Who are we?

Just Transition Wakefield was formed in 2019 as a partnership between Wakefield and District Trades Council and Wakefield Friends of the Earth: an alliance between the Labour and Green movements at the time when the need for climate action was hitting the headlines. We now count in our group third sector organisations, individuals, politicians from the Labour and Green parties, as well as the original founders. 

Why Just Transition Wakefield?

Every country must start its transition from a fossil fuel economy to a zero carbon economy. This transition could take many forms. Our intention is that this transition is socially, economically and environmentally just – that it improves lives, and does not leave people behind.

The trade unions use this phrase to describe how they plan to protect their members and other workers, to ensure that the economic and employment transition does not leave communities on the scrap heap in the way that the closure of the mills, the pits and the steelworks did. We are fully aligned with this. 

What does the organisation do?

The local authority has set itself the challenge of reaching net zero by 2030. The council needs help to achieve this, and that help includes public and political pressure so that it cannot get lost in the daily thrust of politics and central government initiatives.
This against the backdrop of years of austerity, and now the effects of the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Our primary role is to support, critique and maintain pressure on the council to make sure this happens.

It is essential that our political and administrative bodies – from Parish Councils to Global Government – make policy and legislative decisions to drive the transition to a zero carbon economy. But they will not do this without constant political pressure. Just Transition Wakefield will continue to work with and support climate and ecological campaign groups such as Youth Strikes for Climate to keep the pressure on politicians at every level, as well as engaging directly with the council’s climate change team. This will take place nationally and regionally, as well as locally.

Politicians and civil servants need a critical mass of the population to engage and buy in to the actions and policies that will be essential. We need to publicise and enable community action to reduce CO2 emissions and to improve the quality of life for all. 
This could be through support for home insulation or community energy schemes.
This could be through tree planting and local food growing.
This could be through waste reduction and recycling.
And this will be through public education and information. 

None of these things, on their own, will deliver the scale of change needed at the speed that is required. This is why groups such as ours must work on many fronts.

This is also why we network and ally with other groups with similar aims – we need to be a multiplier not a single actor. See which other organisations we work with here.