Markus Wissen, 09.10.2025: Transformation Conflicts and Global Climate Justice

In the face of escalating crises, we need a strong understanding of just transition that includes a democratisation of the economy and imagines the socio-ecological transformation from an internationalist perspective.

The question of justice plays a central role in the current social debates about whether and how a socio-ecological transformation should take place: How should the costs of the energy transition, especially for the urgently needed changes in the building and heating sector, be distributed? How can it be ensured that a reduction in car use does not come at the expense of people in peripheral regions that are inadequately served by public transport? How can we prevent the transition from combustion engines to electric motors from leading to mass redundancies at car manufacturers and suppliers? – These are just some of the questions that arise from a climate justice perspective.

Trade unions often respond with the concept of just transition. According to this concept, the transition to a climate-friendly, post-fossil fuel society must be organised in such a way that no one is left behind. The social and economic costs of both the fight against the climate crisis and the adaptation to its unavoidable consequences should not primarily be borne by wage earners and poorer segments of society.

It is important to demand this for three reasons. Firstly, the concept of just transition includes the realisation that responsibility for the climate crisis is distributed very unequally. It is the wealthy in the form of asset and capital owners and high-income earners who cause disproportionately high CO2 emissions through their investment and consumption decisions. Research on climate inequality has amply demonstrated this (Chancel et al. 2023).

Secondly, the call for a just transition points out that it is not enough for everyone to "tighten their belts". Many simply can't because the belt is already so tight that they hardly have any room to breathe. In addition, the belt metaphor shifts the problem to the consumer sphere and ignores the fact that the decisive causes of the climate crisis can be found in the social organisation of production.

Thirdly and finally, a just transition is essential for the acceptance of climate policy. This was demonstrated by the yellow vests protests in France in 2018, among other things. They were directed against an eco-tax planned by the state, which would have made the forced work-related car use of wage earners in rural regions considerably more expensive without creating public and environmentally friendly alternatives. The rich with their earth-destroying practices, on the other hand, would have got away largely unscathed (cf. Schaupp 2021). This is precisely what the just-transition concept counters by linking the ecological issue with that of social justice.

Pitfalls of the just-transition debate

Despite these merits, the debate on the just transition in the global North runs the risk of falling into pitfalls or being short-sighted. This is the case when the problem is seen primarily in the transition to a post-fossil fuel society, rather than in the climate crisis and the mechanisms that cause it. On the one hand, such a view is perfectly understandable. It is ultimately rooted in the fact that the capitalist mode of production leaves most people no choice but to sell their labour power on the market, even for purposes that cause damage to nature and people elsewhere and in the future, such as the production of cars and armaments.

In addition, as a result of past struggles for social participation, large sections of the working class in the global North are also dependent on resource- and emission-intensive consumption patterns and infrastructures: They need a car to get to work; they need oil or gas to heat their homes; and when it comes to food, they are dependent on the products of an industrialised agricultural and food industry. As a result, dependence on fossil fuel resources has become inscribed in wage earners’ everyday work and life routine, often leaving them no choice but to live at the expense of others and nature. Ulrich Brand and I have labelled this an "imperial mode of living" (Brand/Wissen 2021). For many people, the fact that they are tied into this makes the transition to a more sustainable society a problem.

On the other hand, however, it is short-sighted to see the problem primarily in the transition and less in the socio-ecologically destructive status quo of capitalist societies (cf. Barca 2012; Räthzel/Uzzell 2011). This applies to wage earners in the global North itself: Not least due to decades of neoliberal policies, workers in the automotive industry, public transport, the healthcare sector and many other areas suffer from work intensification, insecurity, unhealthy working conditions, constantly increasing tasks, alienation, lack of recognition and/or poor pay. They also feel the consequences of the climate crisis earlier and more strongly than members of the upper classes, for example in the form of heat at work or in poorly insulated homes (Brand et al. 2022). From this perspective, workers in particular have a lot to gain from overcoming the status quo.

This is all the more true when the global South is included in the analysis, i.e., when the question of just transition is internationalised. The resource- and emission-intensive imperial mode of living has long caused immeasurable suffering. The (neo)colonial North-South relations on which it is based and which it normalises included and include slavery, exploitation, disease and millions of deaths – but also diverse resistance based on a global class consciousness of the subalterns (Linebaugh/Rediker 2000). In times of climate crisis, the contrast between the global South and the global North is intensifying. The class differences in responsibility for the crisis and in the extent to which they are affected by its consequences, as they run through almost all societies, also take on a spatial form, in that the subalterns of the global South, who bear the least responsibility for the crisis due to their low CO2 emissions, are most affected by its consequences.

The ecological modernisation sought by the global North does not make things any better. On the contrary, because the resources required for this – lithium, cobalt and nickel for electric car batteries or green hydrogen for the decarbonisation of the steel industry – largely come from the global South. Their extraction or production often has devastating socio-ecological consequences (Schlosser/Wissen 2025). This means: Even if the transition to a post-fossil fuel society is organised fairly from the perspective of wage earners in Europe, it can cause new injustices on a global scale.

Christos Zografos therefore rightly asks what is happening "on the opposite side of things": "How about the justice implications of a just transition outside the borders of major economies seeking to decarbonise? And how about the justice implications for the spaces affected by the provision of green solutions within Europe, not just for those in Europe affected by the decommissioning of dirty industries?" (Zografos 2022: 40)

Intensifying and internationalising transformation conflicts

What are the political consequences of this? Firstly, it is important to emphasise that sticking with the status quo is not an option. In the wake of the climate movement, it looked as if this insight would also prevail in bourgeois and social democratic circles and the state apparatuses mostly populated by them. Indications for this were programmes such as the European Green Deal or the Inflation Reduction Act in the USA. Things have been different for some time now: Instead of an ecological modernisation, we are experiencing a fossil backlash (Zeller 2023); right-wing climate deniers are gaining the upper hand and the so-called political centre has embarked on an armament course that is fatal in terms of peace and climate policy.

This must be resisted. And the trade unions are also called upon to do this. They should not succumb to the temptations of the defence industry, which is trying to lure struggling companies in the metal industry with promises of jobs. Switching production from rail vehicles to armoured vehicles, as is currently happening at Alstom in Görlitz, is not a job retention strategy without alternatives. It is certainly not desirable from a socio-ecological or security policy perspective: It increases uncertainty by exacerbating geopolitical tensions and draining material resources from social security systems. Trade unions can counteract this by promoting their peace policy mission as an alternative to the bourgeois-social-democratic zeitgeist of “suitability for war”. This is the only way to re-establish the prerequisites for conducting socio-ecological transformation conflicts in the first place and to be able to argue about the just transition to a post-fossil fuel society.

However, my second point is that trade unions and other progressive stakeholders such as the climate movement should not aim to simply return to the level of debate that existed before the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. The European Green Deal of 2019 does contain a just transition mechanism. However, only those territories, industries and employees adversely affected by socio-ecological change within the EU will benefit from this. These include, for example, mining regions in which the EU supports training measures and investments in favour of environmentally friendly economic diversification. In contrast, the effects of a just transition in Europe on the global South are not taken into account. However, they can be serious and should therefore not simply be neglected. A transition that seeks justice only for European workers is unjust. What is needed is the internationalisation of transformation conflicts and of the just transition concept. Trade unions can contribute to this by, for example, organising meetings and exchanges of experience between employees along value chains.

Thirdly: In the coming transformation conflicts, the starting point, which is the socio-ecologically destructive capitalist status quo, should be problematised much more than the transition. The status quo should no longer be understood as being in need of ecological modernisation but fundamentally worth preserving (affirmative understanding of just transition), but as a state whose overcoming can no longer be postponed in the interests of survival and a good life for all today and in the future (transformative understanding of just transition).

This sounds like an abstract demand that lacks any reference to reality. In fact, however, it is already being emphasised in many transformation conflicts today. This applies, for example, where people are collectively fighting and striking for the expansion of social and technical infrastructures and campaigning for better working conditions for those employed there (#wirfahrenzusammen 2023), where they are fighting for an alternative food system based on the principles of regionality and seasonality (Redecker/Herzig 2020) and where they are developing ideas for a progressive conversion that replaces cars with buses, trams and cargo bikes rather than replacing rail vehicles with tanks (Kaiser 2023; Ressel/Zachrau 2025; see also the initiative Verkehrswendestadt Wolfsburg and the mobility podcast by Katja Diehl).

From a trade union perspective, these struggles are extremely attractive because they are about additional, good and socio-ecologically meaningful jobs that free people from the dilemma of having to reproduce themselves at the expense of others. Last but not least, they facilitate experiences of political and, above all, democratic self-efficacy. The support and orientation of such struggles and their intensification towards a "democratisation of the economic" (Urban 2025: 32), which is to be understood as an "elementary transformation resource", require the ability to engage in conflict and the acceptance of a strong political mandate (cf. Sweeney/Treat 2018). Organisational contradictions as well as contradictions in the life situations and interests of employees do not simply disappear as a result. But neither do they if unions concentrate on the defence of what already exists. At a time when the big picture is at stake, we need the courage to question the social conditions in both concrete and fundamental terms and to broaden the horizon of what is possible.

References

#wirfahrenzusammen (2023): Argumente für eine soziale und ökologische Verkehrswende, Berlin (27.10.2025).

Barca, Stefania (2012): On working-class environmentalism. A historical and transnational overview, in: Interface, 4(2), 61-80.

Brand, Ulrich / Fried, Barbara / Koch, Rhonda / Schurian, Hannah / Wissen, Markus (2022): Deiche bauen reicht nicht. Die Klimafolgen bringen massive soziale Verwerfungen mit sich. Die herrschende Politik wird das Problem nicht lösen, sondern eher verschärfen. Wir brauchen dringend Konzepte der Anpassung von links, in: LuXemburg, No. 2, 32-41 (27.10.2025).

Brand, Ulrich / Wissen, Markus (2021): The Imperial Mode of Living. Everyday Life and the Ecological Crisis of Capitalism, London: Verso.

Chancel, Lucas / Bothe, Philipp / Voituriez, Tancrède (2023): Climate inequality report 2023. Fair taxes for a sustainable future in the Global South. World Inequality Lab Study 2023/1 (21.8.2025).

Kaiser, Julia (2023): Rückkehr der Konversionsbewegung? Potenziale und Grenzen der Konversionsbestrebungen sozial-ökologischer Bündnisse rund um Autozuliefererwerke, in: PROKLA 210, 53(1), 35-53.

Linebaugh, Peter / Rediker, Marcus (2022): The Many-Headed Hydra. Sailors, Slaves, Commoners and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic, Boston: Beacon Press.

Räthzel, Nora / Uzzell, David (2011): Trade Unions and Climate Change. The Jobs versus Environment Dilemma, in: Global Environmental Change, 21(4), 1215-1223. 

Redecker, Sophie von / Herzig, Christian (2020): The Peasant Way of a More than Radical Democracy: The Case of La Via Campesina, in: Journal of Business Ethics, 164(4), 657-670. 

Ressel, Saida / Zachrau, Sebastian (2025): Konversion statt Kahlschlag: Wie Beschäftigte den Wandel in der Autoindustrie selbst gestalten, (21.8.2025).

Schaupp, Simon (2021): Das Ende des fossilen Klassenkompromisses. Die Gelbwestenbewegung als ökologischer Konflikt des „Hinterlands“, in: PROKLA 204, 51(3), 435-453. 

Schlosser, Nina / Wissen, Markus (2025): Der Grüne Kapitalismus und sein Außen. Rohstoffkonflikte um die ökologische Modernisierung der Automobilität, in: Graduiertenkolleg „Krise und sozial-ökologische Transformation“ (ed.): Kämpfe um Transformation. Kritische Analysen und Interventionen zur sozial-ökologischen Krise, Bielefeld: transcript, 33-48.

Sweeney, Sean / Treat, John (2018): Trade Unions and Just Transition. The Search for a Transformative Politics. TUED Working Paper No. 11, (21.8.2025).

Urban, Hans-Jürgen (2025): Demokratie als Transformationsressource. Über Regression, Resilienz und Progression in der kapitalistischen Demokratie, in: Wannöffel, Manfred / Hoose, Fabian / Niewerth, Claudia / Urban, Hans-Jürgen (eds.): Mitbestimmung und Partizipation 2030. Demokratische Perspektiven auf Arbeit und Beschäftigung, Baden-Baden: Nomos, 31-47.

Zeller, Christian (2023): Fossile Gegenoffensive – Grüner Kapitalismus ist nicht in Sicht, in: Emanzipation. Zeitschrift für ökosozialistische Strategie, 7(2), 221-252.

Zografos, Christos (2022): The contradictions of Green New Deals: green sacrifice and colonialism, in: Soundings, (80), 37-50.

 

The article in German language: Transformationskonflikte und globale Klimagerechtigkeit