The concept of just transition has gained prominence among governments, labour unions, employers, and civil society since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. More than 19 governments have established national transition commissions or task forces so far, reflecting its growing international acceptance. Many global just transition initiatives have also emerged to ensure the clean energy transition is socially just and does not detrimentally impact workers, consumers, and communities dependent on the fossil fuel sector and broader sectors tied to it. Yet there remains, to date, very little work on developing indicators and a framework to assess how a just transition is unfolding and key areas of focus for policy-makers.

This International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) project has sought to fill this gap by developing a monitoring framework to increase transparency and track progress on a just transition away from fossil fuels. Such information is important to determine how the clean energy transition is unfolding in a given country over time and whether it is socially just.

This monitoring framework approaches a just transition through three layers:

• Three overarching themes in relation to just transition: risks, responses, and results.
• Ten building blocks summarizing the key components of a just transition.
• Multiple quantitative and qualitative indicators that break the key components down into tangible information for each building block.

This monitoring framework was developed based on the International Labour Organization’s just transition guidelines, international and country-specific research on measuring a just transition, and interviews with local and international experts working on the just transition. For a better overview of the underlying methodological assumptions and a full list of indicators covered by this project, see our methodology page. The list of indicators does not aim to be exhaustive but rather provides a first set of indicators that can be adjusted and built on in the future.

This monitoring framework was developed to be generally applied to different country contexts while considering that transitions are inherently local and context-specific. It is first applied to monitor the transition of workers and communities away from the oil and gas sector in Alberta, Canada, the country’s largest oil and gas-producing region. The framework takes into account that a just transition plays out across different administrative levels, requiring actions from all levels of government, and acknowledges that socio-economic and environmental impacts must be tracked on the local level.