A critical issue of our time is how the world can transition from a development model based on the extraction and use of fossil fuels to one based on cleaner sources of energy, and how it does so in a just and inclusive way.

Central to this issue of the IDS Bulletin is the recognition that to be just, any transition must include consideration of the voices, knowledges, and realities of communities most affected. By bringing together authors from both the global South and the global North, covering a wide range of communities affected by different dimensions of the energy transition, we find long histories of action and resistance developed around encounters with earlier transitions.

The articles in this IDS Bulletin highlight cases of advocacy being used to strengthen community voices to make the processes of consultation more inclusive and empowering of marginalised perspectives. In doing so they also address a less well documented citizen-led pathway that focuses on bottom-up forms of action through grass-roots innovation and social movements.

Given the multiple historical forms of injustice which surround energy production, struggles for just transition must ultimately involve multiple forms of justice – be they distributive, recognitional, procedural, restorative, or reparative.