Research Project
Sustainable Transition
Sustainable Transition
Environmental Justice
Environmental Justice
Responsible Research and Innovation
Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach
Go-JuST
The overarching aim of Governing Just Sociotechnical Transitions (Go-JuST) is to identify and analyse the critical factors and dimensions conditioning the potential to achieve just agrifood transitions. The policy insights of this analysis will aid stakeholders in Greece’s regional transition initiatives as they maximize justice and anticipate and reduce injustices in the agrifood sector. Go-JuST introduces and proposes a novel co-productionist model of governance for transitions in the Greek agrifood sector. The project is implemented in the framework of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan “Greece 2.0” with funding from the European Union – NextGenerationEU.
Go-JuST is oriented to the following objectives:
Theory
We review and enrich the theoretical approaches of just transitions. Create the setting for interdisciplinary research and societal engagement in the agrifood sector.
Model
We introduce a model that identifies types of justices and injustices and analyses the social, technoscientific and geographical factors of their emergence and configuration.
Policy making
We provide policy insights grounded in critical and evaluative approaches of analysis that establish "transition platforms" to support deliberation and reflexivity in the making of the transition.
Stakeholders
Empower stakeholders in the agrifood sector to prioritize justice as they introduce and assess transformational innovations and enact sociotechnical change.
Theoretical approaches
Go-JuST combines three different theoretical approaches. It incorporates sustainable transition literature, environmental justice literature, and the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach. Go-JuST offers a governance model that contributes to the integration of social and ethical values in the analysis and establishment of sociotechnical changes. It also offers an apparatus for the evaluation of niche innovations based on varied types of justice. It will influence both Transition Management (TM) practices and the character and direction of niche innovations and scientific research. Go-JuST introduces a “second order reflexivity” (Feindt and Weiland, 2018) that expands on the social analyst’s critical reflexivity. It is fulfilled by engaging stakeholders in a critical evaluation of sociotechnical transitions that center justice.
New governance model
Go-JuST departs from top-down governance and decision-making patterns by proposing a co-productionist approach to just sociotechnical transitions that is influenced by stakeholders’ values, priorities, interests, and power relations. It proposes the creation of “transition platforms” through stakeholder workshops as infrastructures for social networking, imagining change, and evaluating transformation. Go-JuST project and team stand out in terms of their: 1) interdisciplinary approaches, 2) critical understanding of existing transition pathways and science based policies, 3) transdisciplinary approaches in transition management by securing the co-production of policy pathways through the exchange of knowledge and expertise between social scientists and stakeholders, 4) the emphasis on transitions from the society for the society, 5) emphasis on indicators that would continuously and reflexively evaluate sociotechnical transitions based on identified (in)justices, 6) emphasis on replicability of the model and the wider diffusion of results through the digital platform and academic peer-reviewed articles.
Justice in agrifood system
To achieve its aims, Go-JuST focuses on addressing the issue of justice in the agrifood system transitions of a region in Greece. It uses Thessaly, Greece’s agricultural centre, as a model for co-producing just transition and because it is a region that endeavors to make its agrifood system more sustainable. Thessaly was chosen as an ideal location on which to base our study because it is a preeminent area for the consideration of agrifood transitions that is largely characterized by natural resource management for food production.
Go-JuST will contribute to the European knowledge based agrifood transitions by designing more inclusive and socially fair sociotechnical transformations towards climate neutrality. Respecting the emphasis on regions and regional transformations found in the proposals of the EU Green Deal and the UN, Go-JuST focuses on the key agricultural region of Thessaly to develop a governance model of just transitions that could then be adapted to and implemented in other regions and nations.
Go-JuST team
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Sarah Jones
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Jessica Foxx
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