programme of enquiry would also furnish the social and environmental accounting community with a platform for commentary, if and when the United Nations is bold enough to create a scalable and localisable definition of the just transition. Our community would, in our view, have a duty to demonstrate the historical context and roots of that definition, while also problematising discrepancies between the idealised version of climate justice and how it is being operationalised through accounting. Of course, addressing all these questions is beyond the scope of this commentary. However, what we can offer are some potential starting points based on observations on points of conflicts between the climate justice accounting mechanisms recently proposed.

For example, the UNEP FI and ILO roadmap is founded on a just transition definition that emphasises an inclusive transition, placing people (workers, in particular) at the centre of the process through ongoing stakeholder engagement and consideration of a country’s local context. The guide focuses on the social aspects of a transition towards a low carbon economy and adopts a two-pillar approach: ensuring compliance with social performance standards and enabling positive social change.

Conversely, the loss and damage funding framework, which was announced at COP27 and further developed at COP28, adheres to a broader definition of climate justice founded on CBDR-RC. This definition foregrounds an emphasis on national priorities, capabilities and the development of plans to pursue a country-owned approach that is culturally sensitive and gender responsive. Nevertheless, despite this operational definition developed nations make up almost half of the Board governing the loss and damage fund (12 members out of 26 members). Moreover, the World Bank is interim host for four years, providing ample time and opportunity for Western notions of climate justice to shape and dominate the infrastructure for just transition finance.³ Yet there is cause for cautious optimism, with the fund being regarded as a significant milestone that ‘recognises that the needs of countries have reached their adaptive limits’ (Sirur 2023). Of course, these are merely two examples of potential conflicts arising from financial policies and accounting practices derived from differences in just transition definitions, which we hope may provoke considerably more systematic and robust analyses through research projects conducted by SEAJ readers and contributors.

6. So Was COP28 About Climate Justice?

Simply put, no. Our observations contradict the impression that COP28 was entirely dominated by the just transition in order to pursue climate justice. While we see it as a crucial moment in the history of accounting for justice, it would certainly be a misrepresentation of COP28.

One distinctive feature of COP28 was the agreement of nations to transition away from fossil fuels. This was a first for the history of COPs (Morton et al. 2023), prompting headlines signalling the ‘beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era’. This was accompanied by an array of announcements of actions, from the first global stocktake since the 2015 Paris Agreement and the commitment to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030, to the introduction of a new framework and targets for the Global Goal on Adaptation (UNFCCC 2023d).

COP28 also took advantage of its convening power to draw the world’s attention via thematic days that thrust critical issues into the spotlight. This included health day, trade day and indigenous peoples’ day, providing the world with a more granular view of the multifaceted impacts of climate change beyond extreme weather events. In this light, COP28 provides an opportunity to expedite the problematisation of climate-connected topics, providing visibility and formal acknowledgement on a global scale and serving as fertile ground for partnerships within and without COP itself.

Of course, as the broken record skips for yet another year, these announcements and headlines were accompanied by others arguing that COP is no longer fit for purpose. That having thousands of people fly in from across the globe is not what we need to fight climate change.

Indeed, we have even heard opinions from people within COP negotiations that the UNFCCC talks may have served their purpose. Namely, the series of COPs developed and secured global support for the Paris Agreement back in 2015. Arguably, crafting the mechanisms to mobilise the Paris Agreement could be a technocratic exercise achieved without annual spectacle (Strathern 2000).

With that in mind, we admit that we have, so far, been somewhat biased towards the view that COP has a role to play in the just transition. Thus, as a self-provocation:

6.1 Could we Achieve a Just Transition Without COP?

We have already argued that a just transition requires international financing flows to drive low carbon projects in less affluent jurisdictions. But if you look at the history of the UNFCCC, then you'll find promises and targets of securing 100 billion U.S. dollars per year in funding to flow from developed countries into those countries that require climate finance. That's a target we never hit (see Bracking 2015).

So, if COP is meant to play a role in securing and delivering finance to drive a just transition, has it not been shown as an ineffective forum for establishing and delivering on those commitments? Remember, we already have UNEP FI working closely with ILO on embedding the just transition in finance. Perhaps it is therefore a task for initiatives such as the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), where financial regulators from around the world work together to advance green finance.

Likewise, we say that national sovereignty is a critical part of climate justice that each nation should be able to define its own version of climate justice, aligned with its own goals for social and economic development. However, we have a clear example from the 2009 Copenhagen talks of how a lack of respect for national sovereignty led to the collapse of the talks. Perhaps we are remiss to drag up old news and should relish in the success of the Paris Agreement showing more respect for national sovereignty. But the United Nations extends beyond the Paris Agreement, and their data collection efforts and divisions have repeatedly encroached on national sovereignty (see Charnock and Hoskin 2020). So, we see a danger in entrusting the just transition to COP and to the United Nations, because once we establish these climate justice accounting mechanisms they are likely to enjoy a more siloed existence. In their silos, there is a danger that these accounting mechanisms once again prioritise technical matters over the political, committing the same mistakes and seeing the United Nations encroaching on national sovereignty yet again.

7. The Contours of a Research Agenda on Accounting for Climate Justice

By now, you can clearly tell that we (and all climate COPs to date) have many more questions than answers. We do hope we have some provocative suggestions and have evoked a sense of intrigue about the role of COP and the United Nations in generating an accounting infrastructure for the just transition. We also aim to sketch the contours of areas for future research, as an input to discussions on a research agenda that may span topics from financing mechanisms to our enduring obsession with mitigation at the expense of adaptation. Knowing that any attempt to venture research questions will be met with an appropriate degree of scepticism from our esteemed readers, we look forward to reading future works in social and environmental accounting scholarship that critique and tear apart the following:

• Are COPs necessary for developing countries to become integral to implementing a just transition?

• How could COP help to scale a just transition in a manner that is simultaneously tailored to the local contexts of developing countries?

• If COPs provide an annual focal point for the world’s attention on climate change, how does that shape the conditions for the birth of new accounting mechanisms that operationalise climate justice?

• Is the operationalisation of a just transition the ‘beginning of the end’ not only for fossil fuels, but also for COP?

We also ask a question of the community: what should social and environmental accounting scholars do with our catalogue of research outputs? For example, is there a role for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in synthesising research on climate justice and on what a just transition might look like in practice or how it could be pursued? If we think it is important to have an evidence base for the just transition, then this would fit within the IPCC's remit (Charnock and Thomson, 2019; Thomson and Charnock, 2022). Yet the IPCC will not identify these needs unless communities like ours reach out to highlight the importance of the topic and offer introductory syntheses of our body of work.

We may also see national governments developing their own just transition guidance documents and what we see now is that the accounting mechanisms are going to be critical for how those are operationalised. Our community seems better placed than most to analyse this, deriving the implied definitions of climate justice within those mechanisms and problematising misalignments with the global climate justice agenda and the national agendas for climate action.

Of course, this may require a faster turnaround time than is typically possible for publications in our world. And that's why we need to continue engaging in, a perhaps wider array of, consultation processes, so that we can rapidly mobilise our voice in the debate. If accounting is being called upon to operationalise climate justice, then we feel social and environmental accounting scholars have a critical and much-needed voice. The challenge is in how we make that voice heard in the global movement to measure, monitor, and implement a just transition.

Notes

1 What that means in terms of enforcement is beyond the scope of this article. However, enforcing legally binding commitments has been a challenge ever since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (Wang and Wiser 2002), which had a stronger legal character than the Paris Agreement.

2 This urge for a global framework and flexibility for localisation is also addressed by a call for child-sensitive climate actions in UNICEF’s report, Impact Assessment of Climate Change and Environmental Degradation on Children in Thailand (UNICEF 2022). The report highlights the gaps in climate-related plans and policies for sub-national contexts for children, addressing the lack of specific measures and coordination among relevant government agencies, as well as suggesting a combined ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approach to close the gaps.

3 It is worth noting that developed nations are not obliged to contribute to the fund. They are ‘urged’ and ‘invited’ to contribute, with the fund open to wide variety of sources that may see the burden to be shifted away from the states of developed nations (UNFCCC 2023c).