Assessing the ‘just’ in corporate transition plans: framework and guidance

As just transition frameworks and indicators become increasingly prominent, clear guidance is more critical than ever to avoid confusion and ensure consistent application across sectors.

This report provides practical guidance for companies, assessors and governments to evaluate the ‘just’ elements of corporate transition plans. It offers a structured approach to assess how equitable and inclusive these plans are. This work was developed in consultation with the Just Transition Working Group – a group of 50 individual experts from 27 organizations convened by the World Benchmarking Alliance.

The report offers five key recommendations:

1. Companies should use a bottom-up approach to just transition, rooted in social dialogue, meaningful stakeholder engagement, labour rights, decent work, and robust HREDD and transition planning.
2. Assessors should tailor their evaluations to the company’s local context, sector, and internal and external implementation factors.
3. Assessors can use a typology of transitions to better identify social impacts, risks and opportunities linked to companies’ transition plans.
4. Assessors should use just transition indicators at the national, company and project levels to assess alignment with local and sectoral contexts. Just transition observatories can help connect insights across these levels.
5. Governments and the UN should clarify business responsibilities in advancing just transitions and invest in the transition itself. Integrating just transition principles into sustainability reporting standards, HREDD and transition planning policy and taxonomies is one way forward.

A transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy will be impossible without participation of companies. This publication is invaluable in guiding businesses on how to meaningfully integrate just transition outcomes into their everyday operations. Along with the UNGP, the WBA has gone a long way in encouraging a just transition that will ensure private sector accountability.

– Yuri Ramkissoon, Senior Manager Monitoring and Evaluation at the South Africa Presidential Climate Commission and Just Transition Working Group member

The financial sector has a vital role in advancing a just transition—not only through credible, robust, and just transition plans of its own, but also by supporting the transition of the sectors, regions, and customers it serves. WBA’s framework and guidance helps clarify what this means in practice—for companies developing transition plans, for financial institutions and other stakeholders assessing them, and for policymakers shaping the enabling environment.

– Aaron Cantrell, Just Transition Specialist at UNEP-FI and Just Transition Working Group member

In a rapidly changing world, companies need credible climate action plans that address their societal impacts. A just transition demands accountability – not just to investors and governments, but also to the workers, communities, and future generations whose human rights are affected. WBA’s new report is a crucial guide to action that challenges ‘justice-washing’ and supports meaningful change.

– Rob Macquarie, Consultant with the LSE Just Transition Finance Lab and Just Transition Working Group member

For the transition to a net-zero and climate-resilient economy to succeed, businesses must understand and address the risks to people resulting from their climate actions. This paper brings much-needed clarity to the current landscape of just transition planning and implementation by both governments and business, and provides readers with practical tools and resources for putting people at the heart of the transition.

– Brianna Peterson, Senior Advisor at Shift and Just Transition Working Group member