FAQ
Not sure where to start? These are questions companies often raise with us. Find our recommended resources by clicking the question most relevant to you.
"Where do I start on a “just” or people-centered transition?"
Companies across all sectors must account for the people impacted by shifts to lower carbon and climate-resilient activities products and services: workers (including those in value chains), communities, and consumers who may be displaced, disrupted, marginalized or in need of new skills as a result of the transition. Start by reviewing your climate strategy and mapping how your existing climate actions already affect people. Many companies assume that adverse impacts on people are already addressed in their climate strategies or through their human rights due diligence, but often these are siloed processes. A dedicated social or human rights impact assessment often reveals risks and opportunities that the distinct processes would have uncovered. Leverage your organization's existing foundation of responsible business conduct and respect for human rights, then build out through social dialogue with stakeholders who are already or likely to be affected by the transition. Read through WBCSD’s article on how to trigger a mind shift change on a ‘just’ transition.
"How do I build the business case to justify the investment?"
Start by identifying the most significant impacts on people connected to your climate transition, prioritizing those that are most severe, rather than trying to address every possible issue at once. The most severe impacts on people are also likely to be those that, if left unaddressed or poorly addressed, manifest as risks to the business, including risks to operations, cost, delivery of the transition strategy or reputation. From there, define the specific actions that would prevent, mitigate or address those impacts, and build the case for those actions into your existing climate strategy, risk and capital allocation processes, rather than creating a separate ‘just transition’ budget line that competes for attention and funding. This integration is itself part of the business case: a standalone initiative is easy to deprioritize when budgets tighten but impacts on people and related business risks that are already embedded in your investment committee criteria ensures they are factored into capital allocation alongside other business considerations. Framing the issue as both an inside-out risk (how your climate decisions affect people) and an outside-in risk (how climate disruption affects your own operations and workforce) also tends to land well with finance and risk functions, since it emphasizes that investment in a just transition can both help deliver better outcomes for people and protect the company’s ability to execute its transition successfully. WBCSD and ERM's Business Leaders Guide to a Just Climate Transition sets this case out in more detail, mapped to specific business value drivers like talent retention, supply chain resilience and access to capital.
"What people-related risks are material for my sector?"
There is no single set of people-related risks that will be material for every company in a sector. Sector can provide an important starting point, but the impacts most relevant to your company will also depend on where and how you operate, your business model and activities, the nature of your business relationships, and who may be affected, including whether particular groups are more vulnerable to harm.
A practical approach is to first identify where the most severe impacts on people are most likely to arise across your operations and value chain, and then assess the specific impacts in greater depth. Prioritization should consider severity, based on scale, scope and irremediability, and likelihood, meaning the probability that a potential impact will materialize into actual harm. For human rights impacts, particular weight should be given to severity, so a potentially severe impact should not be discounted simply because it appears less likely.
The Roadmap’s milestones are therefore deliberately indicative rather than sector-specific: the right priorities and next steps should reflect the company’s own impacts, operating context and value chain. Starting with the most severe and likely impacts on people can also help identify related risks to the business that might otherwise be overlooked.
Shift's climate-related risk assessment framework, developed directly with seven companies across different sectors, is a useful starting point for this exercise. To learn more, visit Shift's website. For those complying with EU’s Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, Shift’s Explainer on Identification and Prioritization may also be helpful.
"Who should own the “just” or people-centered transition?"
There is rarely a single owner. As is the case with climate action more broadly, responsibility and accountability typically need to be distributed across different roles and functions, not treated as a single job. Governance, ownership and cross-functional collaboration are critical: board-level oversight of the overall commitment, a senior executive accountable for connecting climate and social considerations across functions, and operational accountabilities distributed across relevant business functions (e.g. HR for workforces, procurement for the supply chain and finance for capital allocation). Ownership tends to mature over time, from climate and human rights specialists collaborating as the need arises, to a cross-functional working group with executive buy-in, to fully embedding across functional, for example in different business function strategies and performance plans. Learn more about how executives and boards can play a role in addressing impacts on people stemming from climate action in the Business Leaders Guide to a Just Climate Transition.
“How do I measure real progress?”
Real progress means tracking the impacts on people stemming from your climate-related plans and activities. For any climate decision (e.g. a site closure, new project, a reskilling program), you should be able to answer: Who is being affected? How are people affected? How is your organization addressing affected stakeholders (or not) and how will we know whether those actions are actually working?
Shift's 19 Just Transition Metrics provide a core set of quantitative, sector-agnostic metrics that can supplement qualitative indicators and help provide the full picture necessary to assess the ‘justness’ of the climate transition. This set of metrics does not – because it cannot – address all scenarios and variations. However, they provide a sound foundation upon which additional metrics relevant to specific sectors and geographical contexts can be layered.Rather than building a separate reporting process around them, integrate the relevant metrics into your sustainability or risk cycles, alongside the data your organization already collects on workforce, supply chain and community impacts, so they are reviewed with the same regularity and attention as any other metric your business tracks.
“How do I engage communities in a meaningful way?”
Meaningful engagement is an ongoing process of interaction and dialogue with affected communities that enables a company to understand their experiences, priorities and perspectives, and to take them into account in its decisions and actions. It should begin early enough to inform the identification of impacts and the design of actions to prevent, mitigate or address them, rather than simply communicating decisions after they have been made. For a just or people-centered transition, this means engaging directly with communities that may be affected by climate-related decisions, including those who may be particularly vulnerable to impacts, and creating opportunities for their perspectives and knowledge to inform the company’s approach. Where appropriate, this can also involve working collaboratively with affected communities on the design, implementation and evaluation of solutions.
This is not only important for respecting people’s rights and achieving better outcomes for affected communities. It can also support better business decisions. Poor-quality engagement can allow concerns to escalate into community opposition, with financial effects including operational disruption and delays, project redesign or suspension, legal and regulatory intervention, reputational damage and increased costs of capital.
For additional resources, refer to Sappi's case study in WBCSD's Insights Note on a People-Centered Approach to Climate Action and Shift’s Community Engagement, Nature and Financial Materiality and the Science Based Target Network’s Stakeholder Engagement Guidance.
