Youth voices and perspectives are not always heard when it comes to planning and implementing just transitions, which are connected to the twin digital (as well as broader labour market) and environmental transformations. Yet young people will ultimately inherit and shape the world that we leave behind, and, as such, they should have a stronger say in how to make it a better one. 

On 9 March, the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy and UNRISD co-organized a workshop exploring the implications of the just transition for young people. The workshop touched on aspects relating to labour, participation, and innovation, in a dialogue between academics and policymakers, including several representatives of the International Labour Organization.

In the video below, participants reflected on workshop discussions, highlighting, among others, the multiple definitions of what a “just transition” means for different people, in different parts of the world. Looking at his daughter, one participant noted that conversations about the just transition are not for people of his generation, but rather for her.

The workshop featured a public event that same morning, which heard Frank Siebern-Thomas, Head of Fair, Green, and Digital Transitions, Research Unit, DG Employment - Social Affairs and Inclusion at the European Commission, and Agata Meysner, President of Generation Climate Europe, the largest coalition of youth-led networks on climate and environmental issues at the European level, on the challenges and opportunities that are shaping the biggest labour and environmental transformations of our time. Their interventions shed light on the importance of enabling youth in just transition discourses, activism, and policymaking.

The workshop is part of the AHCD project Protest and Engagement, from the Global to the Local: Mapping the Forms of Youth Participation In Europe.