The Copenhagen climate change has reached a small but crucial point of negotiation. Unions in the UK and around the world have been lobbying hard to include a concept called “Just Transition” in the negotiating texts, committing the conference to a fairer outcome for vulnerable people.

Today, 15 December 2009, Ministers meeting in Copenhagen will have the chance to seal this fairness into the conference outcome. But it is still hanging in the balance.

What is this “Just Transition” and why is it important?

Just Transition is a set of ideas that recognise if we’re going to deal with the effects of climate change, we need to make a massive shift to a more sustainable economy. When we’ve made big economic shifts in the past (as with the UK’s de-industrialisation in the 1980s), they’ve not been planned properly, and the brunt of the negative effects (unemployment, disinvestment) has been borne by the most vulnerable sections and communities in society – reinforcing their vulnerability for a generation.

This time we can plan it properly. Making a Just Transition to the sustainable economy means long term plans for investing in green technology, but also in re-skilling people for the new jobs, and consulting properly about changes at all levels. We can assure that the costs of change are borne fairly across society and across the world.

It also makes practical as well as moral sense. We need to do this quickly – more quickly than such a shift has ever been accomplished before. And this means we need the active buy in of all of society – we need to help bring everyone along with us. Leaving people out of the change is just not an option.

What’s happening today?

There’s been a bit of a breakthrough today, in that (deep breath…) the UN Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Co-operative Action (AWG-LCA) has arrived at a draft text for its final outcome in Copenhagen. The new preamble to the text firmly includes the concept of Just Transition.

Got that? Well, it means that there’s finally a text on the table at Copenhagen which includes a key measure towards a fairer outcome for the conference. There’s a chance for ministers to cement this promising sign into the final agreement by uplifting it into the Ministerial Agreement being discussed tonight.

And what should we do?

Please help us to let Ed Miliband’s team in Copenhagen know we care about the final deal including the fairness that only a proper framework like Just Transition will bring. Ask Ed to lobby hard for Just Transition in the Ministerial Agreement.

There’s more on this issue and reporting from the union delegation to Copenhagen on the TUC’s ToUChstone blog at http://www.touchstoneblog.org.uk/category/copenhagen/

More on Just Transition at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Transition