A lot has changed since Belgium’s King Leopold II seized the natural resources of the Esikongo (in the territory known today as the Democratic Republic of Congo) in 1885, or since the United States seized the Atlantic and Pacific islands containing the naturally-occurring fertilizer guano and claimed them as US territory through the Guano Islands Act of 1856. What hasn’t changed is the relentless search for natural resources by the industrialised countries and transnational corporations of the Global North – often in the very same countries of the Global South they previously occupied.
The energy transition adds to this drive for natural resources. In Latin America, there is a massive push for agrofuels and especially the need for rare-earth minerals such as lithium for batteries that drive electromobility. The impact of this resource scramble on democracy and nature is immense, and the rights of Indigenous people living in these areas has been devastating.The struggle to control Bolivia’s lithium resources, for example, is considered one of the reasons behind the 2019 coup in Bolivia.
This unequal exploitation and extraction of natural resources has been the order of the day since Columbus landed in the Americas in 1492. It has brought economic welfare to the North and devastation to the peoples and nature of the South. Any sustainable solution must recognise this context and accept ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’.
That’s why the trade unions of the Americas (CSA-TUCA) have worked with social movements across the region to develop an alternative vision for the development of the continent, Plataforma de Desarrollo de las Américas, PLADA, which integrates political, economic, social and environmental rights as well as taking historical contexts into account.
According to the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) 2018 Greening with Jobs report, 1.2 billion jobs depend on a stable and healthy environment. We think all jobs depend on a stable and healthy environment, yet with the continued exploitation of nature, this is not happening.
The global trade union movement has been demanding policy changes under the banner ‘No Jobs on a Dead Planet’ since the Rio+20 Conference in 2012. Today we ask for ‘Decent Jobs on a Living Planet’. Decent work sums up the aspirations of people in their working lives. It involves opportunities for work that are productive and delivers a fair income, security in the workplace and social protection for families, better prospects for personal development and social integration, freedom for people to express their concerns, organise and participate in the decisions that affect their lives, and equality of opportunity and treatment for all women and men. In summary, it is about quality jobs underpinned by full labour rights.
Just transition: social justice as a driver for an ecological transition
The concept of just transition, a framework that includes the creation of decent work and quality jobs, has received global recognition in the climate negotiations in Cancun (COP16) and has been included in the Paris Agreement in 2015. For trade unions, a just transition is the pathway to social justice via a sustainable economic transition. Just transition leads to social and environmental justice and builds hope and trust in a future that prioritises people and nature, instead of profit. Unions want to ensure that workers lives, wages, security of employment, health, safety, and social protection are guaranteed in any economic transition.
Social dialogue is at the heart of this. It can facilitate planning processes based on the right to bargain collectively, reaching negotiated agreements and granting genuine partnership. Governments, alongside worker and employer organisations, have negotiated comprehensive guidelines in the ILO that can enable and steer the implementation of a just transition and the global union movement has documented many good examples of just transition processes.
While just transition is a concept that is often associated with workers in fossil fuel industries that are in decline or expected to decline, the concept goes well beyond this.
The climate crisis and the alarming loss of biodiversity is affecting everyone on earth. Together with other movements, such as women’s rights organisations, Indigenous groups and youth groups, workers need genuine participatory mechanisms to make decisions about their future. At the workplace level and in the economic sector, this starts with strong unions and social dialogue.
Just transition is about workers who refuse to be forced to choose between protecting their jobs and protecting the environment. Just transition also means confronting the impacts of the digital economy on workers and demanding that employers recognise their responsibilities to their labour force.
At a national level a just transition involves the negotiation of a new social contract that includes effective social protection measures for everyone. To ensure that we build a better world post-Covid this is more urgent than ever. The union movement is asking for a Global Social Protection Fund of US$37.8 billion to build social protection systems with five years of coverage in the 28 least developed countries.
Finally, it is important to stress that there will be no just transition if economic decisions continue to be dominated by global finance, which seeks to transform all activities into profit for business.
We must question the economic model dominated by austerity and neoliberal policies that transform our common goods into financial assets and commodities. Territories, land, biodiversity, water, seeds, forests, energy, ancestral knowledge, science, care, health and education are common goods. They are not confined to national and local spheres. They are shared across borders and, in some cases, even have regional and global scope.
To guarantee the sovereignty and self-determination of the people over common goods, instances of democratic participation and decision-making are required at the local, national and regional levels. Environmental protection measures should not become excuses for the commodification of common goods. Interculturality, the recognition of environmental knowledge and practices, and the protection of our genetic resources against biopiracy are important conditions to reverse the trend of environmental devastation. It won’t be easy, but we had better get on with it if we want to give all of humanity a fair chance.
