During January 17th and 18th, the Global Climate Jobs Campaign hosted a training in Lisbon, on Climate Jobs and Just Transition. 20 people from 11 different nationalities (Portugal, Spanish State, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Turkey, Ireland, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Netherlands) attended the two days training.
The main goals of the training were to look at different national contexts regarding the labor and climate justice movements; to analyze climate jobs campaigns in different countries; to understand the obstacles (technical, political, and others) that exist in linking up the struggles between employment and climate; to delve into possible solutions to these challenges; and ultimately to launch campaigns reflecting these learnings in territories that still don’t look into this framework as a strategical program for the climate justice and trade union movements.
During the training, concepts such as Climate Justice, Just Transition and Climate Jobs were discussed, in regard to the circumstances in which they were brought up, how they have evolved and are currently understood. It was presented an analysis of how institutions, companies and governments have been co-opting the term Just Transition, and of what kind of productive transformation has in reality been taking place globally.
The training took a very participative model, based on mutual sharing and learning. Participants were invited to envision the creation of a Climate Jobs Campaign in their territories and throughout the sessions were asked to think about a series of questions, such as: How does the spectrum of support for such a campaign looks like in your territory? What are the theories of change of your allies, and what are the differences and similarities among you and other groups? And what are the points of conflict and options for collaboration? Who are the people you want/need to involve in order to start this campaign, and why? What are the first steps? What will be the obstacles in creating such a campaign? What are the points of convergence between the climate justice and environmental movements and the labour movement? And how can you, and your organization communicate them and build bridges?
Throughout the sessions, the facilitators collected notes on the discussions and learnings, in order to put together a final text which was aimed at making an appeal for different organizations to come together to support the existing campaigns and create new Climate Job Campaigns. This document was discussed during the last session, and then further reviewed in order to accommodate the different points made by the participants and was named 2022 Lisbon Declaration on Climate Jobs and Just Transition.
