Costa Rica – Just Transition Initiative

Summary

The author summarizes findings of case studies from Argentina, Costa Rica, the Philippines, and Kenya on the contribution of social dialogue to formalizing the informal economy and meeting the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. She discusses how social dialogue serves as a mechanism for implementing the 2030 Agenda and provides recommendations for improving social dialogue to better contribute to formalizing the informal sector.

The author offers a brief explanation of social dialogue before discussing the scale of the informal sector in the global economy. She then highlights the challenges that informal workers face, demonstrating the need for formalization and explaining why social dialogue is essential to the formalization process. Citing examples from around the world, the author also demonstrates how social dialogue can facilitate progress on social protections, inclusion, and more.

The author highlights the continued challenges to formalization, including lack of commitment to social dialogue by various actors, insufficient time and resources, and lack of coordination between dialogue processes. She concludes with recommendations to address these challenges and strengthen social dialogue outcomes.

Summary

This report discusses the various stakeholder narratives of “just energy transitions” and their claims to justice. The authors promote transformative alliances among these stakeholders to align their sustainable development strategies. They offer a set of eight principles to encourage and assess justice dimensions of energy transition processes in developing countries.

Using the proposed principles and their respective indicators, the authors evaluate twelve countries: China, India, Nepal, the Philippines, Vietnam, Fiji, Morocco, South Africa, Tanzania, Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Mexico. These countries were identified based on justice terminology within their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. Performance among these countries was generally strongest in terms of their ambitious targets regarding climate and the alignment of their NDCs with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. These countries generally scored lower with respect to the socioeconomic dimension—such as ensuring or fostering “decent work and resilience,” “social equity,” and “gender equality”—and even lower in regard to the political dimension.

The paper concludes that countries claiming to be pioneers of just energy transitions do not necessarily perform better in terms of the social and political dimension, nor do those who claim to be pioneers regarding justice necessarily lead when it comes to climate ambition. The authors offer recommendations specific to each of the twelve countries and conclude with broadly applicable policy recommendations to better apply justice to energy transitions.