Since 2021, the term Just Transition (JT) has gained increasing visibility in Central Asian climate and energy debates. According to the Central Asia Climate Portal — an open regional database tracking climate-related publications — references to JT grew from three in 2021 to eleven in 2023, twenty-three in 2024, and forty-three by November 2025. The Russian equivalent «справедливый переход» appeared only in 2023 yet already featured in fourteen publications. This linguistic expansion reflects not only the spread of low-carbon initiatives but also the region’s engagement with the Nationally Determined Contributions 3.0 (NDC 3.0) processes. JT has further been identified as a framework for EU–Central Asia cooperation in the field of critical raw materials.

Across the region, the issue is framed through both opportunity and disruption. In Kazakhstan, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) stresses that decarbonizing fossil-based industries is indispensable for meeting climate goals, yet warns that such transformation carries deep social and economic consequences for coal-dependent regions. Other multilateral actors have begun to explore different lenses. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has examined the socio-economic benefits of energy transition through a gender lens and highlighted the need for a skilled labour force. Also through its Climate Promise initiative United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) calls for integrating fairness and inclusivity into national strategies. Yet no Central Asian state has adopted a dedicated Just Transition strategy.

Understanding what Just Transition means in local contexts is crucial. However, the diversity of interpretations and absence of clear indicators make it difficult to assess progress or accountability. This paper therefore examines how different stakeholders in Central Asia — donors, civil society, trade unions and local communities — understand and describe JT, and what narratives of justice emerge from their accounts. By unpacking these narratives, the study contributes to a growing body of scholarship that situates climate transitions within questions of fairness, participation, and regional identity.

The term Just Transition has become a core element of international climate policy, embedded in the Paris Agreement, International Labour Organization (ILO) Guidelines, and recent United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) JT Compilation Guidelines. Yet there is still no unified conceptual framework: definitions vary across research fields, institutional agendas, and geographic contexts. The UNFCCC guidelines define JT, but they acknowledge that “the context and concept of JT (aims or objectives of the transition, the nature of the transition, drivers, target group(s), etc.) differ across countries and communities.”

This variability is not simply conceptual confusion; it reflects plurality in how justice is understood and enacted. Despite its normative appeal, the global discourse around Just Transition is marked by deep conceptual tensions.

For regions like Central Asia — historically shaped by Soviet industrialization, extractive economies, and postcolonial development hierarchies — adopting a borrowed definition risks reproducing dependency and ignoring local social fabrics. In case of Central Asia local histories, identities, and institutions must inform what “justice” means in transition processes.

This paper therefore approaches Just Transition as a contested, evolving concept rather than a fixed policy term. It argues that to understand JT in Central Asia, one must move beyond imported policy templates and explore how governments, civil society, and communities construct their own narratives of justice. By tracing these narratives, the study seeks to contribute to an emerging decolonial understanding of transition — one that privileges local knowledge, social agency, and the lived experience of vulnerability as legitimate foundations for defining what a “just” transition should mean in this region.

This research employs a qualitative, interpretive design based on narrative analysis to explore how different actors in Central Asia describe and make sense of Just Transition. Rather than measuring implementation outcomes, the study focuses on how meanings of justice are constructed through discourse.

Primary data consist of 6 semi-structured interviews conducted in October-November 2025 with civil society representatives, journalists, trade unions, and environmental activists engaged in regional energy and climate debates. The interviews encouraged participants to reflect on their understanding of Just Transition, its social implications, and perceived barriers to fairness and inclusion.

The analysis also draws on secondary and audio-visual materials, including a 2024 seminar video on Just Transition and inputs from UNECE and Partnership for Action on Green Economy (PAGE) events focused on green recovery and social protection in the energy transition.

Overview

Across United Nations (UN) agencies and national governments in Central Asia, Just Transition is framed not as a single doctrine but as a constellation of overlapping narratives. The dominant focus remains technocratic and state-centered: transition is seen as a matter of planning, coordination, and risk management.

Competing Understandings

UNECE’s systems narrative interprets JT as a coordination challenge. It emphasizes “intentional planning,” integrated regional strategies, and “joint implementation” across stakeholders. Transformation is to be managed through coherent economic, environmental, and social planning—preserving mining heritage to reduce social resistance and repurposing coal infrastructure (e.g., methane capture, graphene production) to avoid stranded assets.

PAGE’s distributional–labour narrative centers on household vulnerability and labour impacts of coal phase-out. If suggested by them, the Carbon Neutrality Strategy will be implemented in Kazakhstan; it will project ≈15,000 job losses offset by ≈60,000 new positions in cleaner sectors, highlighting both economic disruption and health co-benefits. ILO’s procedural–decent work narrative foregrounds tripartite dialogue and policy coherence. OHCHR’s rights-based narrative positions JT within human rights law, insisting that emission cuts must not violate rights to work, health, and participation. It redefines “just” as rights-compliant rather than merely socially acceptable.

Governmental narratives remain fragmented. Kazakhstan’s creation of a JT platform and Kyrgyzstan’s emphasis on responsible investment signal intent but not strategy. Regionally, water–energy–climate governance remains siloed, while limited inter-state trust and hierarchical governance restrict participatory implementation.

Summary

The UN–government discourse constructs Just Transition as a multi-scalar policy framework balancing economic rationalization and social legitimacy. Without stronger regional cooperation and local agency, the risk persists that Central Asia’s transition will be orderly but not just.

Overview

Civil-society actors in Central Asia — environmental non-governmental organization (NGOs), journalists, community activists, and trade-union representatives — articulate JT as a deeply social and moral question. While UN and governmental institutions frame transition as technical modernization, civil-society participants describe justice through inclusion, protection, and dialogue. Most interviewees admitted that the term itself remains new and externally introduced, yet its meanings are emerging through local adaptation.

Most respondents admitted that the very phrase “just transition” remains alien in everyday discourse. The limited recognition of the term JT does not imply an absence of ideas about justice. On the contrary, respondents construct nuanced and context-rich narratives of fairness, even though the political label “Just Transition” remains largely unfamiliar to them. “You can hear it only at conferences... there is no understanding,” said one environmental activist. In countries, the term enters local debate through donor projects or international events rather than national politics. Local media are emerging as crucial translators of the agenda, making climate and transition debates accessible in local languages. By producing their own content, communities begin to shape the meaning of transition from below, turning an external policy term into a locally grounded conversation about livelihoods, vulnerability, and rights. Consequently, civil-society groups often translate it into the language of air quality, energy poverty, or community well-being, connecting climate policy with lived experience rather than with carbon metrics. For labour voices, it is about institutional participation: “It’s not just a government program — trade unions must be involved in it.”

Competing Understandings

Civil-society actors advance three overlapping frames:

Respondents consistently described authoritarian governance and information barriers as limits to public engagement: civil actors often cannot publicly articulate even “obvious” environmental concerns. Several interviewees noted that topics traditionally considered safe — such as air quality, tree-cutting, or energy efficiency — have become politically sensitive, limiting the space for dialogue and collective problem-solving. Others emphasized the lack of institutional channels for dialogue: “Until there are public discussions, nothing will begin.” Under these conditions, NGOs and trade unions rely on awareness-raising, informal education, and international networks to sustain conversation about justice.

Summary

Civil society and labour narratives reveal a shared insistence that justice must be practiced, not proclaimed. Their interpretations merge moral, institutional, and cultural dimensions of fairness — linking miners’ security, community participation, and heritage with calls for tripartite governance. Together, they redefine JT in Central Asia as an evolving social contract: one that must grow from below, through dialogue, recognition, and locally defined balance between economic transformation and human well-being.

Bridging Global Discourses and Local Realities

Internationally, the concept of a JT has evolved from the labour-focused origins of the International Labour Organization and trade unions into a multifaceted agenda linking climate ambition with social inclusion. In the Central Asian context, however, this discourse is translated through a technocratic, state-led lens, emphasizing energy diversification and investment rather than social dialogue or redistribution.

Findings from UN agencies and civil-society and trade unions narratives show a profound mismatch between top-down “green growth” rhetoric and bottom-up justice claims. While UNECE, PAGE, and national ministries frame JT around efficiency, modernization, and new market opportunities, local actors reinterpret it as voice, dignity, and agency. Civil-society groups associate justice with being heard, not merely compensated. The result is a semantic convergence — everyone speaks of “justice” — but a substantive divergence in what it means.

Bridging Global Discourses and Local Realities

This divergence threatens policy coherence. JT agendas promoted by international agencies often lack institutional embedding within Central Asia’s fragmented governance systems. Governments adopt the language of inclusivity but rarely operationalize it through participatory institutions. Without genuine stakeholder engagement, especially at the local level, reforms risk reproducing inequalities they claim to solve. The lack of communication channels between ministries, donors, and communities constrains social legitimacy—a core element of justice itself.

Special Focus 1: Embedding JT in NDC 3.0

The ILO’s Mapping Just Transition in NDCs report places Central Asian countries in the Europe and Central Asia group, implying higher integration of JT principles. Yet this classification misrepresents reality: no Central Asian NDC 2.0 explicitly mentioned JT. National commitments remain sectoral—energy, adaptation, and health—without reference to labour, gender, or social inclusion. For example, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan mention health adaptation, while Uzbekistan highlights participation and awareness through its social programmes. A recent Joint SDG Fund project in Uzbekistan aims to embed inclusivity and fairness into the forthcoming NDC 3.0, potentially marking the region’s first explicit institutionalization of JT principles. These developments demonstrate early recognition, but not yet integration, of the social dimension of climate policy.

Across Central Asia, countries integrated JT into their NDCs 3.0, though progress remains uneven. Importantly, all countries that reference JT first define the term itself, reflecting its novelty and the need to situate it within national contexts. Kazakhstan introduces a “just and inclusive transition framework” with measures on labour markets, retraining, regional diversification, and social protection, positioning itself as a regional frontrunner. Uzbekistan provides a dedicated definition centred on justice, inclusion, and decent jobs, while Kyrgyzstan frames JT as a socially equitable transformation supported by a planned Roadmap to 2035 and public dialogue. Tajikistan and Turkmenistan have yet to submit NDCs 3.0, leaving their JT definitions and approaches unknown.

Special Focus 2: Democracy and Rights as Preconditions

A Just Transition cannot occur in the absence of democratic governance and labour rights. As the ITUC Asia–Pacific report warns, shrinking civic space and repression of union activity across the region undermine workers’ ability to negotiate transition outcomes. Without freedom of association and collective bargaining, the “just” aspect of JT becomes rhetorical.

Central Asian journalists' analyses highlight further risks: limited public understanding of renewable energy reforms can provoke backlash when subsidies are removed—seen in Kazakhstan’s 2022 fuel-price protests and Uzbekistan’s 2024 gasoline-tax unrest. Such episodes show that justice deficits translate directly into instability.

Summary

In global forums, JT is a tool for inclusive decarbonization; in Central Asia, it is still an imported aspiration. Bridging this gap requires reinterpreting “transition” not as a technocratic project but as a social contract — anchored in rights, participation, and local agency. Embedding JT into NDC 3.0, supported by democratic reforms and civic dialogue, is not only a procedural improvement but a precondition for legitimacy.

This research reveals that Just Transition in Central Asia is not primarily a technical or economic issue, but a matter of recognition and agency. Governments and UN partners speak the language of planning, coordination, and investment, yet communities and civil-society actors interpret justice through lived experience — secure livelihoods, participation, and dignity. The gap between green growth narratives and bottom-up meanings of justice remains the main obstacle to legitimacy. As interviewees repeatedly stressed, fairness begins when “all those involved are equally included and listened to”. In civil-society narratives, a JT is impossible without a parallel commitment from international donors, who are seen both as a source of essential resources and as a missed opportunity for political support in defending rights, safety, and public accountability.

Civil-society narratives oscillate between pragmatic optimism and tired realism: a belief in the possibility of a JT as a concept, paired with deep skepticism toward current institutions and the political will required to implement it.

Case of Central Asian underscores that context defines justice. A universal “model” of transition cannot replace locally grounded visions that respect historical identity, cultural continuity, and uneven political realities.

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