COP29 - 20 November 2024
God of Justice - just transitions are important
COP29 - 20 November 2024
God of Justice - just transitions are important
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God of Justice - just transitions are important
reading
reading
Jeremiah 29:4-7 (NIV)
This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
reflection
reflection
We often think of justice in terms of bad people doing bad things, or good people failing to deal with bad things, but just transitions have a lot to do with making sure that good people don't inadvertently do bad things. Lots of goods and bads there. Just transitions are about making sure that as we decarbonise our economies and move to clean energy (which we have to do quickly), as we move from polluting industry to less polluting industry, as we relocate communities from high risk climate areas to lower risk areas, we don't disadvantage those whose livelihoods have depended on the old way of doing things.
Let's step away from good and bad for a moment and look at today's reading from Jeremiah. Perhaps you think it's out of place here, but let us explain our choice. For twenty three years Jeremiah had been speaking the word of God to the people of Judah, calling them to repent, and to turn back to God, but they'd ignored him. So God has allowed the Babylonians to take his people into exile, and he's told them that they're going to be there for seventy years.
We join them in time to learn the contents of a letter that Jeremiah has sent to them in exile. It's a long letter, but we're only concerned with the seemingly mundane message right at the start. While Judah is in captivity, God wants them to live a normal life. They are to create homes, grow food, marry and have children, and to seek the peace and prosperity of their new country of domicile. The thing that struck us was that even having sent them into exile, God wanted the people of Judah to live comfortable, fulfilled lives. And to us, today, that seems like the minimum we should want for others: to be able to afford a home, to feed themselves, and to enjoy family life. We'd also add education and good health, certain that they must have been in the subtext of Jeremiah's letter!
And it's these things that just transitions are about. They're about recognising that at the moment there are whole economies tied up in coal and oil, which means innumerable livelihoods dependent on them. Justice under these circumstances means that some countries and communities will need to help others to transition to sustainable economies; and justice means making sure that workers in high-carbon industries are supported to transition into new jobs.
Perhaps for us, just transitions mean recognising that we are living in a time where great change is needed, one where our political leaders are going to have to make complex and difficult decisions, and one where the trend towards polarisation of thought and opinion is deeply unhelpful. Perhaps just transitions need us to be voices of understanding and reason.
It turns out that even when just transitions are done well, the good and the bad are rarely cut and dry, but the people affected must always be important.
A just transition is about transforming the economy in ways that are fair for everyone - whether you mine coal or crypto, whether you work in the city or on a plantation, whether you're an activist or an industrialist. (From Context)
action
action
It is hard to take part in COP-style Just Transition. It is to do with workers’ rights, international trade in fossil fuels, and metals, and international flows of financial assistance. But we can make our own small acts of justice. It is good to take concrete action - as a kind of antidote to thinking, reading, praying and talking. We recommend:
Buy at least one fairly traded product. Better still: identify one unfairly traded product you regularly buy, and substitute it with a fairly traded equivalent, hence making a permanent change in your shopping habits.
Do at least one practical good turn for someone else. Try to make sure this is something the other person genuinely wanted. For example: baby-sit for a friend; buy a hot drink and a sandwich for a homeless person; be the person at work who steps forward when there is something unpopular that needs doing; consider joining a trade union.
In the podcast listed below in the resources, Caroline Lucas and Hilary Benn suggest
Link up with other people who feel the same way about climate change, about the Just Transition. Contact your member of parliament, your local council, the businesses that you use and ask them what they are doing - hold them to account.
If you are in the fortunate position of having a pension or a bank account, look at where companies or banks are putting their investments - is it going into fossil fuels, the deforestation of other countries or into more sustainable ventures.
prayer
prayer
Creator God, will you teach us your justice?
May our eyes see what you see and our ears hear what you hear.
May our voices speak for our disadvantaged neighbours and may our hands do your just works. We recognise that lots of justice is unglamorous and unseen. It costs more, it’s inconvenient, but it’s in these small everyday decisions that we can choose justice.
Lord, we give you our respective days, the hundreds of decisions we will make today, and ask that you give us creativity and wisdom to make choices that will preserve life.
May we act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with you.
Amen
(Adapted from Lectio 365 14 November 2024)
resources
resources
🎙️ “This is one of the most fundamental shifts we’ll go through as a society” from the Fear and Greed podcast, 6 March 2023 (13 mins). An Australian talking about one of the biggest challenges facing Australia in the near future which is the transition to greener energy. Listen on Spotify, Apple, Pocket Casts (or your podcast player of choice).
📰 People around the world are using courts to question whether climate policies are fair – new study: an article on The Conversation website (22 October 2024).
🎙️ Putting Fairness at the heart of the green transition: Ed Miliband discusses this ambitious plan by the Environmental Justice Commission in episode 200 (July 2021) of the Reasons Revisited podcast (56 mins). Listen on Spotify, Apple, Pocket Casts (or your podcast player of choice).
🎙️ Just Transition: a seven part Context podcast series from the Thomson Reuters Foundation with reporting from journalists in Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, Iceland, India and the United States: some "extraordinary stories about how the Just Transition is playing out across the globe". Listen to episodes on Spotify, Apple, Pocket Casts (or your podcast player of choice).
🎙️ Clean energy or green fields? BBC Rare Earth asks how can we build new green infrastructure without wrecking the countryside.? Helen Czerski and Tom Heap debate the issue with a panel of experts (52 mins).
at cop29
at cop29
There is no specific theme day on Just Transitions at COP29. However, so many of the COP discussions are about issues that require change, and so Just Transitions are an integral part of these. Energy transitions are an obvious example.
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🗓️ Today at COP29: The focus is on Urbanisation / Transport / Tourism
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