Standing at the brink of a global environmental crisis, the days of business as usual in environmental politics are over. The concept of ‘transitions’ captures the extent of systemic societal change required to respond to the climate emergency. Transitions, however, have winners and losers. They can cement and exacerbate inequalities, and even create new forms of disadvantage and exclusion. For example, the phase out of polluting industries can cause traumatic effects in regions reliant on these sectors. The concept of ‘just transitions’ represents the integration of justice dimensions into agendas to address ecological breakdown. 

While the concept of just transitions is gaining influence across policy-making and activist communities, the uptake around the world is not even. The discourse is mostly promoted by political leaders in Europe and North America, mirroring the emergence of the vocabulary in these world regions. In particular, there is a gap in the knowledge on just transitions in China.

China, as the world’s second largest economy, largest emitter of greenhouse gases, and leading producer and user of renewable energy, will shape global transition trajectories. Also, the Chinese leadership has adopted agendas for ambitious socioenvironmental reform, likely to produce significant social impacts. Yet, the justice implications of these agendas are uncertain and understudied. In response, the aim of PLURALIZE is to identify principles and practices of just transitions that can be applied in China. This represents an ambition to rethink the conceptual toolkit and normative orientations that inform just transitions research. 

PLURALIZE also responds to the challenge of implementing just transitions in a global geopolitical landscape in flux, in which the ‘rise of China’ takes on new significance.

PLURALIZE examines this epochal moment of geopolitical restructuring through the lens of China’s influence on just transitions across world regions. 

PLURALIZE constitutes the first systematic attempt to bring together philosophical principles, historical analysis, contemporary policy, and foreign investment flows to explore just transitions in urban China. The project not only seeks to expand the geographical scope of just transitions research, but to construct a new theoretical toolkit that can transform our understanding of just transitions.