The background to GREEN-SORT is the need to implement the important and urgent process of climate change mitigation by ensuring a green transition in a manner that is sustainable across the social, environmental and economic parameters.
As the world’s nations have committed to advance a low carbon energy transition that limits climate change, a need is emerging on engagement between academics, communities and individual citizens; research and communication activities locally and across regions to help ensure a socially responsible transition.
GREEN-SORT takes our cue partly from the commitment to just transitions with respect for human rights that is professed by the Paris Climate Change Agreement.
With the aim of contributing to a green transition that is holistically sustainable, GREEN-SORT aims to reconcile the social aspects of the transition with the technical, economic, financial and other elements of that pressing global challenge.
Our motivation is that the urgent transition to mitigate dangerous climate change may be delayed without a holistic approach that takes account of societal impacts of the necessary technical adaptations and economic activities and works actively to address adverse impacts in collaboration with those affected. Without adequate understanding and consideration of the social impacts, the technical and economic aspects of planning for, funding and implementing the transition may lose important public support. However, knowledge on the interaction of the social, technical, environmental and economic aspects and how to deal with undesired social impacts is lacking.
Accordingly, one of the network’s aims is to explore and address the potential and actual impacts on local communities of renewable energy, agro-industry, mining for green-tech minerals, or other extractive activities related to the green transition.
Our activities involve research, engagement for knowledge-development, and sharing of research-based insights.
We cultivate research options within our focal topic, plan and implement research, and communicate new knowledge through a variety of channels. As part of this we engage with various stakeholders, ranging from (but not limited to) affected communities and civil society to companies, public organisations, institutional investors, and remedy institutions.
Our global scope aims at identifying similarities and differences across regions, and to help share knowledge and insights on practices to societies and groups who may encounter similar challenges despite their very different environments.
GREEN-SORT was established following a workshop in December 2018 at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) on the topic ‘socially responsible green transitions’. The workshop explored the interaction of the concepts and processes of meaningful stakeholder engagement, public participation and impact assessment of natural resource exploration and exploitation, compared experiences from the Global South and the Arctic, and looked at synergies and other issues to be explored in future activities. Following the workshop it was agreed to establish a network with a fully global research and engagement focus.