South Asia faces the dual challenge of phasing out fossil fuels while ensuring equity, inclusion, and sustainable development. A Just Transition is about making this shift to renewable energy in ways that protect livelihoods, reduce inequalities, and secure a future rooted in climate justice. Achieving this requires more than technology and finance. Alongside feed-in tariffs, tax incentives, and subsidies for clean energy, it also demands social protection, gender justice, and community-led planning—so the benefits of transition are shared fairly across society.

CAN International’s campaign, Just Transition Rising, is built on a simple truth: justice must lead the transition. It amplifies the voices of workers and communities whose lives are most affected by the move away from fossil fuels, calling for justice to be at the heart of COP negotiations.

CANSA’s Call for Action

• A people-centered Just Transition in South Asia must diversify economies and create alternative livelihoods and decent jobs.
• Strengthen social protection systems for workers and communities.
• Embed gender justice and intersectionality, ensuring women and marginalized groups are not left behind.
• Secure international cooperation and climate finance, to support long-term investments in sustainable development, technology transfer, and capacity building.

Above all, the transition must tackle poverty, improve public health, and respond to the territorial and social challenges that come with energy shift.

CANSA and its members and partners are working on the multiple aspects of Just Transition from mainstreaming of fossil fuel phaseout and low carbon development, to sustainable production and consumption, circular economy, and bottom-up participatory planning in Just Transition policy-making criteria by connecting and amplifying knowledge/experiences/best practices and Just Transition journeys and initiatives within the network.