How can socio-economic transitions be better managed?

The report examines the decline of major industrial activities in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Africa to derive lessons for contemporary decarbonization efforts. It argues that transition planning is a highly political process and that failing to address pre-existing inequalities or environmental legacies often leads to poor outcomes. Key recommendations include the need for early government engagement, locally-driven planning, and the use of nuanced indicators beyond simple job creation to measure success.

• Transition planning is not a neutral technical exercise but a highly political process. While this can sometimes mobilize short-term resources, government engagement often fails to occur until a crisis has already happened.
• Failure to address pre-existing and transition-induced inequalities leads to less successful outcomes. In Rochester, for example, macroeconomic growth occurred alongside declining wages and growing poverty, as lower-skilled workers could not access new opportunities.
• Environmental cleanup costs are frequently shifted from private companies to the public sector, which violates the 'polluter pays' principle and diverts public funds away from community support programs.
• Locally-driven, bottom-up transition strategies generally produce better results than top-down government approaches, provided they have government support for implementation.
• The absence of adequate social safety nets significantly magnifies the negative impacts of industrial collapse, as seen in the case of the Free State Goldfields in South Africa.
• Standard economic indicators like net job creation are insufficient for assessing a 'just transition'; they must be complemented by metrics on job quality, accessibility, and community resilience.

APA

Atteridge, A., & Strambo, C. (2021). How can socio-economic transitions be better managed? Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/just-transitions-case-synthesis-report.pdf

Chicago

Atteridge, Aaron, and Claudia Strambo. How can socio-economic transitions be better managed? Stockholm Environment Institute, 2021. https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/just-transitions-case-synthesis-report.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Atteridge |first1=Aaron |last2=Strambo |first2=Claudia |title=How can socio-economic transitions be better managed? |publisher=Stockholm Environment Institute |date=July 2021 |url=https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/just-transitions-case-synthesis-report.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{atteridge2021how, author = {Atteridge, Aaron and Strambo, Claudia}, title = {{How can socio-economic transitions be better managed?}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2021}, month = jul, url = {https://www.sei.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/just-transitions-case-synthesis-report.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }