Research and Projects
Please find below a summary of some of our recent projects.
Green Precarity
‘Green’ interventions risk exacerbating existing inequalities, unless designed and implemented to ensure just transition. This project focuses on the micro-level side-effects of initiatives that seek to ‘green’ the economy. It brings together a bilingual (English and Spanish) team of academic and non-academic researchers from law, arts and history, based in Scotland and Latin America, to develop the cross-disciplinary lens titled ‘green precarity’. This lens highlights how green programmes and initiatives deplete the abilities of structurally vulnerable groups to sustain life. By identifying to what extent and how green economy impacts negatively on local communities, green precarity sheds light on new forms of exploitation and dispossession. We then ask whether and under what conditions could legal and governance regimes reverse processes of precarisation of life and promote fairer socio-ecological transitions. Ultimately, the project sets a novel agenda that will assist policymakers in designing environmental programmes that do not exacerbate existing inequalities.
This interdisciplinary project is hosted at the University of Glasgow and is being conducted in partnership with the University of Rosario (Colombia), the Universidad Andina Simon Bolivar (Ecuador) and DAR (Peru). The project is funded by the British Academy under the 2025 Knowledge Frontiers programme.
The cluster members involved in this project are: Giedre Jokubauskaite and Vera Pavlou.
‘The Just Transition: From Concept to Practice’
This project has been funded by the Scottish Council on Global Affairs ('SCGA') and it is now completed. The aim of this project was to contribute to the emerging debate in this area, by distinguishing Just Transition from sustainability more clearly, and by applying those distinguishing factors to a concrete jurisdiction and sector. As the Scottish government has recently released a Just Transition plan for the transport sector (June 2023), this is timely research that aims to connect conceptual and policy discussions about Just Transition internationally, with relevant processes and discussions taking place at the national level.
The award from SCGA was envisaged to build on that foundation by mapping the evolving concept of Just Transition to practice so as to elaborate the distinct features of Just Transition as a concept and to evaluate its application to transport as a case-study.
Just Transition has attracted considerable attention as a policy objective in the EU, Scotland, Canada and beyond in recent years and has influenced policymakers and businesses in their respective approaches to net zero transition and sustainability more generally.
However, it is unclear how Just Transition is linked with broader sustainability objectives and techniques that are often embedded in national and international legal instruments developed with expert scientific input, expressed through such initiatives as UN Sustainable Development Goals, EU Green Finance taxonomy, or carbon accounting and related net zero initiatives at the national level.
In our project we focused on three key dimensions of the concept of Just Transition: the timeframes for implementation; equity between social groups exposed to different impacts by the transition; and the process of formulating transitional measures towards net-zero economy.
Relevant outputs:
While we had already published a summary report ‘Legal Challenges to Just Transitions’ based on our April 2023 workshop, the primary output linked to the SCGA award is the working paper ‘Situating Just Transition as a Distinct Legal Concept’. In this paper, co-authored by all members of the research cluster, we focus on the three normative dimensions of the concept of Just Transition: timeframes, equity, and the process of formulating transitional measures towards net-zero economy, and we also assess the need to strengthen the legal force of the concept, reflected in a cross-cutting dimension of legality. Both outputs are freely accessible on the website of the social sciences research network (SSRN). Another output which maps the conceptual analysis to practice in the transport sector in Scotland is currently underway and has received feedback from relevant stakeholders.
In overall terms we note the relatively slow and limited integration of Just Transition into legal instruments at the international and national levels. In that sense Just Transition seems to be a ‘lightweight’ legal principle as it lacks solid legal foundations and in the main is not linked to changes in the law. However, that approach may carry some benefits by allowing Just Transition to drive effective policy changes across a broad spectrum of issues without the constraints associated with law reform.
You can download both the Legal Challenges to Just Transitions and the Situating Just Transition as a Distinct Legal Concept by clicking on the links below.
Situating just Transition as a Distinct Legal Concept / Legal Challenges to Just Transitions
As part of this project, we also published a following Report for SCGA:
'Mapping Just Transition – From Concept to Practice'
Please see the whole report here: 'Mapping Just Transition - From Concept to Practice'
A Scottish Council on Global Affairs Insight award enabled colleagues from the universities of Aberdeen, Dundee and Glasgow to work together and to map the evolving concept of Just Transition.
The cluster members involved in this project were: Iain MacNeil, Calum Stewart, Giedre Jokubauskaite, Vera Pavlou, Rebecca Williams, Katarzyna Chalaczkiewicz-Ladna and Mingzhe Zhu (all University of Glasgow), Daria Shapovalova (University of Aberdeen) and Sufyan Al Droubi (University of Dundee).
Publications
The list below presents some of our members’ recent publications. For a complete list of publications, please visit individual member's profiles.
Zhu, Mingzhe (2024) Human rights approach to climate change litigation and its limits. In: Zhang, Wei and Liu, Huawen (eds.) Chinese Yearbook of Human Rights. Brill: Leiden, pp. 137-162. ISBN 9789004697362 (doi: 10.1163/9789004697362_007)
Zhu, Mingzhe and Fan, Liyuan (2024) A comparative study of the judicial construction of scientific credibility in climate litigation. Review of European, Comparative and International Environmental Law, 33(2), pp. 250-264. (doi: 10.1111/reel.12542)
Zhu, Mingzhe and Yuchen, He (2024) 创造 “无人的荒野”：从系谱学看美国国家公园制度与土著人民人权危机 = The making of the 'Untouched Wilderness': a genealogical analysis of the establishment of early American national parks. Chinese Journal of Human Rights, pp. 80-102.
Chalaczkiewicz-Ladna, Katarzyna , Esser, Irene-Marie and MacNeil, Iain (2025) The workforce engagement mechanisms in the UK: a way towards more sustainable companies? (Part 2). In: González Sánchez, Sara and Bethencourt Rodríguez, Geraldine (eds.) Gobierno corporativo sostenible: regulación vs. mercado. Thomson Reuters Aranzadi: Madrid, pp. 245-290. ISBN 9788410789531
Stewart, Calum, MacNeil, Iain , Jokubauskaite, Giedre, Pavlou, Vera , Williams, Rebecca , Droubi, Sufyan, Chalaczkiewicz-Ladna, Katarzyna and Shapovalova, Daria (2024) Situating Just Transition as a distinct legal concept. SSRN
Chałaczkiewicz-Ładna, Katarzyna , Sójka, Tomasz and Jerzmanowski, Jędrzej (2023) To whom Polish directors owe their duties – between shareholder primacy and political agenda. European Business Law Review, 34(4), pp. 665-694. (doi: 10.54648/eulr2023034)
Ferrando, T. and Jokubauskaite, G. (2023) Debt and green transition: An Introduction – Debating Development Research. European Association of Development Research and Training Institute.
MacNeil, I. and Esser, I.-M. (2022) The emergence of ‘comply or explain’ as a global model for corporate governance codes. European Business Law Review, 33(1), pp. 1-56.[img]
MacNeil, I. and Esser, I.-M. (2022) Capital markets and corporate governance standards. In: MacNeil, I. and Chiu, I. (eds.) Research Handbook on Global Capital Markets Law. Edward Elgar: Cheltenham. (In Press)
Pavlou, V. (2022) Sustainability, social reproduction and the future of labour law. In: Géa, F. and Palli, B. (eds.) L'avenir du droit du travail: Perspectives internationale et comparée. Bruylant: Brussels. ISBN 9782802769446 (Accepted for Publication) Item availability restricted.
Chalaczkiewicz-Ladna, K. , Esser, I.-M. and MacNeil, I. (2021) Workforce engagement and the UK corporate governance code. In: Corporate Governance, Sustainability and Reputation. Thomson Reuters Aranzadi. (Accepted for Publication)
Solana, J. (2020) Climate litigation in financial markets: a typology. Transnational Environmental Law, 9(1), pp. 103-135. (doi: 10.1017/S2047102519000244)
Solana, J. (2020) Climate change litigation as financial risk. Green Finance, 2(4), pp. 344-372. (doi: 10.3934/GF.2020019)