The global just transition debate will succeed or fail according to whether it redistributes power, finance and decision making.
A coal mine can close in a day. The economic life built around it cannot.
The world is entering an era in which temporarily exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming is increasingly difficult to avoid. The latest United Nations Environment Programme assessment says the multi decadal average of global temperature is now very likely to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next decade. Yet the size and duration of that overshoot still depend on how quickly emissions fall. Every fraction of a degree avoided means less damage, fewer losses and lower costs.
That makes the transition away from fossil fuels more urgent, not less. But urgency cannot become an excuse for unfairness.
The real question is not simply how fast the world can decarbonise. It is who will bear the cost, who will gain from the new economy and who will have the power to shape it.
Who pays? Who benefits? Who decides?
At COP30 in Belém, governments agreed to develop a just transition mechanism, bringing the social dimensions of climate action more firmly into the UN climate architecture. At the June 2026 Bonn climate meetings, Parties took important steps towards operationalising that mechanism, although its final structure remained unresolved.
COP31 in Antalya, from 9 to 20 November, now faces the harder task. Can this emerging architecture become something workers, communities and countries can actually use?
The answer should begin with three words: Connect. Finance. Democratise.
From promise to power
Climate policy is often described through technological substitutions: coal to renewables, combustion engines to electric vehicles, fossil fuels to clean energy and carbon intensive production to low emission production.
All of that is necessary. None of it automatically guarantees justice.
A green economy can reproduce old inequalities if capital and infrastructure remain concentrated, if workers absorb disruption while investors capture new opportunities, if women continue carrying disproportionate unpaid care work, or if young people are asked to acquire new skills without influencing the decisions shaping their future.
A cleaner economy is not automatically a fairer economy.
A just transition is not simply about changing what powers the economy. It is about changing who has power over the economy.
That is the political test for Antalya.
The just transition mechanism should not become another platform for declarations and technical reports. Its success should be judged by whether it connects international commitments to the places where economic transformation actually happens.
Connect people to the capacity to change
Every transition begins with knowledge.
Workers understand production systems. Trade unions understand workplace realities. Employers understand investment constraints. Researchers hold technical expertise. Young people bring new skills, ideas and entrepreneurial energy. Women’s organisations and community groups understand care, safety and social consequences that economic models often overlook.
Yet these forms of knowledge rarely sit at the same table.
A meaningful mechanism should connect countries, workers, communities, employers, trade unions, researchers, youth and local institutions with knowledge, technology and practical expertise.
Those living through economic transformation must help design it. That means more than consultation after decisions have been made. It means access to training, institutions, resources and representation that allow people to shape change.
Finance the transition without creating new vulnerabilities
For developing countries, the challenge is especially difficult. They must transform industries while creating jobs, expanding social protection, retraining workers, building infrastructure and adapting to climate impacts, often with limited fiscal space and high debt burdens.
This makes finance a question of justice, not charity.
The Global South should not have to borrow its way into a transition it did not cause.
Finance must therefore be predictable, accessible and affordable. Grants and concessional resources will matter, as will debt restructuring or relief where debt burdens prevent countries from investing in transformation.
But the issue is not only how much money is mobilised. It is who can access it.
Climate finance must reach workers, communities, small producers and local economies, not only large projects and financial institutions. Otherwise, the transition risks concentrating new wealth while spreading the costs.
Finance should reduce vulnerability, not transfer it.
Democratise decisions about the future of work
Participation is meaningful only when it can change a decision.
Workers should have a voice in what changes, when it changes, what protections accompany it and how new opportunities are distributed. Trade unions must be central because collective bargaining and worker representation are essential safeguards during economic restructuring. Employers also need a seat at the table because investment, technology and production decisions cannot be separated from the transition.
The objective should not be green jobs at any cost. It should be decent work in a green economy.
Young people must also be recognised as institutional stakeholders, not simply beneficiaries or representatives of the future. They are already workers, entrepreneurs, organisers, researchers and innovators.
Their influence should extend to skills systems, green entrepreneurship, digitalisation, mobility, employment and investment decisions.
The future of work cannot be designed without those who will live most of it.
Trade is becoming part of the transition
The transition is also entering global trade.
The European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism currently applies to selected goods in six sectors: cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity and hydrogen. Bangladesh’s ready made garment sector is not currently within the direct scope of CBAM.
But the broader direction is clear. Carbon performance is increasingly becoming part of industrial competitiveness.
For Bangladesh, decarbonisation can no longer be treated only as an environmental responsibility. It is increasingly connected to export competitiveness, investment, technology, emissions measurement, employment and participation in global value chains.
The response cannot be limited to compliance.
If Bangladeshi industries must decarbonise to remain competitive, the costs cannot simply be pushed down to factories and workers. Smaller producers may struggle to finance cleaner technology, while workers may face disruption before new opportunities become available.
The answer must combine capital, technology, skills and social protection.
Trade measures should encourage cleaner production without shifting the adjustment burden onto developing country producers and workers.
Gender, care and the changing world of work
Gender cannot be an add on to just transition.
Women and men experience economic transformation differently.
Women often carry a disproportionate share of unpaid care work, limiting access to training, formal employment and emerging green opportunities. At the same time, many carbon intensive industries and transport occupations remain heavily male dominated.
For working class men, employment can also be deeply connected to masculinity.
Being a driver, mechanic, factory worker or industrial labourer can mean more than earning a wage. It can be connected to being a provider, maintaining family responsibilities, gaining social status and feeling respected within a community.
When an occupation disappears, the impact can therefore reach beyond income. It can challenge identity, dignity and a sense of responsibility.
A worker centred transition must ask whether people have the skills, income security, social protection and voice needed to navigate that change.
Gender justice also requires confronting unequal care responsibilities, access to valued work, control over income, public space and recognition.
A gender just transition must transform employment systems and the social structures surrounding them.
Bangladesh is where the theory meets the road
For Bangladesh, just transition must move from conference language into economic planning.
NDC 3.0 offers an opportunity to put workers and communities closer to the centre of climate implementation.
A worker centred NDC is not an NDC with a labour paragraph added to it. It is an NDC designed around the social consequences of implementation.
That means identifying occupations and regions likely to experience disruption, mapping skills gaps, integrating social protection, supporting informal workers, strengthening gender responsive planning and creating meaningful mechanisms for worker and youth participation.
The practical test is simple: who pays, who benefits and who decides?
The brick kiln transition cannot leave workers behind
Bangladesh’s traditional brick economy supports far more than kiln owners. It sustains workers, transporters, suppliers and surrounding informal businesses.
Moving towards cleaner construction materials and lower emission production is necessary. But environmental necessity does not automatically produce social justice.
Workers need to know what happens to their wages, skills and jobs.
Policymakers must also ask who owns cleaner technology, who pays for conversion and who receives the productivity gains.
If cleaner production is affordable only for large firms, environmental regulation could unintentionally accelerate concentration of economic power while pushing smaller producers and workers to the margins.
Closing or transforming polluting industries without a credible worker transition plan simply transfers an environmental problem into an economic shock.
An environmental policy that destroys livelihoods without creating credible alternatives is not a just transition. It is a transition of costs.
Workers must be mapped before transformation begins. Alternative employment, skills development and social protection must be planned alongside environmental regulation. Cleaner technologies must also become accessible beyond the largest businesses.
Mobility shows why technology alone is not enough
Mobility offers another powerful lesson.
An electric bus may be cleaner than a diesel bus. But that does not automatically make the transport system fairer.
The mobility economy supports drivers, mechanics, conductors, cleaners, workshop workers, spare parts sellers and informal traders. Change the vehicle, and you change work.
At the Just Transition Forum Asia 2026, I discussed this challenge in Lab 4, “Shaping the Future of Mobility: Building a Just and Sustainable Transition through Youth and Trade Union Collaboration in Bangladesh,” jointly hosted by OSHE Foundation and YouthNet Global.
The discussion reinforced a simple point: an electric mobility transition requires much more than electric vehicles.
It requires new maintenance skills, charging infrastructure, investment models, employment pathways and clear answers about who owns the new infrastructure and who benefits from it.
Mobility is also deeply gendered.
Many transport occupations are associated with masculine ideas of income, status and responsibility, while women experience mobility through safety, harassment, affordability, accessibility and care responsibilities.
A just mobility transition therefore means more than cleaner vehicles. It means affordable public transport, decent work, retraining, recognition of informal workers, safer mobility and a shared stake in the new system.
The informal economy cannot remain invisible
The informal economy is where many transitions will be felt most immediately.
Transport, construction, recycling, repair, small manufacturing and street commerce are deeply connected to formal economic systems. Yet many people working in these sectors lack formal contracts, social protection, structured training and meaningful representation.
Bangladesh cannot design a just transition around the formal economy when millions of livelihoods depend on informal systems connected to it.
The informal economy can remain invisible in policy until a livelihood disappears. Then its economic importance becomes impossible to ignore.
The least protected workers should therefore be included first, not last.
Where will the green economy happen?
There is another question that deserves greater attention: where will the new economy be built?
If green manufacturing, clean mobility, charging infrastructure, repair services, skills programmes and green entrepreneurship remain concentrated in Dhaka and a handful of major cities, regional inequality could deepen.
If climate vulnerable districts bear the costs of climate change while major urban centres capture most green investment, can that really be called a just transition?
NDC 3.0 should therefore have both a sectoral and territorial lens.
Green investment should reach historically underinvested regions. Climate vulnerable districts should have a stake in the emerging green economy through industries, mobility, repair, skills, entrepreneurship and local investment.
That is where climate justice becomes economic geography.
Antalya must turn architecture into power
The choice facing COP31 is bigger than the design of another international mechanism.
The just transition mechanism can become a bridge between international commitments and economic realities, but only if it is designed around power.
It should connect countries, workers, communities and institutions with the knowledge, technology and capacity required to transform.
It should mobilise finance without deepening debt and vulnerability, while ensuring resources reach workers, communities and smaller economic actors.
And it should democratise decisions by giving workers, women, youth, affected communities and other stakeholders genuine influence over the direction of change.
If designed well, the mechanism can become more than an institutional achievement. It can become an instrument for implementation, protecting livelihoods, dignity and democratic agency while economies decarbonise.
Belém made the promise.
Bonn advanced the architecture.
Antalya must turn that architecture into power.
The world will decarbonise.
The only question is whether it will do so by redistributing opportunity, or by redistributing pain.
Antalya must choose.
