The Prospects for Decent Work in Green Transitions: Imagining and Enacting the Future

Dear Colleagues,

In a variety of contexts around the world, the future of ‘good work’ (Taylor et al. 2017; Pettinger 2019, CIPD 2021) is being increasingly linked to the prospects of a greening economy. Amidst the turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic, the enthusiasm surrounding ‘green jobs’   has gained ground (Chen et al. 2020; Popp et al. 2020), as ‘green transitions’ figure prominently in visions for ‘building back better’ after the crisis.

The demands for green transitions are propelled in part by a sense of anxiety, alarm and necessity brought about by climate change and other environmental emergencies. At the same time, some imaginaries of foundational, paradigmatic change embrace and claim its emancipatory, equalizing and empowering potential. In some treatments, a ‘green industrial revolution’ is the panacea, tackling a whole swathe of sustainable development goals and more.   Such promises of the green economy are in tension with popular (and populist) skepticism about its capacity to truly deliver results (White, 2002), whether in terms of environmental protection, income redistribution, creating opportunities for ‘decent work’ or in terms of performing all of these simultaneously (Spaiser et al. 2017). It remains far from clear that environmental greening initiatives may simultaneously facilitate the uptake and rewarding of ‘green skills’ or create large volumes of high quality ‘green jobs’ (Eg., Bozkurt and Stowell, 2016). 

Some critiques have further highlighted that the discourse of green transitions has predominantly focused on sectors such as energy, manufacturing, and construction in the Global North. Such bias renders invisible the concerns, perspectives, and politics articulated  by agrarian and rural communities in the Global South that practice diverse livelihoods and precarious work; involve workers in the domain of care, health, education, and services; and include gendered and racialized hierarchies that structure work alongside ecological degradation and conflicts (Velicu and Barca 2020; Singh 2019; Barca 2015; Pettinger 2019; Martinez Alier 2002; Battistoni 2017; Littig 2017; Satheesh 2020).

In this Special Issue, we seek to bring together contributions that capture both the possibilities for and the obstacles facing the creation and provision of decent work through green transitions so that they can be just transitions. We reference the plural deliberately, noting the variable, contingent, embedded and fragmented pathways towards and through green transitions. We note a number of key tensions and openings in the juxtaposition of decent work and green transitions: First, we recognize a need to probe the way the concepts are ‘imagined’ and to attend to the power, legitimacy, and popularity contestations in the way that each concept is framed, consolidated, disseminated, and naturalized. Secondly,   we observe both the multiple levels at which the attempts to enact decent work and green transitions are made and the debates around the scales of analysis. Where do we look for decent work and/or green transitions? Is it in the micro-initiatives in the grassroots or the acts of ‘tinkering’ seemingly innocuous rules at the transnational level and the ‘butterfly effects’ of either of these? Or will only the global-system level do as the truly revealing perspective?

Thirdly, we underscore the immediate significance of the global/local dynamic in its multiplicity of configurations. Finally, we observe that there is a curious lack of scholarship, both empirically and theoretically, at the intersection of two major current scholarly debates on two big ‘societal challenges’: that on sustainability and that on the future of work. The latter has thus far largely been dominated by inquiries into technological change as manifested in the present and future applications of advanced robotics, AI, and Big Data. An understanding of this intersection points towards a political project, a cultural debate, a bundle of techno-material affordances, and/or a critical transition point in societal change and all demand and merit a wide range of research, commentary, and discussion.

Given this rich terrain, the goal of this Special Issue is to offer a platform for sharing a wide range of empirical and theoretical content on the prospects for incorporating decent work in green transitions and/or a more fundamental rethinking of green transitions by foregrounding (decent) work and workers. Contributions may be theoretically oriented pieces exploring key concepts, themes, or research agendas; pieces analyzing new and informative empirical evidence from various contexts; case studies that offer more broadly applicable insights; and a  variety of other approaches and formats to the extent that they address the key concerns of the Special Issue.

The topics and questions pursued in the contributions may include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The variable meanings and interpretations of ‘green economy’, ‘green transition’, ‘decent work’, ‘good work’, and related terms; the conflicts and negotiations around these, both in academic and in popular representations and debates. What is ‘green’? What is ‘decent’? How are these, as concepts, culturally constructed in traditional and social media? How are these construed in academic scholarship? What is their relationship with related discourses such as degrowth, environmental justice, and the politics that underpin these different framings?
• What are the implications of such conceptual differences and contestations for research and practice? What should be in our research agendas for understanding the future of decent work and green transitions?
• Examples and case studies of attempts to create decent work through green transitions, including of social movements mobilizing at the intersection of labor and environmental justice. What happens when organizations, firms, regions, or countries attempt to incorporate the goal of decent work in green transition initiatives? What are the opportunities for delivering both? What are the obstacles?
• The promises of green transitions creating decent work in relation to specific goals: to fight and alleviate poverty and hunger; and to tackle inequalities around gender, race, and How do we avoid green washing with promises of decent work as ‘window dressing’ and PR? How do we ensure that the same elites do not appropriate and hijack the opportunity for imagining and enacting a more egalitarian future?
• The skills needed and used in a green economy and how these are aligned with an improved experience of Are there any specific ‘green skills’ and, if so, how do we train for and reward them? How do we provide opportunities for all segments of the workforce to develop the skills that will result in ‘decent work’ opportunities?

• Who are the individuals left behind in green transitions in the sectors and technologies they replace and transform? How do we economically, socially, and politically engage with workers and communities embedded in sectors that need to be phased out during green transitions while recognizing and supporting their dignity and wellbeing?
• The potential role of decent work in facilitating sustainable communities at the local level during green transitions. What is the role of ‘work’ in sustainable communities? How is this role represented, perceived, and experienced in material, social, and cultural terms?
• Framings of decent work in global governance discourse and practices on green transitions/ climate justice of labor in green restructuring of global production and supply chains. What are its implications for reproducing or challenging Global North and Global South inequalities?
• The role of specific actors including local and regional government bodies, nation states, NGOs, private and public corporations, transnational organizations, sector bodies or labor representatives and unions in charting green transitions. How may these actors help or constrain the inclusion of decent work in key strategies, practices, and incentives of the green economy?
• Skepticism towards green transitions or whether they can deliver ‘decent work’. How can the greening of the economy empower workers and be egalitarian if the fundamental dynamics of global capitalism are not transformed? Should we talk less about ‘green transitions’ and ‘decent work’ and instead continue to focus on the capital–labor dynamic in the global order?

Contributions to the Special Issue

Interested authors are very much encouraged to first submit an Abstract / description of contribution to the Guest Editors by e-mail, indicating the key question or contribution, key theoretical ideas/concepts or literature, and the nature of any empirical material that will be used, especially the geographical focus. Final submission deadline for full papers in the 6000–8000 words range including references, appendices, tables, and illustrations is 30 September 2022.

Contact with the Editors

Authors are very welcome to contact one or all of the SI editors to discuss a possible topic prior to submitting an abstract. Ödül Bozkurt: o.bozkurt@sussex.ac.uk;Murat Ergin: muergin@ku.edu.tr; Divya Sharma: divya.sharma@sussex.ac.uk

References

Barca, S. (2015). Greening the job: trade unions, climate change and the political ecology of labour. In The international Handbook of Political Ecology. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Barca, S., & Leonardi, E. (2018). Working-class ecology and union politics: a conceptual topology. Globalizations, 15(4), 487-503.

Battistoni, A. (2017) ‘Living not just surviving’. Jacobin Magazine. https://jacobinmag.com/2017/08/living-not-just-surviving/

Bottazzi, P. (2019). Work and social-ecological transitions: A critical review of five contrasting approaches. Sustainability, 11(14), 3852.

Bozkurt, Ö., & Stowell, A. (2016). Skills in the green economy: recycling promises in the UK e‐waste management sector. New Technology, Work and Employment, 31(2), 146-160.

Chen, Z., Marin, G., Popp, D., & Vona, F. (2020). Green stimulus in a post-pandemic recovery: the role of skills for a resilient recovery. Environmental and Resource Economics, 76(4), 901-911.

CIPD (2021) CIPD Good Work Index. https://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/work/trends/goodwork#gref  [Accessed 7 July 2021]

Dengler, C., & Seebacher, L. M. (2019). What about the Global South? Towards a feminist decolonial degrowth approach. Ecological Economics, 157, 246-252.

Littig, B. (2017). Good Green Jobs for Whom?: A feminist critique of the green economy. In

Routledge Handbook of Gender and Environment (pp. 318-330). Routledge.

Martinez Alier, Joan 2002. The Environmentalism of the poor.A study of ecological conflicts and evaluation, Northampton (MA): Edward Elgar

Pettinger, L. (2019). What’s Wrong with Work?. Policy Press.

Popp, D., Vona, F., Marin, G., & Chen, Z. (2020). The Employment Impact of Green Fiscal Push: Evidence from the American Recovery Act (No. w27321). National Bureau of Economic Research.

Satheesh, S. (2020). Moving beyond class: A critical review of labor‐environmental conflicts from the global south. Sociology Compass, 14(7), e12797.

Singh, N. M. (2019). Environmental justice, degrowth and post-capitalist futures. Ecological Economics, 163, 138-142.

Spaiser, V., Ranganathan, S., Swain, R. B., & Sumpter, D. J. (2017). The sustainable development oxymoron: quantifying and modelling the incompatibility of sustainable development goals. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 24(6), 457-470.

Taylor, M., Marsh, G., Nicol, D., & Broadbent, P. (2017). Good work: The Taylor review of modern working practices.  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/good-work-the- taylor-review-of-modern-working-practices

Velicu, I., & Barca, S. (2020). The Just Transition and its work of inequality. Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 16(1), 263-273.

White, D. F. (2002). A green industrial revolution? Sustainable technological innovation in a global age. Environmental Politics, 11(2), 1-26.

Dr. Ödül Bozkurt
Dr. Murat Ergin
Dr. Divya Sharma
Guest Editors